- Howdy, and welcome to the Architecture for Health Friday lecture series.

It's great to have you with us.

We have a treat for you today.

We have several representatives from the firm, LS3P, 11 offices and their firm, we have a couple of those offices represented here with us today, three guest speakers.

First, let me introduce Julia Badorrek.

Julia is currently leading for LS3P, their emerging professionals group in their Raleigh office.

And earlier this year or a year ago, she was a 2021 summer leadership conference, or summer leadership summit they call it now, as you may know, Next Generation Scholarship, Recognizing Young Professionals in Healthcare Architecture.

So she's a rising star and we're happy to have her with us.

Also in the studio today is Willy Schlein.

Many of you will know.

He is LS3P's firm-wide Healthcare Practice Leader, lots of history, lots of notable projects in Willy's past.

Importantly, he's the Founding Chairman of the AIA, South Atlantic Region, Architecture for Health Inaugural Conference, now in its second decade of remarkable string of successes that began with Willy's influence, and it's great to have you with us today, Willy.

Joining us online is Ron Smith.

Ron is an architect in the Raleigh office, Board Certified in Health Architecture, past president of the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health Founder in that capacity of the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health Research Committee.

And he currently serves on a multidisciplinary advisory council to CDC's National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH.

So we've got several perspectives for you here today to talk about opportunities for young professionals in their firm.

And I'll hand it to Willy now.

Welcome.

- Thanks, Ray.

Actually, I'd like to hand it to Julia.

Julia's gonna be the leader of this conversation today.

I just get to interact, and maybe answer some questions along the way.

- Oh, I just wanna say, it's such an honor to be here.

I think I speak for all three of us.

It's really a joy to be up on the stage.

I've been with LS3P now for almost five years, and I know Willy and Ron are excited to do their introductions now, as well.

- So, can y'all hear me?

Can you hear me?

I'm ... Hello, can you hear me?

Yeah, okay, so -- - Yes.

Yeah.

- Sorry.

Yeah, so, I'm Ron Smith, thank you for the introduction, Ray, and I'm currently the Director of Medical Planning in the Raleigh office, and I get to work with Julia and our amazing team there, but I also used to live and work in Texas for many years, and had many wonderful visits to College Station to interact with students there, and with your amazing faculty, many of whom, as Ray noted, have been my colleagues and mentors in the Academy of Architecture for Health.

And so I am just delighted to be back here with y'all today.

- All right, howdy you all, this is, I love this part about your culture, and about your world, and hopefully, you know, we're here to share parts of our culture and our world here today.

So, let's see, for context, who am I?

Well, you know, when I was five-years-old, I wanted to be a clown.

And I know I lost a lot of you already, it was very polarizing to say, however, that was the profession that I knew of at that age where I could see on paper, clowns are supposed to, you know, provide this immediate joy, the laughter, the brightness, and that's really what I wanted to do with my life, and thankfully, I get to carry a lot of those themes through the work that I get to do today.

So I did the four plus one program at UNC Charlotte, for you San Francisco fans, it's the other 49ers.

By the time I graduated, I was able to have two college internships, while I was at UNC Charlotte.

One was at a small firm doing a lot of chain hotels, and to be honest, it got to the point where it felt like if I had seen one, I had seen them all.

And my next college internship was a summer working with an architecture historian, and there was no office, it was just a small group of us, that would meet out on sites, specifically schools in the south, so around North Carolina, we were traveling to different communities, and different buildings to figure out how we can best integrate these historic schools back into the community.

But what really stuck with me during school was this experience I had with two friends doing a senior living competition through the AIAS.

This was something we did electively, and it felt a little wild to do on top of all of our work, but it was so rewarding, and I'm still good friends with the two of them, and on the right, that's Gideon Gourley, and he's in the Perkin and Wheel office in DC, and we're still great friends and a good colleague.

So after I graduated, I started at another very small firm, probably the closest I'll get to working at a boutique firm.

It was a newer firm, and it was a group of guys who were really excited about doing cool, modern things.

