Early in his life, Elliot was positively influenced by his Art teacher, who challenged his way of thinking that led him to an interest in architecture and space. After focusing on architecture in his schooling, study abroad in Belgium, undergraduate degree, early career years, and Masters degree at MIT, Elliot realized that he wanted to take on projects with a unique approach, utilizing his experience. Join us for this conversation about how Elliot’s path organically led him to the work he does today with his company, brightspot, and how a degree in Architecture can teach you valuable skills to use across a variety of fields.
You can find his book, How to Get the Most out of College, his podcast of the same name, and other resources at www.elliotfelix.com.
Early in his life, Elliot was positively influenced by his Art teacher, who challenged his way of thinking that led him to an interest in architecture and space. After focusing on architecture in his schooling, study abroad in Belgium, undergraduate degree, early career years, and Masters degree at MIT, Elliot realized that he wanted to take on projects with a unique approach, utilizing his experience. Join us for this conversation about how Elliot’s path organically led him to the work he does today with his company, brightspot, and how a degree in Architecture can teach you valuable skills to use across a variety of fields.
You can find his book, How to Get the Most out of College, his podcast of the same name, and other resources at www.elliotfelix.com.
Thank you for joining us today on Paths in Progress. I'm your host, Carrie Young. On this podcast, people in a variety of career fields, talk about their journey from choosing their college, deciding which majors and minors to pursue, their first jobs out of college, and all of the hurdles, detours and victories along their path through today. Our goal is to help students hear about a variety of exciting opportunities out there and understand what day-to-day life is like in these careers. I hope you enjoy and learn from our story today. Thanks for listening. Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I am here today with Elliot Felix. He is an author and an educational consultant who works with colleges and universities to improve their student experience. His recent book is called How to Get the Most Out Of College. And he has his degrees in Architecture. Elliot, thanks so much for joining us today.
Elliot:It's great to be here. Thanks Carrie.
Carrie:Thank you. So can you go ahead and start by taking us back to your high school days and telling us what you were thinking regarding your educational career path and how you went about looking for colleges?
Elliot:Yeah, absolutely. My story is one where I uncovered a path early on and was very focused on it. Oh. But then made a little bit of a turn and then another turn. And it's been an interesting process. I had an art teacher when I was growing up named Mr. Beta, who was this absolutely amazing, amazing person. And he taught art to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders like it was a college architecture class. Like one of the things we had to do was to bring in a game board and analyze its underlying structure and then turn that into a three dimensional space.
Carrie:Oh, wow. In middle school?
Elliot:Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And he was a friend of the family and became very much a mentor to me and would take me to gallery openings and interesting events. And what was interesting about him is he had this childlike curiosity about the world, and it was infectious. You couldn't help but have that same level of curiosity about how things were made and how things worked and about the people using them. That very much put me on the path to architecture. On that path, as I became more interested, I did like a college summer study program in my sophomore year. It was kind of an epiphany in two ways. One was that it confirmed, Hey, this is what I want to do in college. It was at Bennington College and I spent a month, you know, in the dorms taking an architecture studio class and a creative writing class. And that was, I think a great way to like test the waters. Mm-hmm. And then I think the other thing I learned from that experience was there was a way to find your place. At my high school, it was a large public high school, there were kind of two camps: people who loved school, and people who hated school and had fun. And I thought, well, I would like to both love school and have fun.
Carrie:Right? I mean, there is a happy medium there.
Elliot:I think so. Yeah. And so, finding this college summer study thing was a great way to bridge those two worlds and find smart, curious people, who also had a lot of fun. It was a great experience.
Carrie:If you knew this around sophomore year, how did you start approaching looking at university programs? Did you go to this mentor that you had early in your life or were you looking at prestige of programs? Were you looking at university campuses? Like what was your whole approach to looking for the program that was right for you?
Elliot:Yeah, it's a great question. I took kind of an unusual approach because I ended up graduating high school a year early. My mom was moving to Brussels in Belgium and I was ahead in most things and I took a couple of summer classes. And so I graduated in three years, with the idea that let me do kind of a fun year, study architecture in French and kind of go to college for fun for a year without grades. I applied to like a five year program in Brussels. I told them I planned to be there for all five years, but, you know, really, I knew it was only gonna be a year. And then my college admissions process was all from abroad, even though I was, you know, not an international student. It sort of felt like one at times because I was exploring different campuses from afar. My strategy was to apply to a whole slew of schools and then visit the ones I got into. It was interesting, I kind of narrowed the field to UVA, Berklee, and Washington University in St. Louis. And the reason being, is those three, you got to start architecture right away. Whereas a lot of the other places I was considering, you did, you know, two years of liberal arts and then you started taking architecture studio. Those three places had a really nice blend of you do some studio work, you do some architecture, but you're also getting a broad base and social sciences and natural sciences and arts, and more.
Carrie:I'm really glad you said that because I think there's a lot of students who don't take the time to look at the degree plans in that way. It's so important and can be so informative to the decision that you make because it's not just what classes you're taking, but it's also like you said, like when do you start them and how is the degree plan structured and what are things that you have an option to do and what are things that you absolutely have to do? I've just seen so many students over the years like not really look at that until they're there, and then there's something about it that they're not happy with, that they really could've looked at in advance, you know, and perhaps made a different decision. So I think it's so important, even if you see a list of classes or something, you know, go deeper and see how that degree plan is structured. And also like, what do those classes mean? Because a lot of degrees, may have a course or a minor, or even a major that's titled a certain way that may lead you to believe it means one thing, but it actually means something else, or it may be a little different than what you pictured it. So I think it's so important to do what you did and really look at those programs more deeply as you're making your decisions.
