Like many designers, Alison Ford has engaged in multiple careers giving her a breadth of skills, experience and a keen sense of humor. She has raised three children (making Halloween costumes and birthday cakes), waited tables (through college and graduate school), and has pursued a variety of occupations in imaging or design. 

While she was raising children, Ford taught Theatre Design at Plymouth State College and later at the University of Iowa. At Plymouth she taught set and costume design and related courses and she served as the first Director of the Silver Cultural Arts Center. At the University of Iowa she lead the Theatre Design program, recruiting record numbers of students, winning significant grants, and launching student designers into the profession. As much as she enjoyed her tenured appointment at Iowa, after 2001, she moved her family back home to New York. 

In New York she landed in the lucrative position as a Senior Design Director for Jack Morton Worldwide where she directed artists in the concept, design and execution of Experiential Marketing Environments. As invigorating as the collaborations were, Ford looked for projects with more enduring objectives. From the corporate world she moved to the world of architecture working as a Senior Designer for Sachs Morgan studio where she collaborated in the renovation and building of theatre spaces around the country. 

With the last of her three children launched into the world, Ford practices her profession primarily working on television and film projects which include The Path, White Collar, The Americans, and Mr. Robot. She has worked as an Art Director and Assistant Art Director for several feature films. In addition, in 2007, Ford established her own firm specializing in architectural and interior illustration. Alison Ford Associates provides evocative images of interior and exterior spaces for architects, contractors and other design firms.

Ford has designed scenery for better than one hundred theatre companies around the country including: ACT in Seattle, Missouri Repertory Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Indiana Repertory Theatre, The Berkshire Theatre Festival, The Yale Repertory Theatre, and the New York City Opera Touring Company. 

Other assignments include exhibit design for the New Hampshire Museum of History, The Iowa Children's Museum, and occasional interior design projects.

Ford has lectured on theatre design and set design at Carnegie Mellon, Northeastern University, University of Michigan, University of Illinois, University of Massachusetts and the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center.   She lives in Ossining, New York with her husband, dog, and occasionally visiting children.