And it was cool, and it was fun, and, you know, it was a short-lived experience that felt a little devastating to leave, but again, this was something that wasn't exactly clicking for me.

I took a trip back to Charlotte to work back in that area for a healthcare system, at the time it was called CHS for Carolina's Healthcare System, now it's called Atrium Health, it's one of the bigger healthcare systems in North Carolina, and it was a great opportunity to really cut my teeth on healthcare design, healthcare lingo, healthcare acronyms, such a huge one, I'm gonna try to explain all the acronyms here today because it's definitely a crash course in all that you can learn.

Atrium Health had great and rigorous processes for their projects, from start to finish, including with all their BIM work.

So it was really great to learn all that I could with that system.

I was able to do, actually work on a few dozen, I think, renovation projects, and I say renovation, because you can really make your whole career out of renovating buildings.

And that's part of healthcare architecture, you know, everything will need to eventually be upgraded, or, you know, you can quickly become antiquated and left behind.

So it was a really good experience where getting to work on smaller projects, where I could really feel some ownership.

It got to a point though, where I felt like I needed to redesign, or evolve the design of my career, again, I spent a few years in Charlotte with that firm, and thankfully I had a coworker named Nico who introduced me to Ron in Raleigh, and I'm sure Ron would love to tell you about that relationship.

- Yeah.

So Nico and I worked together when I was living in Texas, I was working in Texas at a large firm there in Houston, and Nico and I teamed up on a couple of master plan projects, and we had a great working relationship, and I had kept in touch with him after I had moved to North Carolina and discovered that he was also living in North Carolina, and that was the connection, when Julie was ready to make a move, Nico gave me a call.

- Yeah, so again, it's kind of, it's all about networking, right?

And who you know, and it was such a joy to get to apply to, again, Raleigh's one of our 11 offices, but it was so exciting for me to apply specifically for a healthcare position.

You're gonna see, Charlotte does not have a specific healthcare program, so it was really exciting for me to already be 24, 25 and feeling like I could really specialize in something that already felt important to me.

And so with that pride, I felt with my new position in the triangle in Raleigh, where business is really booming, and we're seeing so much growth and development, I was able to take that pride, and transfer it immediately into my work.

My first project at LS3P was the Alliance Child Crisis Center, and it was a renovation job, and this was a project between two clients, Alliance Health and KidsPeace.

And as you can see here, it's definitely not the jewel of any community.

However, this is, again, the beauty of what we do.

It is now becoming that community boon, that community resource.

So this is, Alliance is slighted to be a behavioral health center, and I'll get into that later, but here are some of the existing, or some of the images of the existing conditions we saw.

To be honest, I was really encouraged to limit the amount of photos of the sort of derelict conditions of this, but honestly, it was really exciting for me to get to go out, and take, you know, not just for, you know, not just to put lipstick on a pig, but to really take something, and make it beautiful and a good resource for children, adolescents, and their families, and the entire community.

And to be honest, it was pretty fun getting to go through this building and it really reminded me of some of the historic preservation work that I was able to work on through my summer internship at school.

So, very quickly, this is a 27,000 square foot facility, behavioral health, and it's gonna be for children and adolescents.

You can kind of see in this floor plan diagram, the yellow and the yellow spaces and the red are the residential program spaces for both children, adolescents, we separate them, and then the middle green area is the behavioral health urgent care, which we call BHUC, and for an acronym, and this was actually really exciting for me and for us, because BHUCs are a fairly new idea, fairly new program.

So to get to, I literally got to be part of history in the making with Alliance and Kate Peterson with Alliance writing some of the regulations around what a BHUC is.

So it was very exciting, but you know, honestly, some of these stats and some of this data, when I hear it, my eyes kind of start to glaze over, and it's because it's really not conveying the life of these projects and the spirit.

And what I really wanna convey about this project is all the experiences that I had, and all the learning opportunities.

