In this chapter of Foundations + Futures: By the Decade, we step into the 2020s, a decade that has asked Schmidt Associates to plant roots in a new market, take on the most complex projects in firm history, and figure out what servant leadership looks like as a new generation steps into leadership.

Ben Simmons, principal-in-charge and principal leading community work out of Schmidt Associates' Louisville office, and Veena Reddy, senior project architect and firm principal whose work in sustainability, education, and community-centered design shapes how the firm thinks about responsibility, join host Sarah Hempstead to talk through the decade and look at where Schmidt Associates is headed next.

Listeners will hear about:

• Welcoming Arrasmith into the family right before the pandemic hit, a Louisville firm with roots back to 1926 behind landmarks from art deco Greyhound bus stations to the Louisville Zoo's award-winning exhibits, and how a shared belief in servant leadership made the combination work
• The Kentucky Exposition Center, the largest project either has led, a multi-phase modernization of a beloved 1960s facility built to carry its legacy into the next 60 years
• CPS projects, from Iroquois High School to Hudson Middle School, the first new West Louisville high school since the 1930s, plus an in-design STEAM charter school for young women
• Taking sustainability from a buzzword to daily practice, an approach built on subtraction and efficiency, tailored to what each owner's budget, timeline, and building actually need
• Ben and Veena's own promotions to principal this past year, and their shared vision for the firm's next 50 years: becoming a true community resource without losing the culture that gave them both a voice

More than a tour of projects, this is a conversation about planting new roots, taking on work at a scale the firm had never attempted, and carrying servant leadership into a new city and a new generation. It's a look at how the throughline holds: good design serves people, and good leadership serves everyone else first.

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