40 Under Forty 2019 winner:
BEN WILLIS | 32
ARCHITECT, UNION STUDIO ARCHITECTURE & COMMUNITY DESIGN
What is the best advice you have ever received? It’s all about the journey: We may be impatient to reach our destination, but all progress is made by passing through stages of instability, and we can’t know what vital things we’ll pick up because we have time to grow and mature along the way.
What advice would you give your 22-year-old self? Ask more questions – of others and of yourself – and don’t always take the answers at face value.
What moment changed your life more than any other? Joining a children’s choir [around fourth grade] and learning to sing. Singing led me to my first job out of college, introduced me to my husband and many close friends, and has brought me some of the best stories in my life.
What is your favorite Rhode Island food or drink? Calamari.
Fox or MSNBC? NPR.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn? Facebook will always feel like home.
THE PROP: Ben Willis holds a T-square he received when he attended a two-week camp for high schoolers interested in architecture. “It’s a good reminder of the roots of the profession,” he says.