So like I said, this was a pretty rough looking building, and you know, when you're dealing with buildings, especially old buildings, you're doing a lot of, I say forensic investigating, so this was actually an example where we, two other young women in my office and I, we went out and we did selective demolition, where we literally took a box cutter and a sledgehammer to the wall, and said, "Hey, how was this building constructed?"

So, you know, when do you get to do that at, you know, some of your other jobs, just taking a sledgehammer to the wall.

Very fun.

And part of behavioral health, and being part of the behavioral health team of experts at our firm is going out and doing our own testing.

And this is a coworker, Jenna Pie, she's a rock climber and she's out, we were looking at our courtyard space for this building, you know, seeing the wellness spaces and therapy that we can have inside and outside, and part of behavioral health is really mitigating patient safety and keeping patients safe.

And so if you have an outside space, one of the biggest risks is elopement, which is patients escaping.

So Jenna, our rock climber tried to escape, and tried to find finger holds, trying to find toe holds, and, you know, the things that we think about that is specific to this demographic.

Also, this courtyard space, this was the first time I was able to work with a landscape consultant.

And it was a lot of fun, and you can see here, you know, this was already, this is already five-years-old, but back in 2018 when I saw this, I really lit up and it was really such a joy to work with clients, and I still work with, you know, clients like this, that really want to invest so much in their patients, and in their building.

So again, we went from this to a vision of this, bright colors, lots of light, very opening, exciting, welcoming.

Here's the vision for the lobby, again, lots of colors.

We started to play with what we call experiential graphics, so you can kind of start to see that with the butterfly graphic here.

And looking at patient spaces, again, bringing that vision of joy, and familiarity, and comfort.

And some of these, you know, these kids are going through some of the roughest points of their life, you know, and it can be heavy, but it's a joy to get to help these patients realize, you know, their full potential.

And for us to realize the full potential of these spaces.

And I wanna talk about, this was a new, this was a new building project.

It was two buildings on kind of one site, one campus feel, and this was, it's Cone Health and the Gilford Center, so it's Cone Sandhills building and the Gilford building, and this was also behavioral health.

And thankfully we get to see the same kinds of themes here with lots of light, lots of open spaces, it being welcoming, it being a place that feels nice to go to, it's a place that normalizes this kind of healthcare, and this kind of wellness care, you know, a place you wanna go, a place you can go pick up your medicine at the pharmacy, you know, and it can be part of your everyday life, not just when you are experiencing, you know, a crisis.

You're actually looking at a picture of the lobby and one of my mentors in Raleigh, Jeff Morale behind another great experiential graphic, and, you know, these are expensive graphics.

So it's always a delight when clients really push for these because it changes the space entirely.

So again, looking at, this is an observation space for patients in crisis, so, you know, dealing, thinking about, again, light and nurse station design, and the interactions with faculty and patients, and again, here's a great photo of different trades coming together between the folks doing millwork from nurse stations and the folks putting up the graphics on the wall, and, you know, there were lessons, plenty of lessons learned through all these moves here.

And I think back to, I wanna circle back to Alliance here.

Knock on wood, it will be open in this year, hopefully sooner than later, and I'm so excited about this, you all, it is gonna be so fun to see this really come to life.

I just wanted to include a couple progress shots, because we've got more graphics here, and again, I think this is just gonna, it's really gonna change the way the space feels, and the way the patients heal, you know, again, lots of daylight, lots of views to nature, and you can see we've put some color on the windows for another kind of element of joy and fun.

That project.

Alliance Altogether, from my beginning to hopefully now seeing the final result was such an amazing story for me to be a part of and to experience, and I knew I wanted to remember it forever, and I wanted to help everyone who worked on it remember it forever.

So I took the first holiday season of COVID and I said, "I'm gonna interview our two clients, the project manager and the project architect that I work with."

And in reality, those people are my friends, my colleagues, it's my mentor, it's, you know, the folks, it's the village that has helped me get here today with you all.

