Luminate is back! Welcome to another episode of Luminate: Navigating the Unknown Through Creative Leadership. We're kicking off a new season with host Sarah Hempstead and guests Councilor Michael-Paul Hart, Indianapolis City-County Councilor representing District 20, and Joseph Jarzen, client liaison and associate at Schmidt Associates, talking through the vision for turning 94 acres of nostalgia into a neighborhood's next chapter: Washington Square Mall.

Listeners will hear about:

• Councilor Hart's path to leadership, from HVAC service calls to city council
• The patchwork of ownership behind the mall's 1.2 million square feet, and the year and a half journey of bringing everyone to the table
• The vision plan for the site, shaped by community town halls, and the work still ahead

It's a conversation about patience as much as vision, and what it takes to bring owners, city departments, and a community to the table on a project decades in the making.

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To close out our Foundations + Futures anniversary series, we're flipping the format. Rather than revisiting a decade already lived, this roundtable turns to what's next: host Sarah Hempstead speaks with four Schmidt Associates team members, an architect, an interior designer, an engineer, and a landscape architect, about what today's practice looks like, what's changing fastest, and what they hope never does.

Listeners will hear from:

• Alvin Laguerre, Graduate Architect: on the lesson that's shaped his whole approach to Owners (listen to what they say and what they don't), why data centers have become one of the field's most urgent conversations, and the architect's responsibility to help owners understand the real impact of what they build.
• Asia Coffee, Senior Interior Designer: on ten years at the firm, AI's growing hold on design inspiration and what it means for the value of real expertise, and why she hopes the firm's creativity and genuine care for people never fade.
• Andrew Eckrich, Mechanical Engineer: on the industry's shift toward safer refrigerants and electrification, why the next generation of engineers needs to be broader rather than narrower, and how technology has compressed a mailed, triplicate submittal process into a quick turnaround.
• Stephanie Gates, Landscape Architect: on a personal story of the firm standing by her that convinced her she'd her professional home, and how climate change is upending decades-old assumptions about asphalt, native plants, and infrastructure built for a climate that no longer exists.

Along the way, the group traces the biggest shift in how the work gets done: technology, and the speed and collaboration it's unlocked. And they land on what they hope holds steady no matter how far the firm goes: creativity, humanity, and the value of solving problems together.

This is the final chapter of Foundations + Futures, but as Sarah puts it, the story is far from over. Here's to the next 50.

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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.

🔗 Subscribe and follow us at @SchmidtAssociates on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. #WeAreSchmidt