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What can you do with an architecture degree besides traditional practice? Is it possible to blend your design skills with other passions?
Elliot Felix, Founder and CEO of brightspot Strategy, is an architect turned higher education strategist, shares his journey from architecture school to running his own consulting firm.
Elliot talks about how an influential middle school teacher inspired him to study architecture, and how that led him to get his undergraduate architecture degree from UVA and a Master's from MIT.
After practicing at a large firm for several years, Elliot realized he wanted to better understand the people that architecture serves, so he pivoted to strategy consulting focused on workplace and education. This eventually led him to found his own firm Brightspot, which was acquired by the larger firm Buro Happold. Brightspot focuses on research, vision and strategy for higher ed institutions to improve the student experience.
Elliot shares insights on making career transitions, finding meaningful work, taking risks, dealing with challenges, and building support networks. He also discusses his recent book "How to Get the Most Out of College" which contains evidence-based advice for student success.
Key Takeaways:
- Inspiring teachers can spark a career direction from a young age
- Architecture school teaches you to be a creative problem solver
- "Design thinking" skills are valuable in many fields beyond architecture
- Making career transitions involves experimenting and testing out options
- Find opportunities to "prototype" new roles to get a feel for the day-to-day
- It's important to understand the people you're designing for
- Strategy consulting can complement architectural design
- Look for personal role models to guide your career journey
- Concrete goals like "I want to be like X person" are most useful
- Develop a growth mindset to take risks and handle setbacks
- Build your support network before you need it
Links:
- Learn more about brightspot Strategy: https://www.brightspotstrategy.com/
- Buy Elliot’s book: https://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Most-Out-College/dp/193634257X
Guest Bio:
Elliot founded and leads brightspot, now a Buro Happold Company. brightspot is a strategy consultancy on a mission to transform the higher education experience with smart strategy that better connects people, programs, and places – on campus and online – to increase student success, improve research support, and enable staff productivity.He is an accomplished strategist, facilitator, and sense-maker who has helped transform over 100 colleges and universities, including Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Tech, Harvard, MIT, NC State University, New York University, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, and University of Virginia.Elliot is a prolific speaker and writer on reimagining higher education, having presented at conferences including EDUCAUSE, SXSW, SCUP, and Tradeline; having been cited in publications such as Fast Company and Forbes; and written dozens of articles in publications such as Planning for Higher Education, Library Journal, Business Officer Magazine, and Touchpoint: The Journal of Service Design.His book How to Get the Most Out of College was published in January 2022 and provides 127 evidence-based tips for success in college and beyond. It received a blue star from Kirkus Reviews, calling it "A knowledgeable, enthusiastic guide packed with strategies and encouragement."
Creators & Guests
What is Tangents by Out of Architecture?
Welcome to Tangents by Out of Architecture, hosted by Silvia Lee. We’re highlighting some of our favorite stories from the amazing people we’ve met along our journey. We will hear how they created a unique career path for themselves from the variety of skills and talents they developed in and out of architecture.
Out of Architecture is a career consulting firm started by two Harvard-educated professionals interested in exploring the value of their skills both in and out of the architectural profession. We’re here to help you maximize all of the expertise you have honed as a designer to get you a role that fulfills and challenges you. We have the knowledge, experience, and connections to help you put your best self into the market–and reap the benefits.
Leveraging Design Thinking Beyond Architecture With Elliot Felix
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Elliot: [00:00:00] You're going to take risks. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to learn along the way. And I think going into it with open eyes and open arms, you'll have a lot of success. You'll have some setbacks, but I think architecture is, is a rewarding profession. And if that's not the profession you choose, it's also an incredibly rewarding and useful education
Introduction to Tangents by Out of Architecture
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Silvia: Welcome to Tangents by Out of Architecture. Out of architecture is a career resource network helping designers apply their incredible talents in untraditional ways. We're highlighting some of our favorite stories from the amazing people we've met along the way. We will hear how they created a unique career path for themselves from the wide variety of skills and talents they developed in and out of architecture.
Silvia: Our guest today, Elliot Felix, founder and CEO of Brightspot strategy shares his unconventional journey, leveraging his architectural background to make an impact. As well as his insights on taking [00:01:00] career risks, finding role models and building support systems.
