Aged only 26, Ambra Medda—director and co-founder of Design Miami/Basel, the twice-yearly forum for designers, collectors and galleries—is already making quite a name for herself in the design world

With a passion for design that's almost palpable, it's impossible to imagine that Ambra Medda could ever have worked in another field. "Design is in my DNA," she confirms. "I was brought up amid design."

The reason she had wanted to leave her design heritage behind her—her mother is London design gallerist Giuliana Medda—was also the motivation for her launching the design fair at the age of 23. "For people my age, design on a high level was relegated to the older generation," she says. "It wasn't upbeat or exciting."

According to Medda, there was nowhere for designers, collectors, gallery owners and the media to congregate. The obvious answer was to start something along the lines of the long-established art fairs. But as Medda explains, she was convinced there was a reason someone hadn't already done it. "I had moments of doubt, asking: why has no one else done this? I wondered what I was missing that had stopped others," she says. "I guess it just hadn't been done before."

Medda decided to give it a try, resulting in the 2005 Miami show. Since then, the show has established itself as a fixture on the cultural calendar, with an impressive list of galleries showing an ever greater array of one-off designs and limited-edition works.

The show's success has coincided with a boom in limited-edition pieces, but Medda refuses to take any credit for that. "We've started nothing," she insists. "The trend for established artists creating wonderful, one-off and collectible limited-edition pieces is nothing new and nothing we created. We have simply allowed these pieces to come together in one place."

A Sardinian, who grew up in Rhodes, was educated in London and who now runs an organisation in the US and Switzerland, Medda says she enjoys being an outsider. "It's a double-edged sword," she says. "Sometimes you want to belong, but at the same time, it allows you to look at everything with a different perspective."

The same goes for her youth. Now a respected figure within the design world, it is remarkable to think that she is still only 26. Although rarely a problem in the US, where "people judge you on what you do, not who you are", Medda admits that some parts of Europe have a problem with her age. "In Italy, I am always having to apologise for my age," she says.

But the real challenge for Medda has been growing and leading an organisation that now employs eight people. She admits she has been forced to make her own organisation more formal and less "seat of the pants". It may feel like a hobby, but it is a business.

"Anyone who tells you that the arts are not about commerce is a madman," says Medda. "We wouldn't be able to survive without our sponsors [HSBC Private Bank] and while the dealers love it when customers understand and appreciate the design, they also like it when people will walk onto the stand and write a $100,000 cheque for a desk," she says.