She is a founder who connects scattered moments of “useful time” in the city, linking people with the spaces they need. Through SpaceCloud, Korea’s leading shared-space platform, she has enabled tens of thousands of places across the country to be used by the hour, turning the idea of a lighter, more accessible city into reality. Her starting point was the difficulty of finding meeting rooms during her first job, and today she works between Seoul and Jeju, collaborating with local partners while growing the value of spaces with her team. What began as a small experiment connecting a dozen friends’ spaces has expanded into a platform that now reaches the UK, helping users find the right place at the right moment, and helping hosts make use of unused time. She often describes space as “a business of selling time,” and continues to build fair, flexible access through technology. Looking ahead, she hopes to shape community-living projects in Jeju—places that embody a way of living together—and imagines the island becoming a destination for social developers from around the world. Moving between work and life, between local and global, she keeps designing spaces that grow more alive the more people use them.

Originally from Michigan, USA, Stefania teaches English in Jeju while continuing her artistic practice. After a major turning point in her life, she came to the island and has since been learning how to begin again amid its sea, forests, and changing seasons. She enjoys drawing and working with pastels, often depicting people in dreamlike scenes, believing that the act of working with color helps her find calm and make sense of life. As a teacher, she finds the greatest reward in her connection with students and is steadily preparing to pursue art education more deeply in the future. A vegan for nearly fourteen years, she carries her values into daily life through Jeju’s restaurants, traditional markets, and thrift shops. She especially loves nature-filled places like Gwakji and Hamdeok beaches, the trails of Jeolmul Forest, and the cherry blossom-lined streets near Jeju University. She believes that forming genuine connections, even in unfamiliar places, is what makes a city feel like home—and she continues to quietly write her next chapter here on the island.

Nine years after moving to Jeju, Iris has become someone who tells the island’s stories through color. Her studio, Color Lab Jeju, collects the hues found in the island’s nature—the blue of the sea, the green of the forest, and the earthy brown of volcanic soil—and transforms them into design, education, and everyday creations. For Iris, color is more than what we see; it is a language that connects emotions, memories, people, and nature. She has named the seas where Jeju’s haenyeo, or women divers, work—such as Halmang-badang—and continues to record their colors while guiding others to discover their own shades within nature. Through this work, Color Lab Jeju has come to be known as “a lab of empathy through color.” When someone reads the name of a color they’ve chosen and says, “This feels like my story,” Iris treasures that moment. She continues to record the changing light of Jeju, hoping that its colors will live on in the everyday lives of those who encounter them.