Elliot:Yeah, and I had the good fortune of being able to test a lot of the things I was thinking. I started off an architect and I ended up more of a design thinker and a strategist. And one of the, Core tenets of design thinking is prototyping and testing. Without realizing it, at the time, a lot of what I was doing was testing out what it was gonna be like to study architecture. Because I, you know, I did the summer test as a sophomore. And then I did the Brussels tests where I was taking, you know, most of the classes. But after a while, I realized that since I was there for fun and not credit, I should really put my efforts into things that I really enjoyed. And so, some classes got a lot of attention and others, not very much, but that gave me a chance to test things out and know what I was looking for into the future, which was so valuable. It's certainly one of the tips in my book.
Carrie:Can you talk a little bit about that experience in Belgium? Because I think a lot of students, don't go abroad until, you know, it's more common junior year of college or something a little bit later in their experience. So because you had this experience abroad as a younger student, can you talk a little bit about what that was like for you at that age? And then also, I feel like everybody that goes abroad or studies abroad talks about how it changed them as a person because there's so many things you have to learn. It might have been a little different for you if your mom was there with you. But could you just talk about that experience in general and the value that you see in that, looking back on it?
Elliot:Yeah, there was a lot of value. And I think certainly the exposure to new people and places was amazing. Studying in Brussels definitely beat high school in the suburbs and I, you know, we could go to Paris, you know, for the weekend. Yeah, we didn't have a ton of money, so we didn't quite do that every weekend. But, Belgium is pretty nicely located, so we were able to, I was able to do some traveling. Certainly exposure to people in places and a large city and all it has to offer in terms of culture and diversity and activity was amazing. Also didn't hurt that the drinking age was not 21 and that it's a country known for brewing amazing beers. So I learned a lot about different breweries and learned a lot from my friends. Meeting new people, being in a new place, doing new things as you'd expect from studying abroad, was there. And the other thing was it turned out to be a very different style of education, which proved to be a really great bridge into my actual college education. And what I mean by that is this school that was called Saint Luke, St. Luke, it was a five year curriculum and it was quite regimented early on. Like, I think I had 13 or 14 classes. I had a history class, a philosophy class. I had a geology class. I had kind of a structural engineering statics class. I had studio, I had like three different kinds of drawing classes. And your time, nine to five, Monday through Friday was a hundred percent accounted for. Apart from a generous lunch break. So, it felt high school-ish. Yeah. And that, I think was a kind of an interesting bridge. And then the other thing about the education, there was a lot of like how to technical instruction. So, learning specifically how to draw for instance, like drawing technique with a pen and paper freehand as well as, you know, with an architect's mayline. This was pre cad. So pre-computer. And that turned out to be a great compliment, cuz then when I got into actual architecture school, there's very little technical instruction. You're given these creative projects and you're supposed to pick up the techniques, how to build a model, how to draw along the way, from your friends, from one on one instruction.
Carrie:Oh wow.
Elliot:There isn't much of that. So I felt like I had this great base. I got to college already knowing how to draw, already knowing a little bit about modeling. And that I think, freed me up to do more, you know, I can better express my ideas. It really helped me in my studio work, but also in my other academic coursework. When it was time to do statics, I had already done a bit of that, albeit in French, so I didn't get a hundred percent of it, but it was a great jumpstart.
Carrie:What about being around the architecture in Europe? I always thought it was so interesting where in some areas, you have these buildings that are, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years old, and it could be juxtaposed next to this building that's super modern, and everything in between. As someone who was interested in architecture and going into that, did just being in Europe and seeing all of these historical buildings and architectural styles, was that inspiring to you? How did that impact you moving forward?
Elliot:Yeah, that was also super impactful and I appreciated the history, but I was much more into modern architecture. There was plenty of that, too. And I remember, you know, I think one of the rites of passage of a aspiring architect is, in air quotes, you know, breaking in to a famous building to get to tour it. And, I went to Villa Oi in, famous Portier house outside of Paris and, had that experience of, you know, finding a wall that was, cuz it was closed at the time and finding a wall that was easy enough to climb, you know, and then touring the site and looking in the windows and that kind of thing. And, I would not have been able to do that if I was still in my senior year, you know, in the suburbs of upstate New York.
Carrie:Yeah. And just, you know, we probably should not recommend like breaking and entering in general or trespassing.
Elliot:or No, that's not advice, that's just an observation. It seems like a lot of architects have stories of visiting places and finding a way to visit them, despite maybe some barriers, legal or physical.
Carrie:So funny. Oh my gosh. So you chose a university to attend after you were in Belgium. Can you tell us a little bit about what you chose and how your experience was for your undergraduate degree?
Elliot:Yeah. I chose UVA because, again, it was one of those three schools where you got to do architecture right away. And I really fell in love with the campus when I set foot on it. It itself has amazing architecture and landscape architecture. Wow. Yeah. World Heritage Site. You'd think that the architecture school there was steeped in classicism, but it was actually very progressive and modern. During my visit, I sat in on some lectures, I talked to lots of students, and you know, I could see myself there. It felt like a great fit. And it was also a four year program as opposed to a five year program. Meaning you get a, in this case, a BS in architecture, which you can imagine how many jokes there were about that.
Carrie:In a lot of fields. Yeah.