Silvia: Thank you for listening each week. And I hope you come away from this episode, inspired to creatively. Apply your own talents.
Silvia: Thanks for joining us, Elliot. Glad to have you here.
Guest Introduction and Background in Architecture
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Silvia: And we'd like to start off with this question, how would you describe yourself in three words?
Elliot: Higher Education Strategist.
Silvia: That's very, nicely packaged there.
Elliot: Maybe someday I'll get it down to two. But, for now, I'll stick with three.
Silvia: And what is your background in
Elliot: architecture?
Journey into Architecture and Early Influences
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Elliot: I think like a lot of people, the way I got into architecture was an amazing teacher. I had an amazing teacher, Mr. Baida, actually in junior high school and middle school.
Elliot: And he taught art class like it was a college environmental design or architecture class. Like we, one assignment was, bring in a board game, analyze the underlying structure, and then three dimensionalize it in a grid. It's like I'm in sixth [00:02:00] grade doing this. And we, he let me audit some other classes, high school classes, and reading J.
Elliot: B. Jackson became a family friend, took me to art openings, encouraged me to go ask the artist a question. Which, all these things you can or should, should do. he really inspired me, and I thought, I was pretty sure I wanted to be an architect. And then I did a college summer study program at Bennington College.
Elliot: And it was in like an amazing campus, beautiful quad, beautiful people. I like spent the whole summer in the studio because I loved it so much. And I was like, okay, this is a sign. I really like this. And then I decided to go to, to pursue it formally. In a weird way, I, I graduated high school a year early, so I took my would be senior year and I studied architecture in Brussels, in French, so I kind of like did my study abroad before college and then I applied to college from Brussels and landed [00:03:00] at, at, at UVA because it seemed to be this great, it turned out to be this great place where there was like this mix of Thinking and making and craft and landscape and architecture and planning, and I knew that's what I wanted to do, so I didn't want to wait till my third year to start thinking about architecture.
Elliot: They seem to have a nice mix.
Silvia: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think We all have that memory of, those classes that the professor just put so much passion into. they could be talking about anything, and, but the topic that they have is just so exciting, I have my own memory of that as well.
Elliot: Yeah, their enthusiasm is infectious, right? you can't help but get excited, think maybe the way they do, or about the things they do, and yeah, I owe a lot to my teachers, even before high school, through high school and college.
Transition from Architecture to Design Thinking
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Elliot: And what are you up to today? I, after graduating at UVA, I, practiced [00:04:00] architecture at a, at a big firm, Rafael Vignoli Architects, four calendar years.
Elliot: I always joke that it's four calendar years, and it was probably eight work years. And, in those days, you had to print out your timesheet and bring it down to accounting, and then they would give you your paper check, and I would routinely bring it down, and they would say, we just need the one week's hours.
Elliot: this says 80 something, or this says a hundred something. And I was like, that is this week. And it was great. I had, I worked hard, but I had a great experience. And I worked at the front end of architecture and worked on that initial conceptualization of lots and lots of projects and eventually wanted to see where this went, what, what happens after the competition and what happens after we win, win the project and worked on some, some neuroscience labs.
Elliot: in, in Virginia, and, in Maryland, NIH, and Howard Hughes. And it was really a great experience, but it was, it was missing one thing, which was really understanding the people. [00:05:00] I didn't, I didn't really understand enough about the people we were designing for, and maybe that was a little bit of virtue of my, being in a fairly junior role, like you don't have a ton of contact with, with the scientists, let's say.
Elliot: But I really wanted to learn more about that, My kind of pivot out of architecture happened by, funny enough, pursuing a master's in architecture at MIT, but MIT was this great interdisciplinary place where there was no general recognition that what you do outside of the studio enriches what you do in it and got the infinite quarter connecting, connecting course for connecting architecture to all these other disciplines.
Elliot: And it could be art. It could be the media lab. And I had this really great experience where I went in an architect and I came out a designer or a design thinker and understood that design was this way of understanding people and making connections of solving problems, maybe first finding the problems and then solving them.[00:06:00]
Elliot: And that led me to a consultancy called DGW, which no longer exists, but, a bunch of my classmates. are there, or were there, and what we would do is write design briefs for the workplace and for learning environments, so we would understand the people, that was that missing piece, and we would define the problem to be solved, working before or with, with an architecture firm, and that was great, did that for five years, but then realized that really what I was most interested in about people was their experience, and I wanted more tools than just space to help them.
