On Nov 4, 2025, AIANY Emerging New York Architects (ENYA) was honored to collaborate with the AIANY Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, AIANY Planning and Urban Design Committee, and Grimshaw, to host “AIANY Cross-Committee Speed Mentoring at Grimshaw.” This speed mentoring event intended to empower young professionals—in transportation and infrastructure, planning and urban design, and beyond—to perform outreach, network, advance their careers, and get inspired by leadership.
Attendees had the opportunity to engage in 1:1 speed mentoring with leaders in the architecture profession, practice their elevator pitch self-introduction, make impactful first impressions, discuss short-term and long term goals, find out their motivation, inspired by mentors’ career path, and most importantly, what’s their niche make them stand out.
We had a great turn out, positive feedback, and an amazing speed mentoring night.
We appreciate all our distinguished mentors’ time and efforts. Thank you to:
Barry Yanku, AIA, Vice President, New York Aviation Studio Design Director, Corgan
Benjamin Lee, AIA, Project Architect, Corgan (T&I)
Eve Michel, AIA, ex- Vice President, MTA, EDC (T&I director of programming)
Mehnaj Tabassum, Associate Principal, Grimshaw
Phu Duong, AIA, AICP, Founding Principal Urban X Design (P&UD co-chair)
Richard Ryan, AIA, Associate Principal, New York Aviation Studio Lead, Corgan
Russell Kriegel, AIA, LEED AP, Assoc. DBIA, Chief Architect, The Port Authority (T&I co-chair)
Shachi Pandey, AICP, Founding Principal, Metropolitan Urban Design (P&UD co-chair)
Thomas L. Grassi, FAIA, NCARB, Project Director, HNTB (T&I co-chair)
Vivian Cheng, Associate Principal, Grimshaw
Yunhee Jeong LEED AP, Principal in T&I Sector, Grimshaw
Additional thanks to:
Frances Huppert, FAIA, for connecting TI with ENYA.
Thomas, Russell and Eve, for advocating this cross-committee collaboration.
Barry, Richard and Ben, for bringing Corgan leadership as our mentors. Thanks to Phu and Shachi, for connecting the committees with Grimshaw.
Grimshaw, Chris Obayda, Yunhee, Mehnaj and Vivian, for kindly hosting this event and making this happen.
Oscar Wang, for the IT support.
Emma Oesterreicher and Salmata Kaba, for the logistic support.
Haozhou Yang, Assoc. AIA and Guan-Yi Siao, for event support.
This event was curated and moderated by Hao-Yeh Lu, ENYA co-chair. Photography by Ssu-ing Wu, AIA, NCARB, Chia-Han Lin, and Hao-Yeh Lu.