Person Place Thing is an interview show hosted by Randy Cohen based on the idea that people are particularly engaging when they speak, not directly about themselves, but about something they care about. 

Cohen’s guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing that is important to them. The result: surprising stories from great speakers. This installment of Person Place Thing will be a conversation with Kimberly Dowdell, President of the National Organization of Minority Architects and the Director of Business Development for HOK. 

Ordinarily, this program takes place live, on-stage; but for the duration of the current crisis, we’ll live-stream our conversations.

For more information and to hear past episodes, visit PersonPlaceThing.org.

Speakers:
Kimberly Dowdell AIA, NOMA, NCARB, LEED AP BD+C, President, National Organization of Minority Architects; Director of Business Development, HOK
Randy Cohen, Host, Person Place Thing

Kimberly Dowdell is the 2019-2020 National President of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and the Director of Business Development at HOK. She won the 2020 AIA Young Architects Award honoring individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the architecture profession early in their careers. Dowdell is a member of the Detroit Developer Roundtable and the Urban Land Institute. She initiated the concept behind Social Economic Environmental Design, an organization that she co-founded in 2005, and was a Crain’s Detroit Business “40 Under 40” honoree. In 2019, Dowdell delivered the 19th Annual Dunlop Lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for “Late Night With David Letterman,” for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s “TV Nation.” He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for The New York Times Magazine. His most recent book, Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything, was published by Chronicle.