Founding of Bright Spot and its Role in Higher Education
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Elliot: So I founded a company called Bright Spot, and what we do is consultancy in higher ed, really to improve the experience of students, faculty, staff, industry partners, alumni. By improving the space, improving their technology, improving their support services. So it may be about, reimagining a library or helping a business school [00:07:00] grow.
Elliot: And that's what I get to do every day, learn stuff, work with people, define problems, solve problems. And it's pretty rewarding. Two and a half years ago, we were acquired by the global engineering and consulting firm Bureau Happold. So we went from a, small boutique, higher ed strategy shop to effectively like the strategy discipline in a in a global company, and that's been great,
Silvia: too.
Silvia: That's a really cool journey, and I feel like it very much aligns with the tangential to architecture. Can you share a little more detail about how you collaborate with architects, and now you are under an architecture engineering firm, and how you complement and work together with them in what your
Collaboration with Architects and the Role of Bright Spot
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Elliot: expertise is?
Elliot: Yeah, so what we do at Bright Spot is research vision and strategy. And and that's usually the sequence. So first we conduct research to understand people [00:08:00] and maybe the competitive landscape. So we're surveying students, we're doing focus groups, we're mining data, we're doing interviews, talking to faculty, understanding what do they do today?
Elliot: What's working well, what isn't, and then we're also looking at broader industry trends. How are things changing? Could be demographics. It could be technology. It could be culture, could be competition. And then from that we get everybody together and we try and build consensus around a vision for the future.
Elliot: what would an ideal future look like? What are we headed, headed toward? What's important to us? Maybe a set of goals and then with that vision Then we do, this is where the strategy comes in because you do a gap analysis right where you are versus where you want to go, and then how do you get there?
Elliot: And so the strategy might be about forecasting the future amount of space needed, let's say for a new building or for a renovation, or it might be a, across a campus or [00:09:00] maybe a precinct like say for a, a business school that's got a whole bunch of buildings or a library that's got, dozen locations.
Elliot: And then we may also work with them to think about how to change their services and staffing. if it is a library, how are they going to support students? Like, how are they going to not be a repository for books, but actually be a hub for services that support students? whether it's research, writing, data, tutoring, creativity, making.
Elliot: And then we get into the org design. If they're going to offer these different services, how should they organize their people? What new roles should they play? And then what systems are they going to use to deliver the services, whether it's how students are going to book an appointment or what technology they're going to use to record a video or how business school is going to communicate with its students who are overwhelmed by email.
Elliot: So that's it in a nutshell. And sometimes we do that before the architect is hired, and they'll use [00:10:00] that as the basis for hiring the architect. We do that, that's maybe three quarters of the time, and then usually when they already know that they're going to build some new signature building, we'll partner with an architect, and we'll do all that with them, for instance, while they're analyzing the site, and the zoning and the infrastructure, we might be conducting a lot of that research, alongside them, and then we're bringing together the the goals and the constraints, not just about the budget and, Zoning and infrastructure, but also the user needs and, the organizational, vision.
Elliot: Yeah, that's really
Silvia: cool. I like how you said that architects think so much about space and that's like the direction of how things get planned, but you just shared like everything else that would go into how something gets used and. Yeah. Space just does, doesn't cover any of that,
Elliot: does it?[00:11:00]
Elliot: it can, and I think. I feel like the, the great thing about working with the architects that we do, or, some of the best in the world is they're, they're hungry for information and information can inspire the design and help people feel a certain way, help it function a certain way.
Elliot: And, and so they're really excited to learn more about okay, who are the students that are actually going to use this space? Who are the faculty? How are they going to teach? What's the research that that's going on? And so we're trying to uncover all that stuff so they can make a better design.
Elliot: We're, we're not trying to prescribe a design because, Why hire a world class architecture firm to then have a strategy firm create some prescriptive brief? And in fact, we've actually been hired by world class firms to take, design briefs that other people have done, but they can't, that it's like so detailed and so prescriptive, they can't make heads or [00:12:00] tails of it.
