Mia as a child with her mom
Little Mia baking
Mia with her dad
Mia in San Luis Obispo
Mia with Professor Jo Hao
Mia Carreto started selling hand-made bracelets in fourth grade. Her mother, Maricruz, helped her set prices: $3 to $5, depending on the complexity of the “rainbow loom” rubber bands Mia braided.
“The easiest ones I could make really fast,” says the 20-year-old San Fernando Valley native. If classmates wanted one with a design, the price went up.
It was Mia’s first creative business venture. Next came beaded crafts. By high school, she was creating elaborate doodle prints and painting acrylic portraits on commission. She also baked and decorated cakes and cupcakes for neighbors celebrating birthdays and special events.
Whatever the medium, whatever the market, the impulse was the same: make something beautiful, and find customers who want it.
Today that restless creativity has taken sharp focus.
Mia graduates from Santa Monica College this month with an associate degree in interior architecture design and a perfect 4.0 GPA. She will transfer as a junior to Woodbury University in Burbank—her first-choice school—to pursue a bachelor’s in interior design with a minor in architecture.
*
Mia’s vocation sprang, improbably, from her family’s cramped apartment during the pandemic.
At the time, she shared a one-bedroom unit in Van Nuys with her mother, stepfather José and brother Arturo. During the lockdown, Mia, then 15, found herself continually rearranging and redecorating their small living space—switching around the furniture every few days, testing what worked.
“I think that’s when I figured out I was going into interior design,” she says with a smile. “I started tapping into architecture, too.”
Her mom and stepdad didn’t object to the ever-changing apartment layout. They were busy working outside the home to put food on the table.
“My mom is a big hustler,” Mia says, with unmistakable admiration for Maricruz. “She loves to be working.”
A Guatemalan immigrant, Maricruz had come to the United States in her teens and dropped out of high school after becoming pregnant. For as long as Mia can remember, her mom juggled two or three jobs at a time. At 12, Mia started cleaning homes and offices alongside Maricruz. José, who came into the picture around then, brought the same work ethic.
During the pandemic, Maricruz would clean bathrooms at a studio, serve lunches at a school cafeteria and then cover the late shift at a laundromat.
Today, both parents have full-time jobs and run a commercial cleaning business on the side.
*
As a first-gen student, Mia had to meet academic challenges on her own. An honors student at Birmingham Community Charter High School, she graduated with a 4.2 GPA while competing on the wrestling team. As a college peer counselor her senior year, she helped classmates navigate FAFSA applications and college admissions—a process she understood from the inside, having figured it out largely by herself.
“Lots of first-generation kids are lost,” she says. “It’s very difficult to ask parents how to do this when they’ve never done it themselves. But we can create a community and help each other out.”
Mia herself was admitted to nine universities; she chose to enroll in landscape architecture at UC Davis. But three weeks into a summer pre-college bridge program, she knew the quiet, rural campus was all wrong for her big-city energy.
She remembers calling her parents, sheepishly, and asking them to drive her home. “I felt like a failure,” she recalls. “I’d just dropped out of a UC because I couldn’t last three weeks.”
Her best friend pointed Mia toward SMC, where the interior architectural design program was building steam.
“It was the best decision I could ever have made,” Mia says. “I’ve had so many opportunities and been able to meet so many people.”
Early on, Mia got involved with the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS) club, which connected her with tours and studio presentations at top downtown firms like Gensler and RDC. A recent club activity sponsored by Architecture for Communities Los Angeles saw Mia working a high-school career fair that brought together 500 design-curious teens and representatives from 60 top architecture and interior design firms.
Mia credits her professors, Josephine “Jo” Hao and Javier Cambron, with building her confidence and ambition. She’s effusive about the overall design community she found at SMC, especially the NOMAS club.
“We all understand each other,” she says. “We understand the pressure, the homework, how much effort it takes.”
Mia put in plenty of effort. Studio by studio, she gave her all to team-based projects where all-nighters were par for the course. As a commuter student traveling an hour from the San Fernando Valley, she battled rush-hour traffic to make her morning classes at the SMC Center for Media and Design. Then she’d head down to El Segundo, where she worked part-time as a personal assistant in a creative agency. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, she devoted afternoons and evenings to helping out in the family cleaning business. Mia says she’s deeply grateful to her parents, who have supported her every step of the way.
*
This past year, she piled on extra work by entering major design competitions.
Mia was part of the SMC team that achieved a historic third-place win at the 2025 NOMAS student competition in Kansas City. No community college team had previously made it to the final round of the prestigious national competition, let alone taken home a trophy.
The Corsairs’ winning entry was conceived in an advanced studio co-taught by Javier, Jo and art history professor Michael Rocchio. Mia was part of the original student design team that hatched Cadence, a mixed-use development for a blighted neighborhood of Kansas City. The innovative proposal tapped into the city’s deep jazz and blues history.
“That project took eight months of work, and Mia was the person who showed up every single time, a backbone team member behind the scene, the first to jump in when they needed something,” says Javier, who nominated Mia for the honor of being spotlighted for SMC’s 2026 commencement program.
Coming off that win, Mia and former Cadence teammate Coco Martino entered the Student Design Expo hosted by the Southern California chapter of the International Interior Design Association (IIDA). The event brought together design students from eight colleges and universities, including many graduating seniors. The Corsairs team took 2nd place—“a huge accomplishment,” Javier says, “but honestly no surprise to anyone who has worked with Mia.”
Mia was also part of an SMC architecture team competing in the Design Village challenge hosted by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The contest requires students to design and manufacture a full-scale dwelling, carry it piecemeal down a mile-long footpath, assemble the dwelling in the wilderness, and occupy it for several days. Though Mia’s team didn’t win that contest, two other SMC sister teams took home top prizes.
“What makes Mia’s story compelling is the combination of her journey and the way she carries herself,” Javier says. “She’s mature, responsible, dedicated and incredibly supportive of the people around her. She raises the quality of work in any classroom she’s in. She’s the kind of student who makes the whole cohort better.”
Come September, Mia knows the pressure won’t let up at Woodbury. Minoring in architecture will add to her already-demanding courseload. She plans to seek out internships at design firms. She’ll stay involved with NOMAS and IIDA. And enter more competitions.
She’s not intimidated.
“I love a good challenge,” Mia says. “I love to learn new things. I want to do it all.”
* * *
SMC in Focus Volume XII, Issue 3
Believing in Herself
At Santa Monica College, Madeline Davis transformed years of self-doubt into student success, a passion for teaching—and a future she once thought impossible. Read Article
Chasing Her Interior Dreams
This first-gen Corsair racked up interior design awards, earned straight A’s and pulled all-nighters in the studio — all while commuting, working part-time jobs, and helping out with the family cleaning business. Read Article
Bearing Witness
From Navy ships to city streets, Kayjel Mairena built a journalism career at SMC focused on documenting and serving communities in need. Read Article
Writing a New Chapter
Coming to Santa Monica College for a fresh start, Jeffrey Berrios found community in his classes and confidence in writing for The Corsair. Read Article
Bragging Rights
An Art prof has a museum show. An SMC Fashion alum dresses a celebrity. The College gets a $250k grant to design equity-centered professional development. Read Article
From Shoeboxes to Skyscrapers
Jakarta native Bryan Hartanto turned his fixation on infrastructure into an extraordinary journey through SMC—collecting research projects, leadership roles and campus jobs. Headed to UC San Diego for civil engineering, Bryan is determined to keep on building. Read Article