Designing Woman: Katherine Miller on Her Career in Architecture 
by Andrew Kerr
May 2006

Katherine Miller grew up in New Orleans and Bonaire, GA. She graduated from Georgia Tech's College of Architecture. Today she is the Associate Project Manager of Project and Development Services at Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc. At the young age of 26 she already owns her own design business in Boston.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up until 8th grade in New Orleans actually. We moved to Bonaire, Georgia when I was in 8th grade--Warner Robins, Middle Georgia.

Home of Robins Air Force base. This move was related to your father's being in the airforce, I imagine?

It was airforce-related, exactly. My dad was in the airforce in New Orleans, full-time reservist, so it was the only time we had to move, and it was his choice for a promotion.

The airforce has been a big part of your life. Your husband was in the airforce too, correct?

Yes, he did a four year commitment.

What does he do now?

He works at Draper Labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He does robotics engineering and artificial intelligence. He actually graduated from Georgia Tech as well. We met our freshman year here!

Considering both the fact that you have family still in New Orleans, and that you are also an architect, what were your impressions of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent rebuilding effort?

When I saw that the hurricane was coming I had just moved from an area of Florida, and so I had my eyes on it before, when I thought it was going to hit more north towards Pensacola. I owned some real estate down there, so I was worried. When I saw it turn, and the magnitude, I had read an article in Popular Science two or three months before about what would happen if a Category 5 hit New Orleans. So when I heard that it might be a "5" my heart just sank. I was glued to the TV for three days in a row.

But my family's doing really well, they're getting back on their feet and I'm lucky enough to have a lot of entrepreneurs as relatives, so they're all going out and trying to really help the cause.

It seems the hurricane will go down as our generation's San Francisco Earthquake, in terms of the lessons learned about safe architectural design.

I have three uncles and their families that all lost their houses; they're still standing, but they're going to take a lot of work. Of course there was a lot of talk in the family about how someone needs to go down there and really work on developing this place. I had just moved to Boston, so I wasn't the person to do it. But I had been and I still am involved in hurricane-resistant architecture and design, so if there's a good side to Katrina it's that it brings about a lot of awareness about design techniques and how to make things resistant to hurricanes. Because in a place like New Orleans, if you're from there, it's so hard to leave. People are not leaving just because of the hurricane and the fact that this could happen again. People are rebuilding.

I haven't been back there since the hurricane, but I hope to be able to go back sometime soon to see it firsthand.

The company I work for now [Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc.] manages the most square footage in downtown New Orleans. They did a really fantastic job of going back in there right after the hurricane, and they actually opened back up the first high-rise in downtown New Orleans. So, I've been watching them recuperate down there as well through that company.

What was your high school experience like, and how did you develop your early interest in architecture?

I was always really into art. I think I took every art class there was. I never really excelled at it, I just really enjoyed it. There were students I was in class with that were better artists than I was, but that didn't really sway my interest in it.

I also have always really been into problem solving. I'm very project-oriented--I always loved getting projects in school--so architecture kind of, over the years I kept coming back to it as something I'd like to do. I always thought it would be neat to build people's dream homes and things like that. I had a lot of interest in it from probably eighth grade, and I kept going back to that.

I took a lot of math classes in high school too; I took calculus and AP calculus. I haven't worked out a calculus problem since my sophomore year in college, but you use the same thought process a lot.

What was the high school you went to?

Warner Robins High School. "The Demons." [Referring to the school's mascot.] I couldn't believe it! I was moving from New Orleans where every high school was a Catholic girl's high school. I come out here and I'm like, "I'm going to be a Demon?" And it was this really nasty Demon head as the logo, so it was, it's kinda scary! [laughs]

And the funny thing was that the feeder middle school going into it was "The Imps," which are like baby demons apparently. So I was an "Imp" for about a half of a year!

Were there a lot of airforce kids there?

Lots of airforce kids. In Warner Robins there were in that area four big high schools, so it's not like we had all of them at our high school. But there were several kids in my classes whose parents worked on the base.

Did you do sports?

I actually tried out for cross country for one day. And they started us out on a big run. So I started running. All of a sudden we were in this neighborhood by my school. I had no idea where I was--everyone was way far ahead of me! So I kept running. And then I saw a friend's house. And I knocked on the door. And I had their mom drive me back to the school!

Sports wasn't my thing.