Elliot:Yeah. In a lot of fields. As opposed to a bachelor in architecture, which is a five year degree. Mm-hmm. And suitable for licensure. This the four year degree means you have to go back to grad school. I had an inclination that four years was gonna be enough for me and five might lead to burnout. And I like the mix of the electives and the gen ed and the liberal arts. Whereas if you go the five year route, you're kind of compressing things so you have less latitude and maybe less exposure at times. So it felt like a really good fit. I was really lucky in that I feel like a lot of people go to a large school and they feel like they're a number or they feel like they're lost in the shuffle, or it takes them a while to find their people. Or it takes them a while to figure out how their courses connect to a career path. But I was very lucky in that I joined a very tight knit community. The architecture school had its own space, which I think was part of its identity. Every student was assigned a desk. So you had your own space, you had kind of a place to call home in a way. And yeah, unfortunately there's a lot of staying up all night and treating it like a second home, which ultimately is not very healthy, but it generally takes people a couple years to figure that out. It takes the smart ones, I think their first all nighter to realize, you're not really getting much done between, you know, two 10. So you might as well sleep for half of that at least.
Carrie:It's definitely a culture like in most architecture programs, right? I even remember where I went for my undergrad. It didn't matter what time you walked by the architecture building, you could see the studio spaces where the lights were always on and there was always people in there working at their desks.
Elliot:Yeah. And my theory is part of it is the culture and part of it is you start off not knowing what good is. You have no idea if your project is any good because you're doing these things that are totally new to you and they might be abstract or conceptual. And so you basically work as hard as you can, and hope that's good enough. It's sort of like developing taste. You end up developing a sense of what's good and what's not from your instructor, from your peers, from your research, from trips to the library, looking at examples. And then you also develop a sense of how long things take. Eventually you have the confidence to know, Okay, I can get this done in the morning. Once you know what good is and you know how long it takes to get good, then you can work like a human. Whatever people can do to figure that out earlier, the better off they are. Because then they can not get swept up in the culture of all-nighters.
Carrie:Yeah. We'll obviously talk about your book a little bit later in our conversation, but as someone who wrote a book called How to Get the Most Out of College, what were some things in your life experience that you feel like were things that you did that helped you get the most out of college, or perhaps some things that looking back you really wish you would've done differently that would've helped you to get more out of it?
Elliot:It's a great question and one that I'm always thinking about. You know, the book isn't about me and my experience, but you can't help but reflect on your own once you start advising other people on theirs. Mm-hmm. I think that experience of entering the architecture school, in hindsight now, I realize how valuable that was because I joined a close knit community. We had our own space that helped foster that community. My professors were working in the profession, so I had that like direct tie to them. On vacations and holidays and summers, I ended up working for some of my professors. So I had a tie to industry. I had a sense of like how my education was gonna connect to a career, to a profession. Those are all things that I advise students on, you know, finding that course to career connection, you know, finding a role model and understanding their path, like how can you emulate their path. So I was really lucky to do that. And I also, both in undergrad and grad, I was on student government, which I think was a really useful experience. I think it's great to get experience leading something. I think it's great to get experience, representing people, talking to people, understanding their needs, distilling them, articulating them, advocating for them. The experience that led most directly to current career as an educational consultant was a student government initiative in grad school. We could talk more about that when we get to grad school. But I think, you know, finding mentors, connecting to a career paths, finding your people, having that sense of belonging, and finding a way to lead, to contribute, to listen. Those are all things that I think really help you get the most out of college.
Carrie:Yeah. Is there something that you are consistently advising students to do that perhaps you wish you would've done differently within your experience?
Elliot:Yes. My big regret is that I was too focused early on. Since I was, you know, in sixth grade, I thought I was gonna be an architect, right? So I was super focused on architecture and it took me probably until my junior year to realize that my other courses were complimenting rather than taking away from my major. I encourage students to do as much lateral exploration as they can early on, especially if they're not sure what their major might be, because you want to try a bunch of stuff as early as possible so that you can then focus in a productive way.
Carrie:Yeah.
Elliot:I wish I did a little bit more exploration because the classes outside of architecture that I ended up discovering were amazing. I took a class, a literature class on collage, and the idea was collage as like a literary and cultural medium. Hmm. And it was taught by a poet named Ton Lin. We read TS Elliott, we read Gertrude Stein, we looked at Picasso and Brock. We looked at Land Art, Earthworks, Robert Smithson. It was amazing. Hands down, I learned the most in that class. And it pushed me more than any of my studio courses. And it made all my studio courses better. Still to this day I remember walking in one day and we all sat down and he said, Write a story that reads like a landscape, and write a landscape that reads like a story. And then he left the room.
Carrie:Oh wow.
Elliot:and no one had any idea, if we could talk to each other, what he meant, how to do that, and like talk about a stretch assignment. It was just awesome. Everybody came up with their own take and then we read them, you know, half an hour later and it was amazing. It was totally amazing. And so I think that kind of lateral exploration is so valuable. It's too easy to fall into the trap of that kind of thing taking away from your focus as opposed to complimenting it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it just makes you a more interesting rich experience.
