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Beyond the Ordinary

The world is full of extraordinary. Join me in exploring all that sparks creativity and change.

latest inspiration posts

Beyond Black History Month: Celebrating Black Artists Year-Round

We’ve entered a new year, and we have a new administration, yet the challenges that we face as Americans are as old as any of us can remember. Every February, we celebrate Black History Month and then feel like we have done our part in recognizing both the adversity and the contributions of Black Americans in the making of America as we know it. However, I would argue that recognition limited to this one month, the shortest month of the year in fact, is not enough. Understanding and celebrating Black history is critical to the unification and healing that our country so deeply needs. What has been obvious to Black communities for the past couple of centuries, has finally made its way into broader American awareness, amplified by the events of 2020. This awareness is most welcome, but it is our response to the awareness that will be the most important thing.

The Books That Inspire Me to Think Big

Recently I decided to read, in quick succession, an assortment of books about phenomenal business and tech leaders. I’ve found that reading related books one after the other usually leads to new insights that come from seeing the similarities and the differences.

February's Featured Artist: Theaster Gates

My great friend, Theaster Gates, is a visual artist and urban planner who describes himself as “equal parts artist, bureaucrat, and hustler.” As an artist, Gates creates multimedia projects, installations, and performance art that confront issues of social justice, racial inequality, and poverty in the United States.

January's Featured Architect: Mario Botta

Two architects that altered the way I think about design and buildings are Eero Saarinen and Mario Botta. Both have a striking shift in the paradigm of what buildings can do to change the very way we think about our everyday surroundings. Botta was born in Switzerland in 1943 and attended a high school for the arts in Milan before going to study architecture at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia in Venice, graduating in 1969. While he was living in Venice, he had the opportunity to work for Louis Kahn Carlo Scarpa, and Le Corbusier, who influenced his work greatly. Shortly after finishing his studies, Botta founded his own practice in Mendrisio, Switzerland.

January's Featured Artist: Kerry James Marshall

Untitled (Pen), 1998. C-Print. Gallerist: Kavi Gupta, Chicago Kerry James Marshall was born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama before his family moved to South Central Los Angeles where he was raised in the Watts neighborhood—known for the riots in 1965 that were a response to police brutality. Marshall witnessed the riots and grew up surrounded by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s, which impacted him deeply and shaped his perspective as an artist.

Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella

I recently reacquainted myself with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s book Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone. It is required reading for my senior team. Nadella sums up the book perfectly when he writes: “This is a book about transformation.” It is about the transformation that Microsoft is undergoing with Nadella at the helm, but it is also about how Nadella himself has been transformed in the process, and his philosophy that one of the most important human qualities is empathy. Empathy, Nadella insists, is at the heart of how companies, society, and individuals must transform. The book is written in three main sections: his early life and journey to Microsoft, the story of Microsoft’s transformation-in-progress, and his views on technology and the future. One thing I appreciate is that Nadella wanted to write the book now, while everything is happening, so that the reader can share in the story alongside him, rather than looking back in retrospect. He wants it to be a picture of the mess, not the final product. This is the reality of having a significant leadership role in a company — it is always a work in progress with many obstacles to overcome and things to improve. Nadella shows this magnificently. It’s also written in a way that is really simple to digest and tames the complexity of subjects like the cloud and artificial intelligence for the average person.

ARCHITECHT SPOTLIGHT

Jean Nouveau’s Dynamic Vision

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a building with a dome roof and a body of water

Beyond Book Club

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Cover of the book "Engineering in Plain Sight" by Grady Hillhouse, featuring a colorful illustrated landscape with bridges, tunnels, cranes, roads, and power plants representing various elements of the constructed environment.

Engineering in Plain Sight: A Book That Makes You See Things Differently

Medicine 3.0: how to live a long, strong and happy life

The Legacies of Two Great American Heroes

Inspiration

I have always had an insatiable curiosity

What causes me to get out of bed every morning is driven by inspiration. Ever since I was a little boy, I was inspired by my insatiable curiosity, which caused me to be a reader, a thinker, and a dreamer.

I can remember being inspired by seeing Bobby Kennedy on TV and watching videotapes of Martin Luther King Jr., and being deeply saddened by their assassination even though I was only 10 years old when I experienced all of this.

As a little boy, rocket flight was a big thing. I remember being fascinated by the moon and the stars and the astronauts exploring them.As humans we are achieving remarkable things that only a handful of years before were just in the imagination.