Design careers are often shaped by mentors. Debby Gomulka has taken that role herself, serving as an adjunct professor at Cape Fear Community College from 2015 to 2017, according to a 2025 CEOWORLD profile.

The profile also describes the advice she gives students and interns. Her message is to resist conformity: she tells them not to try to fit in, because creative work is abstract by nature. It is a notable stance for a designer whose own career has grown from the furniture industry to international roles.

Her own education is a useful model for that guidance. She earned an interior design degree with an art minor from Meredith College, according to the profile, and then worked in the furniture and design industry before founding her own firm.

Her teaching sits comfortably beside her professional work. As founder of Provenance Lee Interiors, she has spent about 25 years handling restoration, renovation, and new construction, giving students a practitioner’s perspective on interior design.

She also holds an interior design degree with an art minor from Meredith College, which provides the academic foundation for her teaching and her art history informed approach to rooms.

She also describes designers as modern day Michelangelos, a phrase that encourages students to take craft seriously.

Teaching also keeps a designer’s thinking fresh. Explaining why a choice works to students and interns forces clear reasoning, and that discipline can carry back into client meetings, where decisions about layout, color, and materials benefit from the same plain explanation. Her willingness to share that guidance publicly gives younger designers a clear and memorable principle to carry into their first projects.

Mentoring is one more example of the community-minded work she lists on her personal site. Her LinkedIn profile offers a view of her professional path, and her teaching years remain a meaningful part of it.