Carrie:Yeah, and you know, we have a lot of messaging to students right now that they need to pick what they wanna do or choose their path so much earlier in life than what used to be encouraged. A lot of students are finding themselves getting to college, or perhaps before that, you know, with this very laser focused goal. You know, that can be good too. We don't wanna discourage people from having goals or dreams or things that they wanna achieve, But, you know, just like when you use binoculars and you're looking at this very small thing that's in your future or far away, you know, when you're holding those binoculars up to your face, you're not seeing what's right next to you. Right? And you're not seeing these other opportunities that are around you. It's important to have goals that you wanna achieve, especially if you have made decisions about what those could be. But, you know, look for them and watch them in a way where you're not missing these other opportunities around you that, like you said, they can really enrich your experience and they can perhaps, you know, widen your perspective or introduce you to things that you didn't even know were a possibility for you.
Elliot:Yeah. These lessons took me a long time to learn. In grad school, it was useful to have learned them because I really valued my opportunity to explore things at MIT and found lots of other classes that complimented the studio and, you know, taking stuff at the media lab and doing things outside of architecture. Again, the degree requirements. There was a requirement to take two visual arts classes, and the visual arts department is actually inside the architecture and planning school at MIT. Those two classes were amazing. Again, if I hadn't learned the lesson in undergrad, I learned it again in grad and took a class on public art and then a class that was kind of a cross between industrial design and art. And both of those I think really pushed me to think. And I was, you know, with a different cohort of students, and met other people and learned new things. I think that exploration is really, really useful.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. So you had mentioned that you had this awareness when you chose the four year degree program, that graduate school was gonna be something, I dunno if you thought about it as a necessity or just something that you assumed you would be pursuing after your undergraduate work? Can you talk a little bit about how you looked for graduate programs and how you navigated that transition between undergrad and grad, and how that experience differed from your undergraduate program?
Elliot:Yeah, it was very different because I worked for four years in between, and it's, at least in architecture, it's pretty typical to work for a year or two. Few people take four years off. And I think the reason being that the longer you take off, the more you get used to having a real life and, making money and making progress in a profession. Yeah. But, you know, to become a licensed architect, if you've only got the four year degree, you have to go back. So it was always in front of me.
Carrie:What kind of work were you able to do then, in the field of architecture, during those years before you were licensed? What were the kinds of things you were able to learn and accomplish and work on without being licensed?
Elliot:You really do everything but sign the drawings. I mean, you can learn everything. I had a rather unique experience that I worked hard for. But also the timing was perfect and I found a firm called Rafael Vinoly Architects that did lots of large cultural and academic projects. I was very lucky because the office was structured in such a way that there was a small group of people that did the early conceptual design on every project and just worked with Rafael, the founder and lead designer for every project. There was maybe five or six of us, and I arrived at a time when they needed one more person on that squad. We were doing a competition for a new business school at the University of Chicago. We ended up, after a couple of months working, pretty hard to come up with, I think a great, great design. We ended up sort of winning it. They told the other seven or eight folks that they didn't win it, but they didn't want to go public until they liked the design. And in the meantime, the rest of the team, the rest of that like competition concept design squad moved on to the next one. And it was mostly me and Rafael for a month revisiting the design, reworking the design. And so I got this time basically no one else got with him. Wow. Yeah. And we developed a very close relationship and he was very much a mentor to me. I joke that I spent four calendar years there, but it was, you know, at least eight work years because it was known as one of, if not the, like most hardworking places. It was kind of a crazy schedule. You know, Rafael got his best work done on the weekends because then there were no client meetings. So if he wanted to, like, think deeply about something, it was happening on Saturday or more likely Sunday. Then if you're his hands, if you're the one who's helping him think through a sketch and then turn it into a model, whether it's digital or physical. Then you're there on Saturday or Sunday too. It was funny, in those days you had to print out your time sheet and bring it to accounting to get your physical paycheck.
Carrie:Right.
Elliot:I would routinely bring my time sheet down and they would say, Oh, we just need the one week of hours. And I would be like, Yeah, this is, even though it says 80 something or a hundred something, you know, that's just this week. It was grueling but also incredibly rewarding. And I worked on tons of things and I got really good at that front end conceptualization, like understanding the client's needs and turning it into an early concept and then visualizing that concept in drawings and stories and models, digital models and physical models. I was able to do quite a lot and, I was very lucky that, the experience there, I got there just the right time to work on that project. And then I got there at just the right time and that the firm was growing very rapidly. I think when I started there, it was like 75 people and within a year it was 150, and then a year later it was like 250 or something. And you know, when you're in a growing firm, there's generally more opportunity to do more things, to wear more hats. I worked hard, and I was lucky to get to work on some really amazing projects. Like, in addition to that business school, I worked on a laboratory at the National Institutes of Health. I worked on a laboratory at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. I worked on Concert hall in Philadelphia. I worked on a convention center in Pittsburgh. I worked on a convention center in Boston. So it was, it was pretty amazing for a 22 year old.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. We kind of talked about earlier, how it's a little bit harder to go back to grad school once you've been in the workforce for, you know, a period of time. What is the thing that made you say, Okay, now it's time. I need to go do this, or I want to go do this?
Elliot:After a couple of years of doing a lot of the early conceptual work, I wanted to see the other end of architecture and really get into the implementation and the building technology of it all and understand how buildings go together and what they're made of. So I spent my last year and a half really diving deeply into that and had another great mentor at the firm named Charles Bloomberg, who was like the building technology guru, who could, you know, think up new ways of attaching steel to aluminum and glass to make amazing glass facades and structures and everything in between. And, you know, help Rafael realize his vision. As the projects I was working on neared completion, and as this like passion for building technology came to the fore, like going to grad school at MIT became a pretty attractive idea. And it's, it's funny, I picked MIT because of the building technology piece, but ended up kind of taking a left turn while I was there.