But I liked art. I got into drama as well. I used to be pretty shy, and I thought that was a good outlet to gain a little bit of confidence, and also a lot of fun people were involved in it. It was a great activity.

Were you a "straight A" student?

"Straight A" student, yep yep. My lowest grades were always in Spanish.

Which were A's.

Which were A's! [laughing] But I was struggling to get that 90! I really had to study at that to pull that A out because that's hard stuff.

Why did you choose to come to Tech?

The Hope Scholarship is what made me decide to go to Tech. Also, in the architecture program your senior year, you have the option to spend it overseas in Paris. That was also a good deciding factor. My parents told me that if I went to Tech and I took that Hope Scholarship I could spend my senior year in Paris. So the decision was made.

Was that your first trip to Europe?

Yes. You go over there and you're spending nine months over there. We took weekend trips everywhere. The way I structured my schedule I had classes Monday through Wednesday, and I had four-day weekends. And I lived right in Paris, just a great jumping off spot to go anywhere!

I had a blast that year!

Did you study French? You said you had had trouble with Spanish.

I took French in college, and over there you're living with American students and your classes are really mostly in English. I'm just not naturally suited to learning new languages. I remember my last day at class I was getting onto the bus to go back to my apartment after my class (this was in May, I'd already lived there for months) and I had a conversation with a five year old girl! I was so proud of myself! Like wow! I've had a several sentence conversation with someone! And I knew what she was saying, and it was a great feeling, and I wish I could have had that earlier in the year. But it's a tough thing to learn another language. I hand it to anybody who knows more than one language.

What is Georgia Tech's architecture program like, from a student's perspective?

I think we started out with 120, maybe 150 freshman, and we graduated with about 40 or so. It's a program where you have a lot of people changing majors, because it might not be exactly what they wanted. Luckily there's a lot of other programs within the College of Architecture. A lot of people go into industrial design, or building construction. A lot of people also go into management or other, I knew somebody who went into chemical engineering after going into architecture school.

It's a tough program to really stick it out in because it is so time-consuming, but it's a blast at the same time. It's definitely not boring.

What I found actually, and I would have never said this five years ago, is that what I got from the program that has benefited me the most is actually being able to take criticism. You just work so hard on your project and you pin it up, and then someone will come in who's never seen your project before, and they'll bring a guest judge in, and he'll sit there and tear it apart. Or he'll harp on something that you've never bothered to worry about or think about, and you've got to stand up there and respond and go and defend your project. And everyone, most of the girls anyway and some of the guys will cry during their freshman year.

Here the nickname is the School of "Architorture"! [laughs] It used to be a thing where people would as a prank change the letters at the front of the building to say "Architorture."

I hated it back then and I just couldn't believe how mean I thought these people were, but I got into the real world, and I was tough, and I could defend my work without getting defensive and without letting it affect me personally. I've never cried at work, even though I've had to defend my work before. I've actually had colleagues tell me "Wow! You took that criticism really well!" You really learn here to take the criticism, take what you can get from it, and then let the rest roll off your back. Because if you really let it affect you it will get you down.

Another reason why the architecture program is so great is that you're working with other people. Day in/day out you're surrounded by people on all sides of you everyday, and you're talking with each other. I really think that helps a lot, if you can learn how to interact with people and how not to offend people and that sort of stuff. A lot of the real world is about how you collaborate with others, not how you compete with other people.

Which is a message in the scholarship you're offering. [Ms. Miller sponsors two $500 annual scholarships for junior architecture students. "The recipients are chosen by their peers based on collaborative spirit." She writes, "I would like students to realize and encourage collaboration in school; that is what the working world is all about!"]

Yeah, that's a big thing for me. I think especially when you're in college and you're looking towards your future, it's so intimidating. "What if I don't win this project?" (because there are competitive projects here), or "What if I don't place at all?" or "What if I spend four weeks working on this project day and night, and I get up there and it's torn apart?" What do you do that night? How do you go to sleep?

You have to be competitive to do a good job, but you also have to be able to take a step back and know "this too shall pass." Because next semester you'll be working around the same group of people, possibly the same professors. So you can't make enemies. You've just got to enjoy it for what it is and not take it too seriously.

What was your first job after you graduated from Georgia Tech?

I moved to California right after I graduated because my husband was going to grad school. We moved into Silicon Valley (he was going to Stanford) four days after September 11th, 2001. I was trying to find a job in architecture in Silicon Valley, and everyone was laying people off around there. I must have sent out 50 resumes just trying to get an interview. I just kept at it, and I finally got a job as an office aide in an architecture firm.

