Karen Mannheim

In early 2021, TRAZZO had 28 years behind it: more than 2,500 projects, an 80-person team, Lima's most important showrooms, and a list any architect in Lima would recognize: residential buildings by RAMSA for ACM Grupo, projects with Llosa Cortegana Arquitectos and Barclay & Crousse, the Porsche flagship and Osaka Nikkei. Inside Lima, that record moved through Karen's network. Outside it, nobody could see it.

TRAZZO had opened in Miami in 2020. Its buyers there are developers, architects and high-end builders across the United States, Latin America and Spain: a few thousand people, none of whom had walked into a room Karen lit. She had about a thousand followers on Instagram.

A lighting studio is chosen before anyone walks into its work. When the record can't reach the architect or developer specifying the project, the studio isn't in the conversation.

TRAZZO's project list carried weight a Miami developer would recognize at once, if someone told them what it meant. RAMSA designed the most expensive penthouse ever sold in the United States, the Harvard Kennedy School and residential colleges at Yale, and had chosen TRAZZO four times for residential projects in Peru, through ACM Grupo.

So the content never describes lamps. It takes a project the buyer already respects and shows how its light was decided: the process, the constraints, the judgment. The association opens the door; Karen's judgment is what the reader remembers.

• NARRATIVE PLATFORM

  One position for Karen and the company: an entrepreneur who found her language in light. It decides which stories get told and which don’t.

• PROJECT BREAKDOWNS

  How the light was decided in penthouses, villas and buildings, starting with Pezet, by RAMSA, in Lima.

• FOUNDER STORIES

  The decisions behind the company, told by Karen: being chosen to light the new Porsche flagship in Peru, opening Miami in 2020.

• SPOTLIGHT · 2026

  A video series in which Karen interviews people at the top of neighboring fields: Peter Seinfeld, five years in Frank Gehry’s studio; Norbert Jacniak, a Marbella-based chef who has cooked for Formula 1 in Saudi Arabia and for a European king; and leading Latin American architects.

• PRESENTATION SYSTEM

  The structure, master template and rules for any pitch. Karen's team now builds a deck in an afternoon instead of weeks.

LinkedIn carries Karen to developers and architects. Instagram carries the projects. The same story is told in Lima, to a market that already knows TRAZZO, and in Miami, to one that doesn't. Karen and Fran meet once a week; CRUDA runs the rest.