the receptionist to the principals — is to make our clients’ enterprises better. It’s not about what we do. It’s about how we’re going to make their business, their lives and their community better. The other component was that if we’re not making money, we can’t do the right job to service our clients. Because everybody throughout the firm understood that was what we were doing, it fostered a deep spirit of collaboration between offices. I had a number of firmwide responsibilities on the technical side: project delivery, code expertise and regulatory approval stuff. I was often called upon to go to another office and give them a hand to strategize, market a particular project, or solve technical or code issues. So, I saw how that collaborative spirit was evident in how people worked every day. I can’t tell you the number of times that I would drop into the Houston office or the Chicago office, or somebody from New York would fly in. We’d spend the evening having dinner in the office and prepping for an interview the next morning. Once in the interview, the next day, things would go like clockwork. Every one of us knew the stories and how to play off each other. It was clear to clients that we liked to work together, and they had a sense of what we’d be like to work with them. Arthur was great about recognizing and celebrating the people who actually did the work behind the scenes. Within the first couple of years of starting the practice, he set up a profit-sharing plan for the staff. Then, after I was there about eight years or so, we went to an Employee Stock Option Program. By the time I left, the holdings of the employees in the ESOP were about 40%. The profit-sharing plan continued to grow. So even if you’re the guy who’s the most expert at detailing stairs and you’ve been there for 35 years, you’re going to retire with a nice nest egg. EFI Building How did your career evolve after Gensler? In 2008, I went to work with Perkins&Will for about eight years, and while I was doing some projects, I was mostly working on the corporate side to advance the technical performance, standards and project delivery processes that we used to develop projects. Perkins&Will’s model of growth is to acquire other firms. I spent a fair amount of time working with these firms that were acquired to instill the cultural values that make Perkins&Will who they are. In the past 10 years, I’ve moved into consulting roles, cutting back from practice as I have gotten older. I’ve been working with some guys out of London, Bond Events, who do conferences for architects and suppliers. It’s been a great experience, continuing to learn something/teach something I’ve pursued for a long time. Favorite Projects Projects that you are particularly proud of? There’s a number of them that really stick. When I was with SOM, we did the additions to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston, and I was a job captain. There was the glamour and traditions of the old Ritz; it was right on the Boston Garden. We added some ballroom spaces across the alley, fronting on the Garden, some hotel rooms and some condos up top, which was a technical challenge as well as a design review challenge because of its historic nature. With Gensler, I did a whole range of things — office buildings, Silicon Valley campuses and things like that — but I tended to specialize in the historic preservation and retail spaces around Union Square. I worked on pretty much every corner of Union Square. The Nike store on the northeast corner was particularly challenging. It was a building that was built in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake. During the rush to rebuild, they used a
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