I was getting coffee. I was emptying dishwashers. I was taking mail out! I'd tell people about what I was doing and they'd say "You went to school for four years to do that?"

But I was just so happy to get a job that it put me in the right frame of mind. I was happy to go to work everyday and get a paycheck. If you're happy with what you're doing, other people notice.

I also kept consciously putting myself out there, telling people, "If you need some help putting this presentation together I'd be happy to help you," and even overtime, just trying to get your foot in the door in different ways and work with other people and learn and just keep your eyes open, not just think "I'm just emptying the dishwasher." Be talking to people in the break room about what's going on with their project or this or that. It was a year of me being an office aide, but by the end I knew everything that was going on in the firm. I understood how the business worked.

You also worked for a start up company that didn't survive. Sounds very interesting; what was the story behind that?

This company: "the perfect storm." (Laughs) I went to the start-up company with someone who I had worked with at another firm in Florida. I was really excited to be in something small, fresh, and new. It was a design/build company where you had the designers, and then it had a construction section that would actually go out and construct it. The great thing I got out of it was really working hand-in-hand with the contractors. They'd come in for a cold drink and I'd sit them down over the plans and ask them, "Tell me what I can show differently, because you're the ones using these things!" In the trade a lot of people call blueprints "the funny papers," because so many times they say architects have no idea how someone puts something together. So I really learned the importance of showing something that a 16 year old who's working during the summer on a construction site can look at it and understand how something goes together without ever having done it before.

The negative of that company was that there were some dishonest people there. I think there was some money that was disappearing, and all that sort of stuff, and there was just really bad estimating going on. The guys that were bidding out their work were just totally lowballing it just to get the work, and they weren't seeing far enough ahead that, you know, OK I said I could do this for a $100,000, but it's going to cost me $120,000 and where am I now? So they went out of business I think in about a year.

I find it remarkably courageous on your part that after this negative experience you went into business for yourself.

So many people said, "You're 24, you want to start your own business? What do you know about that?" But on the flip side of that I figured, "What do I have to lose? This company's going under, I have to do something. I'll give myself a few months, if it doesn't work out I'll do something else." Sometimes you have to be willing to take a risk. There were so many people who told me "Are you crazy? Just go work at this firm or that firm! You'll go in and get a paycheck from day one!" And I just wasn't really interested in that anymore. I just had a lot of frustration watching people running a business poorly, so I wanted to make something work.

I had met a lot of people working at the other couple of firms I worked at in Florida, and they had been encouraging me to go out on my own, and I was really lucky to have a built-in client base; I really walked into a lot of work. So that part wasn't as scary as it could have been. But I've since moved to Boston. I still on the weekend do work for clients down in Florida, because it pays well, I can charge by the hour and take on what I want and still be involved in some really neat projects down there. And I can keep my ear to the ground as to what development is taking place down there!

What are some recent projects that you have found interesting?

I just finished up a project for a company called Solectron in Massachusetts. I work at a real estate development company now. What I do is help existing corporations build real estate for themselves. I just worked with this company that was building a circuit board processing plant, and they had a hundred pieces of different equipment: conveyor belts, very sensitive equipment; and they had all sorts of utilities required: nitrogen, crazy stuff. And we had to build out this factory for them.

I found the contractors weren't stepping up to figure out how to lay this stuff out. Everyone was kinda pointing to someone else saying "That person needs to figure out how this is going to work." So we were halfway through construction and nobody really knew how the factory floor was going to...no one could really say, "OK you need to bring down power here, and it needs to be this type of power." And so on. So I recently went to the existing plant, going to every piece of machinery saying, "This needs oxygen right here, this needs 270 volts here," and I went to the site because nobody else was willing to do it. I went to the site over probably the course of four days on my hands and knees taping on the ground where every piece of equipment was going to go, and this was probably over about 30,000 square feet of factory floor. So that's what I like about my job. A lot of times I'm just in the office coordinating between contractors and architects and this and that, but a lot of times I can get out there and eat off the "Roach Coach" with the contractors and get a little dirty, so there's a lot of variety in what I do, which is a lot of fun!

What words of advice would you offer to students out there?

What I've really found is to not listen to the naysayers about what you can't do, because you can't know until you're tried it. And most of the time you have a lot less to lose than you think you do!