Beneath Our Feet: The Hidden Architecture of Legacy

A reminder that the smallest things we overlook are what carry us forward. 🌼

Recently, I watched Origin by Ava DuVernay, based on Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste. The film follows Wilkerson’s journey as she connects the dots between caste systems in the U.S., India, and Nazi Germany, parallels that were often dismissed until she made the case so undeniable that her book stayed on the NYT Bestseller list for over a year.

It made me think about my own work. How people don’t always “get” that I’m both an urban planner and an oral historian. That my systems-level thinking in transportation and city planning and my deep listening in family histories are two sides of the same coin.

At first, I struggled with this duality. Would folks understand how my transportation and planning background helps me zoom out to see the patterns? Or how oral history helps me zoom in on what really matters: people’s voices, their stories, their presence?

But Origin reminded me that sometimes people need the connection made plain. So here’s mine.

As an urban planner who has done award-winning work, who has written plans that have been put into motion from Atlanta to Boston to New York to LA and places in between for nearly a decade…. Who is a trained oral historian from Columbia University, with specialization from Columbia Business School’s Global Family Enterprise Program, who holds five-generations (and counting) of my family’s history from my elders, let me share something I live and know, deeply:

The thing that puts plans into action, the thing that keeps families remembered for generations, and the place where I literally began my career: