I tried many different mole recipes at this year’s Mole Festival at St. Anne’s church.

Tell us about what neighborhood you live in and what makes it unique.

I live in Southwest Detroit. It’s a vibrant, walkable community with active small businesses, awesome green space, and caring neighbors. Southwest is known for its dense Latino communities, and traversing down Vernor Highway would make that apparent pretty quickly. Good food, good people – it’s a great place to be.

What have you learned from Challenge Detroit during your fellowship year?

One thing that has stuck out to me this year is the variety of leadership roles one can try on during this fellowship. Being able to test my own comfort levels in these different roles has been a valuable and stretching experience. I’ve learned that leadership encompasses both teaching and communication, and as you grow in one, you grow in all three.

Tell us about your host company and your role in the organization.

A small design-build project that was recently completed for Live6’s Market on the Ave. Every other Saturday from 12:00-5:00pm just south of Livernois and 6 Mile. Come check it out!

The Detroit Collaborative Design Center is a nonprofit architecture and urban design firm in Detroit Mercy’s School of Architecture. We use a human-centered design process that brings the communities in which we work to the table for the project’s development. We think beauty is a social justice issue and we love to have fun while championing good design for all people.

Architects have a way of being a jack-of-all-trades. We have ideas of what we want to do and teach ourselves how to get there. I am a project manager and designer, but what that looks like in my day to day is that I work to design and build small scale projects, design our future office, and help bring a local art installation into fruition. I am also the constant instigator of the “let’s build it!” mentality.

We connect with Julia’s co-workers at the Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC) and asked them to share more about her work and the impact her work has on the organization.

Julia brings joy to whatever she touches at the the DCDC. Though this joy is not accompanied by naïveté. Instead, it is coupled with Julia’s insightful and critical eye.

Julia truly embraces and engages others and their approaches whether or not they are compatible with her own.  This guarantees a critical discourse necessary to embrace multiple perspectives, controversial viewpoints, and creative investigation.

Julia is is a dedicated and exceptional person, who is also a dedicated and exceptional leader.  – Dan Pitera, Exectuive Director, DCDC

What kind of impact do you hope to have with your host company and within the city?

DCDC helped Live6 kick off their community conversation series “Speakeasy” at Detroit Sip, a forthcoming coffee shop on 6 Mile.

When Doyle Mosher came to speak to us (the fellows) a few weeks ago he said that his job was his life and his life was his job. I feel the same way about architecture, art, Detroit, and my life. Everything that I am is breathed into my work and I inhale it back and so forth. If I say my hope is to listen more intently and design more compassionately I mean that for my own dinner table and at my desk. I hope to encourage those around me and grow more rigorous in my personal pursuit of good, beautiful design.

What are you most looking forward to for the rest of the summer in Detroit?

I’m most looking forward to enjoying the sunshine and biking around the City! Being outside of a car is truly the best way to get to know a place, and I’m excited to get to know the different personalities of Detroit’s neighborhoods by way of bike.

What do you envision for Detroit 10 years from now?

My hope is for growth in the neighborhoods – for vibrant, safe, energized communities. We’re on our way there, but I hope as we go we don’t leave anyone behind.

To learn more about Julia and her experiences in Detroit check out her spotlight video below.