Carrie:Can you tell us about that?
Elliot:The thing that is so, I think interesting about a place like MIT is how there is very much like a culture of collaboration across disciplines. I think a lot of architecture schools have their own building and their own identity, and they're quite separate from other departments. But at MIT, almost all the buildings are connected. Especially if they're on the infinite corridor, you know, as the school architecture and planning school was. I got exposed to lots of things outside of architecture within architecture at the media lab. In addition to that, technological or technical underpinnings, there is also social underpinnings and ethos and philosophy there where it's quite clear that buildings and landscapes are for people. You know, they don't exist on their own for their own sake. They exist for people. That was like an undercurrent at the school that I think got me really interested in and made me aware maybe what a little bit, what was lacking in the architecture profession, at least at the time. It made me reflect on my own experience where we didn't know enough or a lot about the people we were designing for. What was their culture? How were they learning, how were they working? Going to MIT gave me this opportunity to really understand people better in order to create better spaces for them. That was sort of the progression there and the idea that I feel like I went into MIT as an architect and I came out as a designer, even though my degree was technically in architecture. And I was seeing design as a way to find and solve problems. And that more than spaces could be designed. Systems, services could be designed as well. All in service of people.
Carrie:Yeah. Did you start visualizing different career paths with that kind of thought process? Or what were you starting to think about your future? Were you not seeing yourself as an architect or going out and trying to find a job in that? What were you starting to think through regarding your own path?
Elliot:I was thinking about research and strategy and I was exploring different ways to do that. Some architecture firms have a research and strategy team within them, and where I ended up landing was following in the footsteps of some MIT colleagues at a place that was co-founded by a guy named Frank Duffy, who was an adjunct at MIT at the time. It was a research and strategy firm that would understand people's needs through surveys and focus groups and interviews and, understand the like environment and the culture through social science research techniques. And then would create strategy for spaces in the form of a design brief. The job of the brief is to frame the question that the building is supposed to answer, right? It's supposed to define the problem to be solved. And that ended up I think, being a great fit for me because it was a way to apply what I learned at MIT. It was interesting in that it related to that student government experience where I got to MIT and it was great, but you know, it was like a time of transition and there was some kinks to work out, I think, in the student experience. Those of us in student government got together and we did a project that's not unlike what I do every day as a consultant. We did a survey, we did a town hall meeting. We distilled like a set of key concerns among the students. Then we had like a brainstorming session to identify solutions. We went to the new dean and said, you know, these are the problems and here's what we propose. Adele Santos was her name. She's amazing. And to her credit, she was like, Yeah, this all makes sense. Let's do all of these. We were able to Almost double the compensation for TAs, cuz you know, we compared ourselves to other departments and saw that it was significantly less and we were able to really showcase and celebrate the thesis projects, which previously, you know, you would work for a year and then you would present for an hour and that was it. There was no show, no book, no celebration, no showcasing. And, we were able to add those components in. And then finally we were able to adjust the schedule grid a bit so for the more advanced studios, was at a time that didn't interfere with other classes. Between having done some, not realizing it, some educational consulting as a student leader. And then having some classmates find their way to DG W and then having Frank, who was an adjunct at, I wasn't lucky enough to be in his class, but heard him talk and could tell what he and DGW were about. It was like a natural progression.
Carrie:Over the course of a lot of these interviews that I've done, it's been really interesting for people to describe how their career path gets to this certain place where they're kind of clicking into these natural talents they have and things that really make sense with their personality and how they see the world and how they see things. So, listening to you describe this transition kind of moving in this direction. When you look back on it, are there things about your character and personality and things that you enjoy to do that you look back and go, Well, yeah, this makes sense because I've always been somebody who looks at everything this way, or I was always somebody who helped to reorganize things, or I was somebody who would be in charge of this group of people. You know what I'm saying? Like, were there things even as a kid in middle school or high school that you see that really click with the way that your path started moving?
Elliot:Yeah, I mean, I think going back to coming into MIT as an architect and leaving as a designer, I think design is about understanding people. It's about testing things out, and it's about thinking kind of in systems, thinking holistically, making connections. Those are things that I'm particularly well suited to from the experiences I've had. I think the people part, my mom is a hospice nurse and my parents were always involved volunteering at school and so forth. And I think just like caring about people was in the air. And I think the trying things out, experimenting, I guess that was just part of who I was and who I am. You know, I was trying out architecture school before I was in it, and, I'm very comfortable taking risks, very comfortable trying new things. So that was a good fit. I think like the risk taking comes from, I grew up with super severe food allergies, like I was allergic to eggs, nuts, beef, shellfish, and half of all fruits and vegetables, you know, and eating the wrong thing would kill me. Literally every time I went out to eat, My life depended on like how well I communicated and how well I was like reading the, the waiter, the waitress. I think that made me both very cautious, but also like amazingly optimistic about things. So I think I was, you know, I was well suited in that regard. And then I think the making connections and the thinking holistically, that really goes back to Mr. Beta. That was how he thought he could connect anything to anything. So did many of my professors, in architecture school. Maybe those seeds were there and it was a matter of things clicking like you said, but yeah, certainly did.
Carrie:I've worked with students in the arts a lot, and even any student who's had a long term goal or a long term path, it can be athletes too, you know, where you've had these things you've worked on for so long and this goal that you had, and then you decide to do something else for whatever reason. Or you kind of move in a different direction away from that, or it's perhaps not gonna look like the way that you had always envisioned it. Did you have any kind of grievance for the fact that you weren't going to become an architect in the traditional sense that you had perhaps envisioned, as a younger student?
