You're Doing What With Your Major?

 Spotlight on UK Alumna Nicolle Fedor Griffin, AIA

Major:  Bachelor of Architecture, Minor in Art History

Current Career: Owner’s Representative, Senior Project and Construction Manager, Licensed Architect  (I am the only licensed female architect in the rural areas between San Diego, CA and Phoenix, AZ….a 300 mile stretch!)

Description of Career Path: Some people have a career strategy….I had a series of fortunate events kind of like in a chain reaction or a kinetic sculpture that worked well.  You could say my career path is like a Mythbusters experiment that shouldn’t have worked but did anyway.  I went from a small architectural firm in Oldham County in 1994 to a firm owned by another UK grad in Phoenix, Arizona.  From there I moved to the small border town (Yuma, AZ) in 1995 where my USMC fiancé was stationed.  I ran the architectural division of a medium sized civil engineering firm that had architectural, civil, environmental, geotechnical, and surveying services in-house.  My boss was elderly and in poor health so he told me he would do all of the design work and “you can do everything else”.  “Everything else” turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened to me because it literally meant everything from marketing, fee preparation, design management and coordination, client meetings, to construction contract administration.  In 2006 I became a licensed architect but then decided to make a complete career change.  A construction management firm from Phoenix was awarded the contract to manage design and construction for 6 new libraries in Yuma.  I knew nobody from Phoenix wanted to move to Yuma so I sent the firm my resume and the rest is history.  2006-2009 I managed a $58 million library bond program and helped select and hire all of the architects and contractors, negotiating all of their contracts and managing all 6 projects.  2009-2011 thanks to the recession I commuted from Yuma to Irvine, California (230 miles one way).  I put 1,000 miles a week on my car but worked on projects for Southern California Edison and John Wayne Airport Expansion and loved every second of it, BUT…I hated being away from my family…so, in 2011 I left that job to return home and was hired by a competitor to be the Senior Construction Manager for the John M. Roll US Federal Courthouse project where I am currently.  After  we finish this project in 2013 who knows who I’ll be working for, or where, or on what project.  But following my career so far I know it will be exciting!

Favorite UK memory/class etc.: UK’s College of Architecture, now the College of Design, has a closed admission policy meaning you have to be admitted through an entrance exam.  I didn’t make it my 1^st try, so the 2^nd time when I took the exam and was notified that I had been admitted to the college was one of the proudest moments of my life, particularly since I knew I wanted to be an architect ever since I was about 14 years old. 

Class I wish I had taken at UK: There are several classes in hindsight now I wish I had taken including: marketing, business administration, accounting, and construction estimating/scheduling.  I also have a dream one day to create and teach a curriculum called “Managing Client Expectations.”

Future Dream Job: At this point in my career, my dream job would honestly be working for myself as a consultant to library districts around the country helping them plan future expansions, new libraries, etc.  Whole project planning and management, particularly for libraries, is my passion.  However, I simply most enjoy being able to get in on day one of planning a project and assisting an owner with that whole process.  Any job that allows me to assist them from planning thru execution is my dream job.  It gives me extreme satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment to be able to drive to different places and say “I was part of the team that planned, designed, and built that.”

What I know now that I didn’t know as a student: Learning to design a project is so much different from learning how to design it so it can actually be built.  There is still a deficit regarding that little nugget in the education for architects, and still particularly for, I have to say, women.  Little girls are still not as likely to be out in the shed helping daddy build or work on the car, so we have a lot of catching up to do with the boys when it comes to understanding how to build things.  Lego only just this year finally came out with a line of toys marketed specifically for girls.  Mattel only just last year created an architect Barbie.  You have to know how to build it in order to know how to design it, plain and simple.  The 1st thing I tell people about myself is that I was 21 years old when I found out a 2x4 is a “lie”.  (If you don’t get that last one, go ask a carpenter.)

Advice to others considering a job or career change: It’s one of the oldest clichés in the book, “do what you love doing”.  It’s the figuring out what that is and the getting there that’s the hard part, particularly in this economy.  Be tenacious without being annoying.  Listen more and speak less.  This is a good rule and tool for any career, particularly if you want to make a change and need to learn new skills.  I have also learned from experience that sometimes it’s the job we didn’t get offered or that we didn’t accept that leads us into an even better position.  Use everything you learn from and experience on what you’re doing currently to get you to the place where you want to be eventually!

Favorite books: Well my 6 year old has just found a passion for reading and is addicted to the children’s series called “The Adventures of Captain Underpants.”  That’s where I am most of the time, in the gutter anyway, so we’re devouring that series together this summer.  

Favorite blogs: I am more of a tomboy and enjoy target shooting and driving my car illegally fast without getting caught.  So I look for blogs about guns and cars.  My 2 favorites are Sass, Brass, N Bullets (http://sassbrassnbullets.com/), a shooting site for women (hence the sticker on my hardhat that says “Girls with Guns”), and http://www.challengertalk.com/, a site for Dodge Challenger owners.