Biography

Michelle M. Burney

Around age four or five, Michelle decided she needed her own room. Not because of any great conflict — she loved her sister — but because she needed a space she could make her own. Her parents said yes. She rearranged the furniture immediately. Then rearranged it again, as her needs changed, until it finally felt right.

That instinct never left her.

Michelle is the Founder and Principal of Lakaynan, a Los Angeles based design + build studio whose name means "the home" in Haitian Creole. The word is both personal and declarative: home as sanctuary, inheritance, and strategy.

Her path to the built environment didn't start in a design school. It started with an awareness, present since childhood, that the spaces we occupy shape how we feel — and that most people are living and working inside rooms that are quietly working against them. She carries that conviction into every project.

Michelle holds a Bachelor of Science in International Business from San Francisco State University and an Associate of Arts in Interior Design from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. She further deepened her literacy in the built environment through formal construction training with the Southwestern States Carpenters Union pre-apprenticeship program — a deliberate step toward understanding building from the inside out. She is currently completing a Contractor Accelerator with The Center by Lendistry, focused on rebuilding efforts in Altadena and Pacific Palisades.

For Michelle, design is not decoration. It is alignment. It is understanding how a room shapes behavior, how a headquarters influences momentum, and how ownership transforms legacy.

Lakaynan was founded in April 2023 and is currently in a growth stage — expanding its team and deepening its focus on projects that merge thoughtful design with community-forward development. Michelle brings both a designer's eye and a builder's mind to every engagement, and is building a studio that holds its value the same way a well-designed home does: with intention, clarity, and bones that last.

She lives and works in Los Angeles — designing spaces that hold people well.