So I didn't have a podcast, I still don't have a podcast, but I decided that the best way to collect these interviews and these stories was to do an episode, if you will, a podcast episode.

And so I took that time, and I learned the Garage Band on my MacBook, and I put it all together in something that I feel really proud of.

And I did this for a few reasons.

It was two and a half years into my LS3P career.

Not that things were feeling stagnant, but it was, you know, it was time for me to make some moves, and to seek the opportunities that let me continue what I was curious and passionate about.

And through this work, I was able to connect more with even folks in our own office like Willy, and that's been so exciting, I feel like I know Willy so well now, and it was real, the second he said, "Let's go to Texas and present", I, you know, "Yes", and that's what you want at work.

You know, that's the goal to find the work culture where you can have moments like this.

So again, you know, you get to these crossroads, where you're picking out who you wanna be, you're picking out the vehicle you want to take you there, and the path you wanna take.

So really, you're doing all of this to just really build your team, right?

You want the robust team, the village there beside you, behind you, in front of you, you know, this is the goal, and then your community's gonna continue to up and flow, but you know, you can take these opportunities to really make it what you can, what you want, which is exciting.

So again, you know, we're here now, Ron and I from Raleigh again, Willy from Greenville, South Carolina, and I think the point of this is really when you are curious or passionate about something, and you have these goals, just to say it out loud, it's such a joy to be able to talk to Ron, Willy, everyone in our office, everyone on our healthcare team, about what I wanna do and what we wanna do, you know, as folks in this community, in this office, in this world.

And I just really wanna encourage you to always talk to people, especially people who can make decisions for you on your behalf behind closed doors, you know, keep expressing your interest, and your, you know, what you wanna do with your life and career path even in your personal life.

- Well I wanna -- - Yes, please.

- [Willy] I wanna give you a chance to breathe.

- Absolutely.

- You've been telling a great story there.

And you know, part of when I saw this slide, I would've interjected earlier, but you were just rolling with your story, and one thing I've learned as a mentor is to listen, and not interrupt.

So I apologize for interrupting this time, but you know, with Julia leading our EPs, it's really been about us, about Ron and others in our office, myself and Catherine, listening, you know, what do you guys want to do with your careers?

And that's part of why we're here today, I mean, any good firm should listen to the newest generation in the office, 'cause that's really who's setting the tone, and that's who's gonna be the future of the firm.

So when you guys say it loud, we're listening, and I think that's why we're here today.

- Yeah, it's a two-way street.

It really is.

I couldn't be here if Willy was not, I know this is very buzzwordy, but he's really helped empower me and helped champion what I wanna do, and yeah, you know, you need that.

So thank you, thank you.

Please don't try to read all this.

I understand how chaotic it looks, but this is my brain dump of the circles of community that I find in my life and everything from, you know, my work to some of my personal life extracurriculars, starting with the yellow support system of family and friends, which is, you know, so critical and I value so much, even to the magenta circle of academia, where I get to interact with folks like you, which is, you know, just another facet of this.

And so while all this networking, it might sound like such a nightmare, I'll say, just keep at it, you know, kind of fake it till you make it.

I think that's, you know, if anything, let's keep that in mind, because I think this is such a key to your success in your career, I know it can feel like a lot of work, I know it can feel scary and intimidating, but just keep at it, what sounds like a nightmare to me, and what sounded so overwhelming and intimidating to me when I was a student was thinking about code.

And with healthcare design, there's healthcare code, and like I said earlier, you know, your state-of-the-art hospital 20 years ago is not gonna be state of the art now.

And you know, it's for the better, because code and regulations are updating, you know, to make things safer, to make patients, visitors, faculty safer, better, more efficient.

But it can be really overwhelming.

And thankfully my mentor in Raleigh, or one of my mentors at the firm in Raleigh, my behavioral health mentor just has a gift for letting people kind of choose their own path, and create their own opportunities, so I told him, I said, "This is really intimidating for me."