Elliot: And they'll be like, do you know what they're trying to do here? And could you like boil this down to a few pages for us so we can actually design something for them? So I think that's a really fun part of the process is helping, helping inform, better, better design or like what a gift to an architecture firm to come in on a project where the vision, the budget and the site are all lined up and you're not trying to like wrestle that problem.
Elliot: As you create a concept, or as you, as you create a scheme, so that's a lot of what we do is get, get people organized, uncover the information, get them aligned, to like, create the conditions for better design, and that design could be space. it could be services, it could be systems, it could be, could be organizationally.
Silvia: Yeah, that's really cool.
Insights from the Book 'How to Get the Most Out of College'
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Silvia: I also know that you recently published a book. Do you want to share more
Elliot: about that? [00:13:00] Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. It's called How to Get the Most Out of College. And lots of great information in there for architecture students, students in general. And really that my mission is student success, so I'm trying to help students succeed by working with colleges and universities to improve their facilities, their support services, their systems.
Elliot: But I'm also know a hell of a lot about how college works. And a couple of years ago, I thought, it'd be good for students and parents and families to know this stuff. So they could take full advantage of everything their college offers because that's. there's a, there's a common theme in my consulting work and I've done a few thousand focus groups with students, I, I think our work at BrightSpot is lucky enough to have impacted more than a million students when you look at who's gone to a building or who's used a service or logged onto a system, which is really great.
Elliot: But, you can always learn more. [00:14:00] And from what I've learned, I really wanted to say, okay, I, I know how college works. Here's how you can make it work for you. BrightSpot. com And find belonging, for instance, feel like you're part of a community, find support, whether it's, technology, career, advising, research, and see how your classes connect with a future career so that you have that purpose, so you have that, that path, like you can make progress along it.
Elliot: And, and so that's really what the book is. It takes my, my work with more than a hundred colleges and a few hundred academic research studies. On how students succeed. And it boils down, boils them down to 127 evidence-based tips. And each tip is what to do, why to do it, how to do it, and then a story of a student, doing it in their own, in their own words.
Elliot: So it's things like work on real world projects or do an internship or find a mentor, choosing the [00:15:00] right dorm or residence hall or, using, using design thinking or telling stories with data. All these things that are based, the research about how students can have a successful experience in college and, and, and into a career, fulfilling career.
Advice for Career Changes and Navigating Challenges
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Silvia: Do you have any favorite pieces of advice for maybe not necessarily students specifically, but just those who feel like in a spot where they're considering making a career
Elliot: change? I feel like some of the most powerful things in my life are ideas that you can't. Unlearn or unthink they're like certain it's like Freud's conception of the unconscious, right?
Elliot: once you learn that you're like, oh, okay, like that's how that's how it works or Einstein's theory of Relativity and for me like design thinking is one of those things Like can't help but see the world through that lens and see like the [00:16:00] power of like prototyping things and testing things out And there's actually a growing movement under the umbrella of what's often called life design, where it's really about applying design thinking to your life.
Elliot: And design's all about understanding people, making connections, trying things out. And so my advice is apply what you're learning as an architect, as a designer, to your own life and experiment. And, and there's lots of ways to conduct experiments. a common thing for students to do when they're trying to like prototype a career, you can do an informational interview.
Elliot: You can ask somebody like, what's their day like? You can go shadow them and see what their day is like. Then you can get a sense of is this a role that I would want to play? What was their path? How did they get there? What skills do they value? Or maybe what do I need to do more of or less of while I'm in college or after to get there?
Elliot: Then the next step, [00:17:00] if it's an hour interview or a half day shadowing, maybe there's like a one day project you can work on, right? That allows you to kind of prototype what it would feel like to in their shoes. So I really think the best thing to do is to, is to try things out and learn from that, find safe ways that don't take, don't cost you a lot of time or money or personal risk to test out future, future directions.
Elliot: And it's like the same thing we do in our work. Like one of the things we talk about at Brightspot is the, the, if you build it, they will come. It's just like the worst, it's like the worst possible way to approach architecture. You should test it and know they will. So you should be, you should be testing things.
Elliot: You should be prototyping things. You should be learning from that. You should be reducing the risk and building momentum towards success.
Silvia: Do you mostly use data to make your decisions and also advice? [00:18:00] So I guess it's a two part question because personal decisions, do you, how much do you rely on your intuition?
