BHS Employee of the Year: A Conversation with Art Director Erica Hess

This week Erica Hess, Art Director, of our Marketing Team was awarded Employee of the Year designation by Brown Harris Stevens. We sat down with her to learn more about her work ethic, the future of AI in design, and so much more.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

If you’ve ever heard the music playing in the Marketing lounge, you’ll see why it’s so fun! I’m very lucky to work with such a talented, supportive, creative team that consistently pushes ideas further and elevates our brand. It’s a great environment for collaboration, and I always enjoy seeing how a simple idea can grow into something really strong when everyone contributes their perspective.

If a real estate agent from another firm asked you why join BHS when it comes to the marketing support they receive what would you say to them?

One of the biggest differences at BHS is how hands-on the marketing support really is. We’re always looking for ways to improve what we offer, but more importantly, we take the time to understand each agent and what they’re trying to build. That makes it easier to create marketing that actually reflects their brand and helps support their business in a meaningful way.

You are known for your DIY Home Improvement projects that both you and your husband work on, what project do you feel is one that you felt most fulfilled with after completing and why?

We put the most time and effort into our kitchen, which ended up being an ongoing project for quite a while. We’d say it was complete, and then a year later we’d find something else we wanted to improve or add. The most rewarding part has been seeing how our skills evolved over time. Each update reflected how much more confident and capable we’d become, and it turned into more than just a renovation, but a project that grew with us.

What is your favorite design project you ever worked on and why?

The bus shelter ads for agents are always fun to work on because you get to see the design come to life in the real world. There’s something exciting about walking through the city and spotting something you created displayed at that scale and seeing how it connects directly with people in everyday spaces.

Share with us an art or design skill that people may not know you have.

I love designing Halloween costumes and usually end up making two each year for different occasions. My favorites tend to revolve around food items because it’s fun to figure out how to translate them into real materials, like making popcorn out of crumpled paper with dashes of yellow paint. It’s always a creative challenge that lets me experiment and think about materials in a playful way.

How is AI and new design technology changing what’s possible in real estate design?

AI has become a really useful tool for image generation and editing, and for helping photos work with your design instead of forcing the design to work around it. Things that used to take a lot of tedious manual work can now be done much faster, which allows for more time to focus on creativity, big ideas, and strategy.

Favorite piece of art and why?

When I was in Spain, I was mesmerized by “The Royal Heart” by Salvador Dalí. It’s a gold brooch with a red ruby-jeweled heart inside that actually has a moving, battery-powered heartbeat. The glimmering jewels set around a beating human heart create this surreal contrast between something ornate and material and something deeply human and alive.