So he said, "Okay, I'm gonna start giving you the code questions we have on our projects, and I'll send you to, you know, X, Y, or Z resource, and tell you which chapters to refer to, and this will get, you know, this will help get your groundings in some of these code books because it's a lot.

And sometimes the codes overlap, and it's your job to interpret what you should move forward with, and sometimes you have more questions than answers after looking at, you know, code book after code book."

And I think really it's just, it's, again, it's a village, right?

It's everyone come together and learning.

So part of this, again, I am, as I'm taking my AREs, two more left fingers crossed, I was, I took my construction administration exam and I failed.

And a fail is obviously gonna feel devastating, but you just gotta keep at it.

And I told my, I told the same mentor and he said, "Let's get you out on site, let's get you looking at construction in the field."

I was so grateful to get to go out to the WakeMed Medical Park of Cary, MOB and Parking Deck, MOB's Medical Office Building, and so here we are.

So every week I went out, and this is a photo from the site, it was great working with WakeMed.

WakeMed is one of the largest healthcare systems of Wake County, where I live, and they work with the largest developer in the nation of medical office buildings, so thinking about my beginnings at the small kind of boutique firm, and now where I am now working with these healthcare systems, you know, talking about billions with a B of dollars, thinking about projects, it's really exciting, and I wanna touch on the relationship that I got to really create with Joe, you can see in the background there, this was one of my first times getting to work with Joe in our office who does construction administration, such a critical part of our team, and he's become another one of my mentors that I can go to on any project and I can say, "Hey, you know, does this sound okay?

Is this real?"

And you know, this was also another project, every project is gonna have its own challenges, and ups and downs and things that you could never expect think of.

But it's, you know, it's our job to flex and adapt, and I know we're all so tired of hearing about COVID, but this was the photo that you're looking at was literally Joe calling me.

This was minutes after Joe calling me on the phone saying, "We need to mask up for the site, this is happening."

I grabbed a T-towel on the way out and I said, "Let's do it."

You know, it's that kind of flexibility, and adapting that, you know, you're training for now, right?

And you are all so capable.

It's just, you're gonna be tested in these ways, you could've never, you would've never thought of.

So again, site visits are always so great, please try to push for that wherever you are, you're gonna learn, you know, you're gonna see what you're drawing in real life, like this wall detail, this window detail, it's invaluable to see come to life.

And on that same note, let's see, during construction, mock-ups, mock-ups are so critical.

So on the left we're looking at a mock-up of the exterior wall.

We do this to see how the materials look, how they come together, make sure everything is, you know, really showing the vision and continuing the design that we intended on.

And to the right, you're looking at styrofoam mock-ups of kiosk check-in stations.

So I think we're all familiar, we go to the doctor check-in, and sometimes now we check in, you know, at a screen, and so again, you know, especially thinking about COVID, everything is different.

We were, you know, it can feel a little hectic sometimes in the scramble of rethinking, but the iterative design process we go through is always for the best.

And you can see the final shots here of the medical office building, the parking deck, and the kind of amenity green space in-between.

And then we have the checking kiosks in real life.

So that was more than helpful, you know, we bring the clients, we bring our team, everyone gets to look at this stuff, and it's such a team, again, our village, right?

It's all coming together.

So 2020 was not only the year that I did this podcast episode, but it was the year that I was determined to go to a conference.

It was something that I've wanted to do for a long time, but the reality is that conferences are so expensive.

I mean, beyond what I even imagined, it is, some of them, some of the big ones can be thousands of dollars for an individual to go to.

But luckily there are lots of scholarship opportunities.

So please, please look for those opportunities before you tell yourself no.

And, you know, a lot of these organizations really want to attract young people, so that's even better for you, a lot of these organizations will have scholarships for emerging professionals, especially within the five, six year experience range.

So please, if this is something you're interested in, you know, do it, it's hard for the firm to say no to you if you've already applied and you've already got your ticket there.

One of those conferences that I was able to go to, the scholarship Ray mentioned, thank you so much in the introduction is the SLS conference, the Summer Leadership Summit, put on by the Academy of Architecture for Health, and the American College of Healthcare Architects.