Silvia: And then also in your work, I think there's the data, but then you have to extract like the, the, what you want the strategy from that. So how much of that do you, like, how much of it is data versus feeling?
Elliot: I think there's different kinds of data, right? At the very least, there's like objective and subjective data.
Elliot: And then there's, internal and external data, right? So there might be things that are specific to you, but then there might be like things that are happening more broadly in the, in the, in the market. Like an example with the number of job postings mentioning data, I believe has increased like 30 percent over the last few years.
Elliot: So that's like the market telling you. X, or, we did this research a few months ago where I said there's this new emerging role in libraries called the Student Success Librarian, and their [00:19:00] job is really like to understand the students and to coordinate all these various support services, whether it's research, writing, data, tutoring, time management, whatever it might be.
Elliot: And, there's a hundred of those on LinkedIn. And, a few years ago, there weren't that many, so that's also like external data telling you there's a market, there's a market need for these skills or for that role. So I think you can look inside yourself, you can reflect who you are, what you value, who you want to be, who you want to be with.
Elliot: And then you can also look externally, it's, it's a bit like supply and demand, right? you you're trying to find something you are great at and do well and care about and find meaningful that there's a need for, because if there's no need for it, nobody's going to pay you for it, which could be great as a hobby, but, can't really work as a, as a career.
Elliot: So I think they're both, I think the, the thinking and the feeling. are both, are [00:20:00] both valuable and maybe they're both, they're both data, right? It can be qualitative and quantitative, can be objective, can be, can be subjective. Yeah,
Silvia: that's a great response. And while you were talking about trying different things out, and I feel like as architects, we have a lot of abilities and capabilities.
Silvia: So there's so many things we can do. So then you really have to ask yourself, do you enjoy doing that? Is this something you want to continually do? And for and how much does it offer you to grow in this as well? So I think those are a lot of different ideas that. You might not be, like, you might not be aware of when you're making decisions or the impact of what any of your decisions are.
Silvia: So it's hard to navigate through all of those different, data points in that
Elliot: way. Yeah, and I think that's where, prototyping, testing, it's so important because you can get a vibe pretty easily from a test. I have to say, I, one thing I learned [00:21:00] after MIT, MIT was this, amazing place for grad school.
Elliot: And I, I, I went in as I met, I like went in an architect, came out a designer, great thing about that is like my mind was open. The bad thing about that is what the hell am I going to do after? I didn't know, I didn't know which direction to, I, my thesis was on, creating a new kind of branch library in the New York City subway.
Elliot: And I was like super passionate about libraries and designing the system and how are they going to circulate in the cars, the reading rooms and, how do you make the stations. More palatable, not just to read in, but to be in and bring plants and landscape and light. So I was like, Oh, maybe I'll do something for the MTA.
Elliot: maybe I'll do something, maybe I'll do something with libraries. Maybe I'll do something with culture and maybe I'll go back to, go back to architecture. I didn't, I didn't really know. I took a job with a government agency and they were like, great, you're hired, but you can't [00:22:00] start for three, some ridiculous amount of time.
Elliot: Because, we have to work this through the system and that was like red flag number one. And then red flag number two was I came into the office and I had to sign these forms. And it was like a stack, an inch high stack of paper, many of which were like the 10th generation photocopy, skewed, fuzzy, all asking me for like my name, social address, date of birth.
Elliot: And after an hour of filling out those forms, I was just like, I can't. I can't do this. Like I just had a little window of what my work is going to be like. I declined, which was a really hard decision, but I thought Better that you find a candidate now rather than me work three months and then you have to replace me and whatever.
Elliot: A, it doesn't always work. You might make the wrong decision. And B, I think, feelings count a lot. And finding ways where you [00:23:00] can get that, get the vibe, what's it going to feel like to do this job, is we'll work with these people on these projects. That's such
Silvia: a great story to share because I think it's like, those are the things that you won't really know, like just by if you ask someone what to look out for, for a job, they're not going to be like red flags of like how difficult it is to get on boarded or like things like that.
Silvia: But, and I think also those are very specific to a person, like those gut reactions about what you're cool with and what you're not cool with. And I love that it's just like those little things, but it's so meaningful.
Elliot: Yeah, it's extrapolation can be very dangerous because you can read too much into some little thing.
