Michelle Jaime

Feb 27

School: Kaiser High School

Career: Interior Designer | Founder of The Vanguard Theory

You may recognize Michelle Jaime as half the duo of HGTV’s Aloha Homes. Her, alongside her brother David, re-model run-down properties into beautiful forever homes right here in the 808. Michelle is in charge of handling the interior design side.

As children, Michelle and her brother would visit model homes in Mililani with their dad. Her eye for design stemmed from there and eventually inspired her to pursue a career in interior design. However, Michelle’s career journey didn’t happen without some major lows.

When the U.S. economy fell into a recession in 2009, many people were left without jobs. Unfortunately, Michelle was one of them.

She spent some time designing independently for other large companies. Meanwhile, she recognized a need for smaller, highly creative design projects, but there wasn’t an opportunity in Hawaiʻi to do so. So with a friend’s help, Michelle founded her own design firm, The Vanguard Theory.

They took things one at a time, slowly building a portfolio of projects and client base. Surely enough, Michelle got her big break when her firm was approached to design the public spaces of the SurfJack Hotel.