I did have to type that all out.

It is hard for me to remember, even though it has been a few years now working with the SLS group, and I know Ron's got a lot of thoughts about the Academy, and has done a lot of work, and I would love to turn it over to him now.

- Well, it's just so exciting to, it has been wonderful to see you, Julia, bring your passion and your energy to the SLS, and to take the initiative to do that.

The Academy has been really at the core of our profession since it started back in the late 1960s.

And I think the healthcare architecture profession has grown with the Academy, and the two are really intertwined.

And so many people like yourself have grown up within that community to become leaders in our field.

And so it's really great to see you as an emerging professional to take the initiative and get involved in that.

- Thank you.

And I just, a few notes about the SLS, this is a really special conference for folks in healthcare design.

It is usually capped at around 200 people, and it's really special, because it's specifically not architects talking to other architects, it's industry leaders in healthcare in adjacent industries that come to talk about what's really cutting edge, and what's really leading their industry and our industry, so it's very exciting.

Historically, this has been in Chicago, maybe one day we will be somewhere else, but Chicago again this year, and I wanna say, so every year they select I think around three next gen scholars, and that bottom right photo is in the middle there, you've got Holly Harris with the Smith Group in Chicago, and Vince Tuttle, who's with the back group in Charlotte, and both of these two young women are amazing, and I'm proud to call them friends, colleagues, and it was just so amazing getting to not only to know them, but to know more about their communities and their work.

And let's see.

And while, you know, it's exciting, and you learn so much from these speakers, and in Keynote, you know, speakers at these conferences, another one of the great things about these, it's such a reunion for our healthcare circles, you know, to not only meet new people, but to keep seeing your friends and your colleagues at other places, and I remember meeting a man during one of our breaks, had a hat around his neck, and I just said, "Oh, what a great guy", you know, and it wasn't until I came home, and I was looking through my business cards, and I said, "Oh my gosh, I met Ray Pentecost, that was him."

It was someone I didn't know who he looked like, I'd never seen a photo, but the name, oh my gosh, I had just heard it over and over, especially helping plan the SLS conference with the two other next gen scholars.

So it was such a joy to really come full circle, but I guess it's really iterative circles, right?

It's these iterating circles that continue to grow, and evolve with you and your career.

And so I wanna talk about another really unsexy project that no one else in my firm is presenting on, this is at an academic medical campus in North Carolina, and like I said before, the state-of-the-art hospitals will one day become not state-of-the-art.

And that's just the nature of our work and what we do, and again, it's all for the better, but we, you know, especially in behavioral health, we get these projects, where sometimes it's really focused on the patient safety upgrades.

So you're doing some more detailed work about the specific products and accessories you're putting into the space, and to be honest, let's see what I'm gonna talk about in the next slide can be a little heavy, but I'm just gonna talk about it, high-level part of what we do for behavioral health testing is try to find what we call points of ligature, and that is what you're seeing in the shoe lace photo examples.

It's where you, if you can tie off to a point or secure to a point with something like a shoelace and have a steady, stable connection, that is a patient risk, and because we, because this is life and death, we try to eliminate all of these kinds of potential ways, the potential patient harm.

So unfortunately the biggest, the leading cause of death in these facilities is hanging, so this becomes even that much more critical.

So we test for this stuff, we have our ligature kits, we bring shoelaces, we bring up a knotted bed sheet looking for a wedge condition, which is also a, you know, a secure kind of point of ligature.

But it is really a joy for me to get to work on these projects, and I see it so much as yes, as patient safety, as helping a population in some of their hardest times just feel normal, and just feel like human and to see joy and the design in the surroundings that they're in.

And that's so, you know, and that's what we get to do, and that's what is exciting about my job.

You know, it's not how to make this feel like a prison, or look like a prison because there's plenty, there's plenty of those out there.