Elliot: On the other hand, it can be incredibly insightful. And I think that's one of the tricky things is like what to extrapolate from and how, how far out. And maybe it's about making sure you have multiple, to use your like multiple data points [00:24:00] that you're getting that feeling, feeling from. And maybe, maybe one red flag.
Elliot: is okay, and you will later uncover that it's not read, but, but I, I don't know, it's, there's definitely some trial and error involved, which is why, whatever you can do to take the pressure off and have low, low stakes conversations. The better. I think that's so much of my work is about that.
Elliot: That's like a lot of what's in the book is, for instance, like, how can you get a better feel for a college before, while the stakes are low, like, how can you sample a college while the stakes are low before you're worried about the bill and the application and the, and the pressure and the deadlines and the, the family and all your advice and 17 opinions.
Elliot: Or, do a lot of work helping people change how they work. And, one of the things you can do is create norms based on your values for how you want to use space, how you [00:25:00] want to organize your time. And so much of that is like lowering the stakes by talking about a problem before it happens.
Elliot: And now you have a, now you have an agreed upon, we're going to eat at our desk. We're going to interrupt each other or not. We're going to, we're going to come into the office. These days, the week, what, whatever. So whatever you can do to try things out, learn, lower the stakes.
Elliot: I think, the better, the better you are.
Silvia: Yeah. A lot of that resonates with like my experiences as an architect, because I feel like we're always like putting out fires or trying to prevent like issues from happening down the road. So I also like to prepare as much as possible by if this happens, then this is how we will, we can cover it or We know this is taken care of like in a way it's so many like potential circumstances. So applying that to life is also like very much thinking through different [00:26:00] scenarios and like understanding where you stand on all of those. And even with the job, like searching for like what you are okay with and not okay with, sometimes you need those Less than ideal experiences to understand okay, I didn't care so much for this that happens.
Silvia: So in the next job, I know this is more important for me to find. So I love that like you're really taking stock of the entire spectrum of things that go into what makes a person happy and what they do or find purpose and. Yeah, which is part of what we spend so much of our day doing is
Elliot: like our career.
Elliot: Yeah, for sure. And I think also just being realistic, like hard stuff is good for you. there's good hard and there's bad hard. Some things are unnecessarily or unproductively difficult. I think a lot of, a lot of what I've tried to do as I've grown and as I've mentored people is help, help them understand, the things that come easy generally are the [00:27:00] things you don't value.
Elliot: the things that are difficult, that's generally when you're learning. That's generally when you're growing, building a muscle, right? you could certainly strain a muscle by doing too much or doing something too much weight, something that's too difficult, and the same can come at work. there can be too much emotional weight or whatever, whatever it might be.
Elliot: But I do think understanding that, some things are going to be hard, and that's actually a good thing, is really helpful. helpful too.
Silvia: do you have any advice on that? Like just dealing with those situations? they come in so many different ways. Like sometimes at work, it's maybe this is not the place I should be, because it's not productive for me anymore.
Silvia: Or sometimes this is just really challenging and I don't know
Elliot: what to do. I think there's two bits of research that are in my book about, College that I think apply in, in your career, there's a lot, but I think the two, two in particular, one is, one is the [00:28:00] growth mindset, which, people may have heard of, but I think the, the, the big idea in growth mind mindset is like your ability isn't fixed and you learn through failure and one of the best like growth mindset hacks is the word yet.
Elliot: So you can say, I don't know how to do that. where you can say, I don't know how to do that yet, and it's a total, it's basically a way to start convincing your brain that it's okay not to know, it's okay for something to be hard, it's okay to, to make mistakes. because you don't know how to do it yet.
Elliot: And that's, that's actually what this is. This is practice. So I think when it comes to taking risks, there's two things you can do. One is have a growth mindset where you see failure as part of the process and the way you learn. And a great way, a great kind of hack to that, there aren't too many shortcuts in life, but I think the, the word yet is a really good one, right?
Elliot: So instead of saying, you can't do that, say, I can't do that yet. And you're reinforcing, you're [00:29:00] tricking your brain into, and your body into, into understanding, okay, this is practice. I may make some mistakes. I'll learn from them and I'll figure it out. The other thing you really need is a support network.