Elliot:Yeah. I think my first couple years as a consultant out of grad school, I was a little bit torn. You know, I was kind of keeping one foot in architecture and one foot in consulting and thinking, you know, maybe one day I will get registered. I have the experience, you know, from before grad school, so you know, in theory I could take all the exams. But then, you know, as I thought more about it, it was really like, okay, I'm imagining myself studying to take these exams. What would I rather do with my time? And like, do I really need that credential? And I was thinking, I'd much rather give talks. I'd much rather write articles, much rather do research. And that sort of answered it for me. One great thing about DGW was it very much had this culture of sharing ideas. So, writing articles, going to conferences, doing presentations was something I did there even early on. And something I really enjoy doing today. I guess what answered the question for me was thinking about these concrete trade offs between how you spend your time. Would I rather write a book or write an article or give a talk, you know, or study for a structures exam? And ultimately that helped me put both feet in the consulting camp.
Carrie:Yeah, I think it's such an interesting way to hear everybody's story, you know, about how this happens cuz there's a lot of people out there who get a degree or more than one degree in a particular area and then move in a different direction for a variety of reasons, right? Some people are actively moving in a different direction, out of choice. Some people have had something happen in their life that kind of forces them to move in a different direction. Some people really try hard to go in a certain direction and just eventually find they need to do something different. So there's all of these different stories that go along with these, but it's really interesting to hear How and why that happens. It's also interesting to hear how people still utilize that. There's kind of this weird messaging in our culture where if somebody gets a degree or multiple degrees in a certain area and they don't become that thing, then they've somehow failed or something. Right? Or they've wasted their time. And
Elliot:Yeah. Then you're not quote unquote using your degree.
Carrie:Yeah. Yeah. But it's so not true. I mean, even just in our conversation so far, you've described so many different ways where your educational experience has informed your path and all these different things that you've learned along the way and mentors you've had. So I really hope that people start to think about this differently and this conversation can be framed in a different way where, you know, you're not wasting your time, by getting an education in one area and moving in another direction, because something along that path has informed you in that way. Right? And you've still learned so much that you can utilize. You know, we talk about transferable skills a lot, and a lot of your network and your mentorship along the way can be utilized in other areas. It doesn't have to be that exact label or title that you thought you were trying to obtain in the beginning.
Elliot:Yeah, absolutely. Your education can take you in lots of different ways, and I think you can learn specific skills that you can apply. I think you can learn what you care about and you could find like what you're passionate about. You can find your why. Then those things can be applied in different domains. One thing I certainly learned in grad school was my passion for education. And I learned it in my thesis project. In my very first thesis review. My thesis started off as Freud and the New York City subway. I learned about how there were 10 or 15 stations in the New York City subway that had platforms that were walled off and were no longer used. And I was like, that's so interesting that there are these spaces with millions of people traveling by, you know, in some of the most expensive real estate in the world and they're empty. Yeah. And then at the same time I was like reading a lot of Freud and I was preoccupied with that. And like my thesis wasn't going anywhere. And one of my advisors, Mark Yarsenbeck sort of put me in the hot seat or, and, was said like, if you could do anything, what would you do? And I said, You know, it would be something about education. He started pulling on the thread and then we landed on libraries. And so my thesis became creating a new kind of library in the New York City subway and thinking about how subways democratize mobility and opportunity. And the library democratizes, you know, access to information and opportunity. And they're both kind of like circulatory systems and infrastructures. They both have cards and people read on the subways. And I was like, Oh, this is like a perfect fit. Wow. And from that I was like, Okay, education. That's my thing. And then the skills: in architecture school, you learn how to synthesize, you learn how to analyze, you learn how to communicate, you learn how to present, you learn how to conceptualize, you learn how to work on a team. It's an amazing education and you can do so many different things with it, including being architect, but other things. And I, Right. A few years ago I was at South by Southwest edu and I was sitting at a table. Four of us had all started companies, and it turned out we we were all architects. And one of them, John, Yeah. One of them was John Katzman, who went to Princeton for architecture and then ended up starting the Princeton Review. And then ended up starting to u and then ended up starting Noodle. So very well known, ed tech companies, that were all started by a former architect. I think it's a great education and I think there are ways to quote unquote, use your education, even if your profession is not the same name as your degree.
Carrie:Yeah. Totally. I love that.