But thankfully in the last 10, 15 years, we've seen a big boom in new products, and new design thinking, so I, you know, I'm so glad that we are looking forward, and we're only doing better, but we've gotta keep championing that, as well.

We had a few opportunities to do, you know, some more of that design work with this project, one of the examples is nurse stations, which always is a big conversation with behavioral health, because there is a tension between being open, and transparent with the staff, and keeping that sort of line of communication, that line of open and welcoming communication there, and keeping the staff protected.

As you can imagine, the burnout rate is wild, it's super high for these nurses, and they wanna feel safe at work, you know, just like we all do.

So you're looking at two examples.

One on the left is a little more enclosed, it's not all the way to the ceiling, but different still than the image on the right, which is a little bit lower, and we can talk about more, especially when we deal with younger demographics, like children, adolescents.

And I wanna say, I think Willy and Ron have some thoughts about this, but this was a unique project, not only because of the project's scope, but we got this project with one other very small project at the exact same time with this medical campus.

And so this was really our foot in the door project, and that can be really overwhelming.

And Willy, Ron, I know you've got thoughts on this.

- Well, I can start, you know, you had a slide up there earlier about storytelling, and I think just sitting here and listening, we're all spellbound and captivated, you know, your experience with the firm has been pretty amazing, and fun for us to watch, and I think that's really what we're trying to impart here today too for the Texas A&M Architecture and Health students is, you know, the opportunities that are here, and how we can work together in an office, and as regards to how this was sort of a first step, you know, part of being an emerging professional is you are making those steps, and you are also becoming, you're emerging to be that professional that will lead these clients too, and I think you and Ron, and Jeff and others have worked on projects that have brought us the next project through thick and thin, and I think that's what you're gonna talk about here, in your next few slides is, what's the life of these projects, and how do you get to interact with the client, and solve problems that are not just about the project.

Sometimes they're really some of the friction that happens on the team.

- Yeah, Ron, I don't know if you wanna chime in with the topic.

- No, I agree completely with what Willy said.

I know where you're headed with this.

And just to say that that very small project that you're gonna talk about is typical, I think of healthcare organizations, for when they have a new contractor or a new AE team, that they're gonna try out, sometimes they give them the smallest, messiest renovation project as the first one.

And that's what this was.

- Yeah, thank you.

Thank you Ron and Willy.

Small and messy it was.

So as we completed that first, I'll say nano-nano project because it was that small, we were getting feedback and, you know, report cards actually don't end after school, we continue to be graded just like doctors and facilities are graded, you know, we've seen it all, we're so burned out with these customer experience surveys, you know, how many stars would you rate this?

So it's a similar, you see the similar themes with some of these healthcare campuses.

And so we got our report card from the first project, while we were in, you know, in the weeds with the second patient safety project and, you know, things were already feeling pretty tense, and it was tense on the first project that was done, and they were, things were kind of heating up on this, the second project and the report card was, we took a pause, you know, we said, "Okay, we know we're gonna have another, we're gonna need to face the music, you know, on the project that we're continuing to work on, so what are our next steps?

You know, what can we do?"

And Ron and I, Ron, we wanted to reach out to our project managers at this hospital, and just really have a heart to heart, and say, "We wanna do better, you know, please help us help you."

And it was awkward, and it was tense at first, but talking through, you know, the kind of our experiences, and really coming at it genuinely, authentically, and trying to learn to do better, we all actually came away, I mean, Ron and I used the word reset.

I mean, it was such a reset for our team, and, you know, again, it did feel tense, and by the end it was just the four of us, it was the two project managers from the hospital, and Ron and I on the phone, and I think we all literally kind of just exhaled, you know?

And that's so meaningful, because again, we're all, at the end of the day, we're all humans, this is our job, you know, we all have people to answer to, and that's really what we figured out, it's, you know, there's always something else going on, and we can have the open and safe communication, that's so important.

And so I guess speaking of teams in the village that it takes, this is our LS3P healthcare team throughout all of our offices, this is our retreat that we were able to do in this past year in the fall, and yeah, so here's my village, here's how it all gets done.

