October 16, 2026

Available Light Announces Retirement of Founder and CEO Steven Rosen, FIALD, CLD

Available Light, an internationally recognized experiential lighting design firm, announces that Founder and CEO Steven Rosen, FIALD, CLD will retire in December 2026, after more than four decades in lighting design and 35 years leading the firm he founded.

There is a lot to celebrate.

Over the more than 40-year arc of his lighting design career, there are more than a thousand projects, plenty of awards, and 35 years of Available Light history we could talk about. But perhaps Steven's greatest legacy is the community of designers, collaborators, clients, students, and friends he has influenced—and learned from—along the way.

Long before Available Light, Steven started with a plan to spend a life of design in the theater. Nothing brought him greater joy than visually interpreting a dramatic work with light. But life presented opportunities that he had never imagined. Steven supplemented his burgeoning theatrical career by lighting tradeshow exhibits alongside one of his mentors, Rick Chamberlain. A chance tradeshow collaboration with renowned museum exhibit designer, Nick Paffett, led to his first museum commission: the Virginia Air & Space Center. Steven was bit by the museum bug and would never look back. A few years later, another fortuitous encounter with architect Bob Schaeffner, led to his first architectural lighting design assignment, a new earth sciences building at Amherst College. Theater–Tradeshows–Museums–Architecture. "Why focus on one discipline when I could do it all?" Rosen mused.

And that's exactly what Steven did. He built Available Light with the belief that unrestrained theatrical storytelling could serve a more expansive audience. What began as a single drafting table in his living room apartment in 1992 has grown into a national lighting design practice with six studios, almost 40 people, and a portfolio spanning museum exhibition, architecture, themed entertainment, trade show exhibits, and immersive environments around the world. Steven's wife, Susan Gochenour, believed in this vision and soon signed on as the young firm's first Managing Director.

Steven won the first-ever IALD Radiance Award for Available Light's work on Building 7 at MIT. He received Lifetime Achievement awards from both LDI/Live Design and The Edison Report, became a Fellow of the IALD, and landed on the 2025 blooloop 50 Top Museum Influencer list. Rosen has enjoyed a bountiful career.

"My greatest achievement has been assembling this team of passionate, talented, and hard-working professionals at Available Light," says Rosen. "Serving as their leader has been an honor and a privilege. Realizing that we have multiple layers of people ready for the challenge of running the firm, I made my decision that the time is now to hand over the reins and cheer on their success. I am a very proud Founder!"

Thank you, Steven, for building a place where creativity, curiosity, storytelling, and breathtaking lighting will continue to thrive for decades to come. Available Light, this company he built, will continue to evolve, push boundaries, and create meaningful experiences through light.