ACK Smart Energy is thrilled to introduce the newest member of our team, Heather Kennedy Magbie.
Heather is a Nantucket year-rounder, calling the Grey Lady home for almost five years. Originally from coastal Maine, her time on Nantucket started when her now-husband followed a job lead, moving them both to the island.
“Love brought me to Nantucket, actually,” Heather said. “My husband works for his brother as the operations manager of an HVAC company. We would come out for visits and fell in love with the island. It seemed our hearts were set on living here full time and I was intrigued by the Interior Design market here. Coming from a small town in Maine, there are so many things about Nantucket that drew us to want to live here - it really feels like home. We love the simplicity of living on Nantucket, the small town vibe, and the incredible summers. It feels like the right place to be.”
After starting work on island as an interior designer, various projects brought Heather and her future business partner, Christine Perkins, together and thus Isle Designs was born.
“I was working independently as an interior designer, at the time. I wanted to start my company here and [Christine] and I just really hit it off,” she said. “We love the way we work together, and we just thought ‘You know what, let’s just do this. Let’s go into this thing we’re passionate about.’”
A graduate of Syracuse University with a BFA in Environmental and Interior Design, Heather was able to specialize in her combined interests of sustainability and design. Four years after moving to the island, Heather now brings her studies to tangible fruition, designing primarily residential properties with sustainability in mind for each project.
“It’s something I always strive to do, especially in a small community like this. There is a lot of waste in these projects so I try to be really delicate about the way we go about them. I really try not to just throw things out,” she said. “We work through each project in a thoughtful manner, just trying not to negatively impact our small community as much as we can. That’s what drew me to ACK Smart Energy. I was looking for something that works simultaneously with my company, and this seemed that it would fit really well with the things that I’m passionate about.”
So how does one connect home interiors with exterior solar panels? Heather’s proficiency in computer-aided design programs is the tie that binds.
“I have a passion for technical design and sustainable construction. I work really heavily in AutoCAD, SketchUP, and programs like that that do computer-aided design. This just seemed like something that would be really interesting to me.”
Fusing her passions, Heather now splits her professional time designing interiors with Isle Designs and exteriors with ACK Smart Energy. Finding the perfect solar panel array for a property structure or landscape is her craft, all with the hope of giving back to the community she loves so much and working to lessen the impact made on island.
“I see a huge place for solar energy here. I mean, being out on an island, even with the cloud coverage, you’re still generating a good amount of energy. We don’t have a lot of tall trees, so you really can find a lot of good applications out here on Nantucket for solar.”
As for her long-term goals? Like a true Nantucketer, she hopes to make a positive impact that will keep the island its unique self for many years to come.
“I hope we can get our island to a point where we’re generating greener energy so we can use less fossil fuels and electricity from the cables coming from the Cape. We’re already at a point where we’re at capacity and we’re continuing to build. Anything we can possibly do to try and alleviate our footprint and try to make our systems work better out here helps. We have one earth, we have to do everything we can to protect it now.”