Brandeis Magazine

“Who wants a lawyer to design their wedding?” florist Lynn Jawitz ’78 jokes. “It’s not the first thing I tell people when they hire me to plan their special occasion.”

She has even more to hide. Besides having a law degree, Jawitz also worked as a Merrill Lynch stockbroker before she turned over a new leaf and became an award-winning self-described “floral architect.” Today, the lush bouquets she creates at Florisan, her business on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, bloom in the pages of upscale magazines and at high-profile weddings.

Back in 1990, with a 1-year-old and another baby on the way, Jawitz realized corporate life would never allow her to stop and smell the roses. So she enrolled at Parsons to study Japanese, English and Dutch floral design, and began to build her floral business into the success it has become.

A native of Levittown, N.Y., Jawitz says she always had a passion for “beautiful presentations” — setting the tables at her synagogue, planning her own “magical” Sweet 16 in her family’s basement. Even at Brandeis, she planned elaborate end-of-year events for her friends at WBRS.

“You love it. You love it,” Jawitz remembers the radio station’s general manager telling her as she catered the WBRS parties with wine, cheese and M&M’s.

Nearly 40 years later, petal to the metal, she admits, “He was right. I did love it.”

— Robyn Spector ’13