Elliot: And I think that's so important to build your support network before you need it. So think about, who are you going to go to when you have a problem? When you get a grad, maybe it's... A bad grade or it's a bad breakup in college or, in your career, maybe it's a bad performance review or a project, you just face plan on a project, like who are you going to talk to about that when you're in that moment?
Elliot: that's not the time to figure out who your people are. Like you want to be, you want to be building that beforehand, them helping you, you helping them. And it may be best if that network of people is a mixture of people. That, are going through the same things you're going through at the same time, but also some folks [00:30:00] who have already been in your shoes.
Elliot: And maybe have a little bit more experience and maybe some folks that have different experience, I remember like one of the students I interviewed for my book is an international student and she was really struggling initially in college because it's, it's such a huge adjustment there, not only are you adjusting to college, but you're in a different country, different culture, different rules, healthcare system, all these, all this stuff.
Elliot: And she was like only hanging out with other international students that all had the same questions. And so her, unlock was playing a club sport, and then all of a sudden she had a different group of friends that knew about the healthcare system or knew about the town they were in or what, whatever it might be.
Elliot: So I think you want, some people that are going through the same stuff, some people that have already gone through that stuff, and then some people that, have a different perspective on that, on that stuff. That could be three people, that could be 30 people. But you want that support network to help [00:31:00] you, to give you advice, but also to challenge you to hold you accountable.
Elliot: And I think if you, if you have a growth mindset, if you have support, you can take the risks.
Silvia: Yeah, I can't agree enough about that support network. A few college friends, like I'm still so close to them today, like I talk to them every day through. Multiple different platforms, but it's because of it was so hard in school and then working starting out that just people that understand you is so invaluable because your friends will be like, that's a horrible job.
Silvia: Don't like, don't work for your crazy bosses, but they don't also understand the internal struggle where you're trying to get your foot in the door. You're trying to learn things on the job, and this is an opportunity. But so you kind of like, need both perspectives to balance it.
Elliot: Yeah, and I think it's also, it's not just the company, but it's also the role, because there are great roles at so so companies, and there are terrible roles at great [00:32:00] companies.
Elliot: So I think you you really have to figure out that, that combination and that balance. of course, it would be great if. It was a, a best place to work and you had the most fun, director of special projects or whatever the most, the most fun role is there, but sometimes it's a trade off and you have to do your homework.
Elliot: And I know when I, working at Vignoli's office, a lot of people told me, you're going to work long hours, you're going to do, toilet details, whatever, whatever it is, I had the opposite experience. Where I got to work on, concept design for hundreds of projects. I got to work directly with Raphael sometimes in crazy places.
Elliot: Like once we worked on a design. for an atrium and I was like working in Rhino during the intermission at Carnegie Hall because if you wanted time with Raphael, that's when I could get it. So he's bring your laptop. We'll go listen to Vienna [00:33:00] Philharmonic and then we'll work on the atrium at intermission.
Elliot: It's okay, great. So I think a lot depends on, on the role, who you're working with, what you're working on. as well as, the organization and the culture. And
Silvia: how would you describe, I know startups use this a lot, aligning to your North Star and, having that help make decisions, is this worth it?
Silvia: Is this worthwhile? if you have ten different things to do, what do you do? What speaks to you about, finding what that is for each person?
Elliot: What I've found, working with students in particular, and then people that are early in their career, is that the more concrete your goals and your vision are, the more meaningful and the more useful they are to you.
Elliot: usually, the most useful North Star is actually a role model. It's a person. It's I want to be like so and I want to have that job. I might not have that job right away. It might be three jobs away. But I think like often the best, [00:34:00] the best North star is a, is, is a role model and that maybe that person is a mentor.
Elliot: So I think oftentimes the best North star is a person because that's a real living, breathing person who plays a role, has a job. You can understand what it's like, what a day in their life is You can understand their path, how they got there. And that can be super helpful for you to, that might not be your next job.
Elliot: That might be two or three jobs away, but you can understand that's what you're, you're aiming for. And you can, you can learn from them directly or indirectly. And I think that's often so. much more useful than some abstract notion. it's like there's a very popular learning theory, I think advocated for by a guy named John Seely Brown, who talks about the goal is to learn to be not to learn about.