And this is a big investment from the firm, where we get to come together, we get to tour really benchmarking projects from benchmarking firms, that's us doing a tour at Atrium Health in Charlotte, and our Hard Hats Invests.

I'm one of the only red hard hats, I don't know how that happened, but ... And then the right is one of our workshops that we did where we look inward at LS3P and the work we're doing, and we think about how we can do that better, and how we can be better, and how our teams can be better.

So you can see Willy there with his arm outstretched, and yeah, we love this quote.

"We exist to love and serve", and you know, I think it's just so great to be able to have the opportunity like this, and like the retreat, and like all these, you know, what I've talked about so far.

It's all part of this.

And just like your community engagement, you know, you'll find, you'll continue to follow your own curiosities and passions, like I've said, whether it's through the AIA, you know, another organization that you're attracted to, or you're working with folks like the Boys and Girls Club.

I actually got to do this through LS3P, so you'll find your opportunities, you know, just go for it.

I wanna say, you know, I've talked to you now about all the facets of my, I guess first seven years out in the field, and this really is what is making me into the person that I am, and you all will also have your own facets of life, and as individuals, as much as I hate metaphors, you all are your own disco balls shining and reflecting light into the world, and I want you to think about your teammates, and your community as, you know, other disco balls coming together, and what a joy it is, and how rewarding it can be to be in a community, where you are not only reflecting light out at each other, but you're reflecting it back in.

And that's really the message, and the great thing, and what gets me excited to work, to do what I do now, to be part of LS3P, to be part of that community, and to just get to explore what I want.

And you know, it's really yours, your life and your career, it's really yours for the making.

And just please take the risks you want, and we just, I just, we wanna encourage you to follow, follow what, you know, follow what your interests are.

And I think if you take anything away, that's what architecture is about, and that's where we find success, and that's really the peak for us.

So thank you so much for your time today, it's been a joy to get to share my story, and to be here with Willy and Ron, my mentors, and to see Ray again.

So thank you all so much.

(participants applause) - Thank you Julia for you, just for you.

The hat is back on, and thank you for that kind mention.

Willy, Julia, Ron, fantastic having you with us today.

Our time is pretty much up, but is there one burning question someone would like to raise?

- Coming.

- Come forward.

(footsteps echoing) - Cool.

I just wanna ask Julie how her past experience affects your work now?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

I could answer it easy with kind of skills where I could say, you know, I learned rendering like those images at the small firm where I was working on modern homes.

I learned so many lessons about, yeah, about small firms, and about how to really sell yourself, and be a brand.

I think I could still say the same for anywhere I've worked, but, you know, you wear a lot of hats in a small firm, and I know you've heard this all before, but it's true.

And you know, there are pros and cons to small, medium and large firms, and I think right now I am really enjoying being at a larger firm, where I get to maybe have more of a focus on the work that I wanna do, but I wanna say that my time at the small firms was invaluable, and I see it even testing with my exams, I was able to work on some of the grunt work that gets passed on to others now at maybe a larger firm.

I don't wanna say grunt work, for me, it's grunt work in my opinion, but other people really gravitate towards that, and are passionate about.

But I think, you know, you will figure out kind of where you wanna be, and where you wanna go.

And yeah, a small firm, you're gonna be doing a lot, but you are also doing a lot at a large firm, but I think it's just different and, you know, it's, everything's been an experience, and you will take, you will learn from everything you do, and I just, yeah, keep exploring, you know, because I think the goal is to find the culture, where you can thrive, and again, it's a two-way street between your firm and you.

So it's ... Good luck out there.

- Thank you.

- That's great.

Julia, listening to you talk, it's easy to understand why so many are recognizing you as a next generation leader and emerging professional.

Congratulations on all you have accomplished.

We'll be watching your career with great interest.

- Thank you.

- Willy, Ron, great having you, Julia with us today.

Thanks again, one more thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

(participants applause) - Thank you.

(upbeat electronic music)