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If you want to learn something, read about it. If you want to understand something, write about it. If you want to master something, teach it.

– Yogi Bhajan

One of the most rewarding experiences of my architecture career was co-leading three separate classes of Gensler University (GU), the global design firm’s accelerated leadership development program. In addition to collaborative workshops, office visits, and virtual meetings, students of each class heard from influential speakers who included clients, consultants, educators, and researchers. Today, most of those GU graduates are leading Gensler offices or their own firms. Helping others achieve success has been central to my leadership roles at multiple design firms and served as a key motivation for writing this book.

Recent events provided additional encouragement. Here in the US, we are finally confronting the lingering discrimination in our society and our shared responsibility to address it. But the architecture profession has much more work to do. The nation’s largest minority-owned architecture firm, Moody Nolan, was appropriately recognized in 2021 by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) with the Architecture Firm Award. MASS Design Group, an innovative non-profit focused on serving the underserved, earned the same award in 2022. Of the ten firms recognized between 2011 and 2020, however, over two-thirds of the Principals still leading those firms are white men.

Today, it is more important than ever that we showcase and learn from design leaders who look like the world, and who bring diverse life experiences and cultural backgrounds to their work. Individually, each of the sixteen people interviewed for this book stands on their own as a successful and influential design leader. Collectively, they express what design leadership in our profession can and should look like.

Prior to Gensler, I worked at four other exceptional design firms. In chronological order, they are: EHDD; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; LPA; and ZGF Architects. Of the five firms including Gensler, four were honored by the AIA with the Architecture Firm Award. One of the four has earned the honor twice and the fifth has earned the AIA California Firm Award twice.

I mention these awards not to burnish my own reputation; in fact, I have joked with colleagues for years that all five firms earned them while I worked elsewhere. I mention them to highlight my good fortune. I have had the opportunity to collaborate with – and learn from – hundreds of talented design leaders over the past forty years.

During that time, I have observed the most effective way in which design leaders can share what they learn is through storytelling. Relatable stories are what young professionals most often remember and apply to their own careers, more than company policies, guidelines, or checklists. When they hear personal stories from a design leader who inspired a client, seized an opportunity, discovered a key insight, made a difficult decision, or creatively overcame an obstacle, they better retain and more effectively leverage the lessons and insights.

And that is why the sixteen individuals featured in Voices of Design Leadership speak in their own words and tell their own stories. My authorship role is not to represent their points of view with excerpts, but to engage in conversations that allow each person to express themselves in open dialogue.