Elliot: So you want to learn to be a scientist, not learn [00:35:00] about science, for example. And I think instead of learning about being a creative director, go find a creative director that really inspires you. figure out how they got there, figure out what their day is like, and then think about how you can get there, maybe in as few steps as possible.
Silvia: Yeah, that's great advice
Conclusion: Looking Forward to the Future of Architectural Practice
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Silvia: . What are you looking forward to in the future?
Elliot: I'm really excited about how the architectural practice is evolving, and I, I feel like it's come, it's come quite a long way. in solving some of the, some of the problems that pushed me halfway out of it in that so many architecture firms now do a fair amount of research.
Elliot: They do a fair amount of strategy. a lot of architecture firms have a group like Brightspot inside of them. So I think that's a really positive sign that there's more and more other professionals like looking for this discovery process, trying to use research to inform and [00:36:00] direct and guide. I also feel like there's better recognition among, institutions, organizations, cultural, educational industry about the value of design and, and the power of designing and redesigning places and processes and, and programs and services.
Elliot: So I think that's also, that's also really, really exciting. And I'm. As I work with and talk to and meet more and more young people, I think that's also really exciting, as we think about the future, because I think like the students I meet today have, have been through so much. I think college is way more costly and way more complicated than it was 5, 10, 20, certainly longer, 25 years ago.
Elliot: And, as much as people like to [00:37:00] complain about the generations that come after them, I think. It's, it's a very inspiring, the students that I meet are so inspiring for their, their resilience, their ambition, their desire to make an impact in the world, and the desire to, to do it in a way while they're still taking care of themselves and their family.
Elliot: And, and finding, finding meaning and purpose in what they do every day, not deferring that to, three careers from now or when they're retired. And, and I, I appreciate that high standard and I hope we can all meet it together.
Silvia: Yeah, that is very inspiring. can you share more about your book, where we can find it?
Silvia: And, you also mentioned that there's you gift one for every, book bought.
Elliot: Yeah. Yeah, so the book has a buy one, give one model, because, my, my mission is student success, and I know not everyone can afford the book, so we donate one for, for every copy that's, that's purchased, so I'm always looking for organizations to, to donate [00:38:00] to in, in bulk, and, and we, we've been able to do that for a number of great ones like Generation Hope and the Collective Success Network, And, and I'm certainly interested in that, and I think the best way to find out if the book is just on my website, so elliottfelix.
Elliot: com forward slash book, and there it'll take you to, information about it, and then a link to buy it on Amazon, which is the best place. You can also find it on Amazon if you do, Elliott Felix, how to get the most out of college. And yeah, I hope it, hope it, is helpful to all the architecture students out
Silvia: there.
Silvia: Thank you so much. Is there anything else that you would want to add to
Elliot: this? I'll just say thank you and say, reinforce that it is, it is a journey. You're going to take risks. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to learn along the way. And I think going into it with open eyes and open arms, you'll have a lot of, have a lot of success.
Elliot: You'll have some setbacks, but I think architecture is, is a rewarding profession. [00:39:00] And if that's not the profession you choose, it's also an incredibly rewarding and useful education where you get a set of skills and experiences that are incredibly valuable in things that are tangential to architecture or further afield.
Elliot: And my best friends and my network is full of people that are still practicing as well as people that have taken other paths. And I think finding your right path is that in and of itself can be a lot of fun. Thank you
Silvia: so much. There were so many good pieces of advice in there. My pleasure.
Elliot: Thanks for
Silvia: having me.
Silvia: thank you. Have a great day. You too.
Elliot: Take care.
Erin: Hey everyone. It's Erin from out of Architecture. If you find these stories inspiring and are looking for guidance, clarity, or just need someone to talk to about where you are in your career, please know that we offer 30 minute consultations to talk about what may be next for you. If you're interested, head to out of architecture.com/scheduling to book some time with us.
Jake: Hey [00:40:00] everyone. It's Jake from Out of Architecture. We love hearing your stories, but we know there's more out there that we've still yet to experience. If you or someone you know would be a good fit for the podcast and has a story about taking their architecture skills beyond the bounds of traditional practice, we'd love to hear it.
Jake: Send us an email at tangents@outofarchitecture.com.
Silvia: Thanks for listening to our podcast, new episodes every two weeks. See you then