Elliot:So at DGW, our job was to use social science research techniques to understand people and their needs and how they're changing and how they worked and how they learned. Conducted research, and then how those needs could be met by a new or renovated or improved space and put all that together in a design brief. We worked on small teams, 3, 4, 5 people and focused on two domains, the workplace and learning environments. In a way, those distinctions are somewhat artificial because I think of the workplace as a learning environment. So we would conduct surveys and interview people and do focus groups and look at the competitive landscape and do the benchmarking. And we would quantify what the future needs were, you know, how much of what kind of space was needed. And then we would think about how it should be organized so that people and ideas and equipment can flow. Then we would hand that off to an architect, to start the design. Or we might be working with them to uncover the needs while they're researching and understanding and analyzing the site, for instance. In doing that work, which was, you know, incredibly rewarding. I also got very lucky, like my first two big projects when I landed at DGW, one was studying the library at UVA, my alma mater. And then the other was creating the design guidelines for Google's offices because, you know, in 2006 and seven, they were doubling every year and they were starting to scale up and they needed, like, how can we direct architects about who we are and how we work and what our office should look like? So I got to work on some great projects with awesome people with different backgrounds. Some architects, some people with business strategy, and some people with more social science backgrounds. It was a great experience. I spent about five years there. But toward the end, what I realized was this process was great at uncovering a broad set of needs. But we only had one tool in a toolbox to address them, which was space. And so I started to do these projects that dealt more with like, what was the organizational strategy, like doing a strategic plan or a vision for, you know, where's our business school gonna head? Or thinking about the support services offered within a space, whether it's technology or welcome or concierge or food service, hospitality. At the time, D G W was acquired and there wasn't, you know, much of an appetite for moving beyond the space. And so that was a great time to evolve. And that's when I started Bright Spot. Our mission is to create more engaging, equitable and sustainable experiences for people, and to do that by improving spaces and services and staffing and systems for universities primarily, but, you know, science and technology, culture, as well. That really grew out of that observation that space is but one way to solve a problem. If you're really trying to help people and improve their experience, you need other tools in the toolbox.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if you can give us some examples of some projects that you have worked on. If you have kind of a pivotal project or a favorite project that you'd wanna share that kind of highlights the type of work that you're doing?
Elliot:Yeah, I can share a few. I think probably the project we're most known for is the Hunt Library at NC State, which is very much a next generation library that houses the books in a robotically retrieved vault. It holds 2 million books and you can get one in, you know, five minutes after you request it. And as a result of compacting the collection, we were able to provide oodles of space for students to study and work on projects. It has lots of technology rich spaces for immersive learning and gaming and data visualization and kind of everything in between. That was really, I think, a stepping stone to doing lots and lots of other library projects. I think we've done 70 some library projects for the 12 years we've been in business. We've also done quite a bit of strategic planning, which has really been great. Helping people at the organizational level define their mission, their vision, their goals, their actions, and really provide them focus so that they can deliver on that. We've done that for a lot of museums, libraries, schools of business and engineering. And then on a more kind of service oriented project, which also had a space component. I was lucky enough to lead a project for UVA to create a more holistic approach to advising. I think one of the things they realized was that particularly early on, in your first and second years, students need a whole range of advice. And it might be about what courses to take, but it might be about studying abroad. It might be about opportunities to volunteer in the community. It might be about personal finance. It might be about counseling and psychological services. It might be about career paths. And they wanted to bring these functions together kind of under one roof to share space, share ideas, share services, and more holistically support students. We started that project really unpacking what the students needs were, surveys and shadowing them and interviewing them. Then we brought a whole range of providers together to articulate, what are they gonna offer, how are they gonna offer it, how are they gonna work together? And then plan the space that would be needed. That's definitely one of my favorite projects, not just cuz it's where I went to school. But I think it's a really great example of thinking holistically about the student experience and providing a whole range of supports in a way where you can meet students where they are. And we put it in the library for that reason. Because if you normalize getting help, you know, everybody goes to the writing center, everybody struggles with technology at one time or another, everybody needs advice on a career path or a course to take. Then more people can use those services. So we created a space where, you know, at one table it might be two students working on a project, and at the next table over it's a student talking to their peer mentor. I love that idea that students get the support they need to succeed and they do it in a way that doesn't have a stigma, that normalizes. And then really advertises all the help that a university offers, which unfortunately students don't always take full advantage of.
Carrie:Right. Well, and also so early in the college experience, I think part of it is students may know a resource exists or they may not. Especially if you get into a large university, there are so many offices and resources and things, and sometimes it's just overwhelming. Like, where is this place? Where is this place? Now they're referring me to this place and I need to, you know. If you put a resource like that in one place, then if the students just know, okay, that's where I go and they'll help me or they can help me find something else if that's not the right space. I think it's also just so helpful to centralize that in that way for students who are early in their experience on that campus. So I assume that that project, is that what started leading to you writing your book?
Elliot:That was definitely part of it. I mean, as I was doing projects like that, I was collecting insights about how to get the most out of college, how to make the most of your experience. The research that we were doing from project to project and also the research we were referencing, that others had done looking across projects, those were starting to build up in my memory banks or in my back pocket. I had always wanted to write a book on student experience and thought it would be really interesting to write it to students and parents and families directly. Knowing that folks in higher ed could learn from it indirectly. I was looking for a way to sort of work the problem from both ends. While I'm working with institutions to help them improve their spaces and their support services and how they staff them and their technology, I can also provide insights to students and families that they can use like right away. Cuz you know, a lot of times our projects take years to come to fruition.
Carrie:Right.
Elliot:So it was a way to help students kind of from two directions and share what I had learned and also do it in a way that helps level the playing field. Because as you get into higher ed, you know, the inequities, by race and income and experience and background, they become quite, quite evident. Thinking about a student who maybe doesn't have as much, maybe social capital, they don't have the resources or the relationships. Could I give them like an insider's view of how college really works, so they could make it work for them?
Carrie:Yeah. Giving em accessibility to this information. So if a student's listening and thinking about the work that you're doing, with your company and as a consultant, and if they are listening to this and thinking, This sounds really interesting. I really like how he's approaching this or the type of work that you're doing and the type of thought process you're going through. I mean, you know, naturally wouldn't say, Well, if you wanna do what Elliot's doing, then go get an architecture degree, Right. Although it served you well, but if for students who are listening and who are really interested in this kind of work, as far as how you are looking at candidates that you're hiring to work with you and the people that you're collaborating with, what are some of the majors and minors and experiences that you would recommend for students to seek out in college if they're interested in the type of work that you're doing now?
