I would like to thank the School of Architecture and Planning for inviting me today. You are graduating from incredibly important fields that can make a real difference in the world.

Talks like mine are meant to do a lot in a few minutes to set you on your way. It is really impossible. So I am going to do just 3 things. Tell you a secret, give you advice, and help you find your kangaroo story.

The secret is that I have attended dozens of graduations, but I only went to one of mine, the first one, and that was because I had lost a bet with my parents. This is because what matters to me is the journey as a whole, not the stops along the way. Though I do know reasonable people disagree, and for some the stops are important.

But that means my advice focuses on the journey, rather than endings and beginnings.

So considering the journey, one thing many people struggle with is how to make their profession something they can stay with over time, through twists and turns. And my advice is your journey isn’t a solo performance; it also doesn’t need to be a highly coached team sport. But it does need something in the middle, which is the group.

As we know from recent events, the world is complicated and unpredictable, or more positively, it is full of emerging opportunities and challenges that are hard to foresee. Managing a career and a life is four-dimensional—working out opportunities and challenges in space and time. This is really hard to figure out on your own. So my strong belief from mentoring what are now thousands of students is that you need at least 3 groups.

The first is an advisory group—people with more experience you can turn to from time to time for guidance. To make the group look for people with glimmers of interest in you. A person at work who seems savvy and willing to talk; someone who responds well when you present a project; or a former faculty member who answers your emails.

These are people you could rely on to answer an email or two a year, or to meet at a conference, or take the occasional Zoom. To change the world, it helps to do it competently and the advisory group can really help. I've had this kind of group myself. They’ve never known I saw them as my group, and I tried not to bother them too much, but they’ve made a key difference.

So that’s the advisory group—people who are further along the path. The second is what I call a peer review group — people providing supportive feedback that might also be critical! For graduating students, your peers around you can be the start of that group. Or you can join a professional association, or maybe colleagues at work. This mustn't be just about validation, but also about review and criticism to improve your work.

Finally, there is the support group to give you acknowledgment without too much criticism. Part of your support group is sitting here today—family and friends.

So that’s my secret about the importance of the journey, and my advice about finding your advisory, peer, and support groups. And now to my kangaroo stories. I'm from rural Australia, and for a few decades, my family did kangaroo rescue. This is not common, and you never own a kangaroo—they are wild animals, and we had to get permission from national parks and wildlife to do so. I have stories about trusting kangaroos, violent kangaroos, and a kangaroo helping repair a car (which involved bumping the power steering back on; it was really amazing). I do quite a good impression of different kangaroo movement styles. But telling you the stories would take a long time, so I want to get to the punchline.

In Australia, kangaroo stories aren't that interesting; there are a lot of kangaroos, so I didn't really tell them until I became an immigrant and came to the US. where I didn't share a history with others. All the jokes here seemed to refer to popular culture I didn’t know. So I had to find things that could speak across silos, disagreements, backgrounds, and opinions, and it turns out kangaroo stories do that. And once you've shared a kangaroo story, then the next conversation is a bit easier. But that’s a skill needed today even if you aren’t from somewhere else, given the divisions in the world. Now, some of those divisions are really hard to bridge, as my university has experienced with the federal government. But not all divisions are so firm. So my third point is to find your kangaroo stories—something about life’s surprises, your own foibles, and things that go wrong that have a lesson—stories that will help you reach out to others who are not like you as you try to improve the built environment.

So that's my advice: this commencement is a step on a journey; you need to find your groups and also tap into your version of a kangaroo story. Congratulations to the class of 2026.

Good evening faculty, families, friends, and most excitingly, the Class of 2026.

A few years ago, I walked onto a neglected lot that most people had stopped seeing. It was overgrown and littered with thousands of pieces of trash. From a market perspective, it carried little monetary value. On a satellite map, it was just another patch of grass with a central gazebo. Yet when I spoke with neighbors, a different geography emerged. Children crossed it on their way home from school. Elders gathered there in the late afternoon sun. This community garden was woven quietly into their daily life. What appeared vacant on paper was active in memory and movement.

We graduate into a complex world. The United States faces a housing deficit exceeding 3.8 million units, while climate data confirms the past decade as the warmest on record, with billion-dollar disasters increasing. Global supply chain disruptions and geopolitical conflicts show how deeply interconnected our infrastructure and communities are. These are real life challenges that require the creativity and expertise we have cultivated at University at Buffalo.

As a planning student the highlights of my scholarship have been co-creating a comprehensive plan for Lasalle Park on Buffalo’s waterfront, redesigning Hayes Lawn on South Campus for greater student and University District resident engagement and opportunity, and creating a robust proposal for activating parking lots and commercial corridor along our Main Street for a shared Arts, Food, and Retail Commons built on informal social capital and infrastructure.
Awarding me one of the highest achievements within the undergraduate planning degree.

Along the way, I’ve treasured moments like hosting the 2023 UB Undergraduate Student Association’s International Fiesta, celebrating community and culture, and leading the Get Seeded competition at the UB Co-Lab, where student ideas became visions for Buffalo’s future. I've also survived the 2 a.m. RA calls from freshmen who apparently thought they were the Road Runner, I swear I heard some of them go beep-beep… Ultimately, every experience, every challenge, and every mentor has shaped how I approach people, projects, and possibilities.

Our disciplines sit at the center of this recognition. Architecture, planning, and real estate shape land use patterns that influence both the physical footprint of our regions and the social, economic, and environmental systems that sustain them; determining patterns of energy consumption, mobility, and carbon emissions, framing access to education, jobs, and health, and either reinforcing or bridging divides across the nation. The most concrete example for collaboration between these three disciplines was our ULI Urban Plan competition, tasking us with redeveloping an entire neighborhood. Structured around distinct roles and a site burdened by disinvestment, competing priorities, and fiscal constraint, the exercise made plain that design, policy, and capital only produce equitable outcomes when they are accountable to one another. We honor that lesson by carrying those faculty, peer, and community partner relationships into practice. Resilience and prosperity in this context requires adaptive policy, ethical development practice, and sustained civic engagement. Especially as we observe the 5/14 TOPs Massacre, that occurred in 2022 on Jefferson Ave, and honor the 10 Black lives taken away from hatred, our future work demands fluency in historical context, civil rights, cultural humility, neighborhood level resiliency, economic development, environmental and food justice and human behavior.

Through my work leading East Side Stewards, an organization mobilizing community-led redevelopment on the East Side of Buffalo, I have seen how sustained presence, grounded in trust and active listening, can shift a neighborhood’s trajectory. In areas long defined by disinvestment, even small, deliberate interventions, building a play ground, sowing seeds, breaking bread, mowing the lawn, create spaces that residents can reclaim and activate. We have 
transformed unbuilt parcels into stewarded green spaces hosting youth programs, facilitating green workforce development, food distribution, and community gatherings. What changes is both the land we inhabit and civic imagination, as neighbors see that investment can align with their vision and foster shared ownership of the future.

My fellow graduates, our task is not small. Yet history shows that cities evolve through the conviction of those willing to plan boldly and build responsibly. Let us approach this moment with rigor, humility, and imagination. The landscapes ahead of us need critical thinkers, professionals willing to be curious, courageous, and committed to shaping places that are equitable, resilient, and alive with possibility.

Thank you, and let us go forward ready to turn our shared vision into reality! Congratulations Class of 2026!