Elliot:Yeah, I mean, I think there's ways to get at this along different paths. It could be a business degree, it could be something in the social sciences, it could be a journalism degree. It could be architecture and design. Any of those I think could lead to a path like mine, as long as you do a few things along the way. One is learning about people. I think that's so, so important. So your anthro, your psych, your sociology course, things that help you understand people and their needs and how they're changing. Cuz that's really critical. I think the second thing is, while you're studying these things, you have to do real projects for real people. you have to find ways to apply what you're learning in the classroom, in a way that helps a community. Yeah. And it could be, you know, a local nonprofit. It could be part of a service learning project that you're volunteering. Once you learn about people, then you need to find ways to help them. While you're doing that, you also wanna enrich your own perspective and your own experience, by doing that exploration that we were talking about by taking a variety of classes, having a variety of experiences. Finally there are some really important skills to learn along the way. Being able to work on a team, being able to communicate, like make a good presentation, write. Being fluent with data, being able to collect, analyze, visualize data. And then I think the tools of design thinking, which, you know, you can learn in any of those degrees.
Carrie:So you wrote a book that gives a lot of great advice to college students, but is there any other big picture advice that you would like to share with students now?
Elliot:Well, thank you so much for the chance to be on the podcast and I really appreciated talking about my path and what I learned along the way. Some successes, some failures, and always a chance to learn and I hope this helps other folks. I guess if I would have one last bit of advice, it's think about how these things can build on each other. I think about belonging, support, and connection as a really good way to get started in college and beyond. So you start Finding that sense of belonging, finding your people, finding your place, you know, finding a space that feels your own, that where you're not going into somebody else's space, but you help create it. You're with people that value you for who you are and that you have some things in common with, but Also some things that are different so that you can learn and grow. And once you have that belonging and you feel like you're a part of something, then you can find support. And that support can be personal support. It can be your support network of friends and advisors and mentors and family, coaches. But it can also be support services. And there's one thing I've learned in doing consulting work for more than a hundred universities. It's that students, unfortunately, Don't take advantage of all they have to offer. There are literally hundreds of people at most universities, or dozens of people at most colleges whose job it is to help you find support and that might be counseling, it might be tutoring, it might be success coaching. It might be helping you write more effectively. It might be helping you analyze data in more compelling ways or tell better stories when you make a presentation. And so support is out there. It it definitely, you have to put yourself out there to ask for it. But there's so much that they can do. I mean, even as something as simple as someone to help you with your LinkedIn profile or your resume and think about your career options. Once you go from belonging, then you find that support and then you try and make connections. The sub subtitle in my book is about making those connections so that you can, for instance, do a project for one that helps with another one. So you can go deeper and you can explore, you know, something you care about or use your time more efficiently. You can also make connections between a class and a potential career path, or between a class project and a community group. My advice is this, you know, progress from belonging to support to connection, and that's how you can learn and grow and succeed.
Carrie:Yeah, that's great advice. Especially to encourage students to really go out and take advantage of those resources and those people who are there, literally it's their job to help them because that's really hard to see a student's struggle and potentially worst case scenario and you'll have to drop out of school or fail a bunch of things, or really struggle in a way because they didn't wanna ask for help. They didn't wanna ask somebody or they didn't know where to go, or they were too afraid for some reason to ask or didn't wanna bother somebody. You know, all of those reasons that we give ourselves that we don't wanna ask for help. So it's so, so important to just ask. Ask the questions. If it's the wrong person, they will help you find the right person. But that, I really think that's one of the biggest keys to college success is when you have a question, make sure you ask it and find the resource that can help you.
Elliot:Yeah. And don't hold back. I hear a lot of students, maybe self-censor a little bit, because they think maybe somebody needs the help more, mm-hmm. And I think, you know, it's great to have empathy. It's great to have sympathy. It's great to have awareness of others. But I think you can also, get the help you're paying for with your tuition. And that, that's the other thing I hear from students that they regret, you know, not getting the help they were paying for and, something that would've really improved their experience. And maybe you start small, but these things really pay off. And if you think about all the different kinds of help I just mentioned, they all tie back to skills that are gonna help you thrive in college and after it, right? Yeah. Making presentations, analyzing data or writing more persuasively, more effectively. It's there to help you and take advantage.
Carrie:Absolutely. Well, Elliot, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your story with us and sharing all of this great advice. Can you tell everybody where they can find you and where they can find your book?
Elliot:Absolutely. Yeah. The best place is to go to elliot felix.com and that's where I put everything in terms of articles I've written and talks I've given, and podcasts I've been on my own podcast, which is called How to Get the Most Out of College, where I interview students and experts like you, Carrie, your episodes coming out soon. and you can also find the links to all my social media feeds there. There's tikTok videos and Instagram reels all about different tips in my book. I hope it helps folks as they think about how to belong and find support and make connections, and get the most outta college.
Carrie:Thank you so much, Elliot.
Elliot:Thank you.
Carrie:Do you know someone I should interview? Please DM me on Instagram@pathsinprogresspodcast and let me know who I should talk to. I would love to hear about how these stories are impacting your journey. Please follow Paths in Progress wherever you download your podcasts and leave a review to let me know what you think. You can also follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn at Paths in Progress Podcast. Our music is by John Grimmett and the artwork is by Edgar Alanis. Thanks again for joining me today.