Unity of purpose fuels our success.

Hi, nice to meet you! My name is Phat. I was born in Vietnam but raised in Houston, Texas. I will be a senior in high school this upcoming year (2024-2025) and plan on attending college with a major in nutrition and a minor in kinesiology. In my free time, I enjoy spending time outdoors with friends or catching up on sleep.

Born and raised in Alief, Houston, Texas, where my fascination with architecture began at the age of 7 through endlessly rearranging dollhouses and my love for drawing. Growing up with immigrant parents from El Salvador and Peru shaped my architectural perspective, blending diverse artistic influences and design traditions into my work. This cultural richness inspires me to find innovative solutions and deepen my understanding of architectural diversity and inclusivity.

They say if you want something done fast, ask a busy person to do it. I am that busy person, let me tell you! I'm a wife, a mother of three, a full-time designer with a passion for solving complex problems, a writer of stories, a player of games, a master of dungeons, and a habitual hobbyist.

Welcome to the little summary of yours truly! Following in my father's footsteps is something I've always wanted to achieve. Being introduced to the ideas of blueprint paper and even destroying the poor paper which led to infuriating my dad will always be a memory.

My immense obsessions with Legos would only lead to my father suggesting the architectural route. Here I am now being presented with the opportunity to build a foundation on basic architecture through an internship.

The thought of being able to design one’s own house shortly is one of my biggest drives for continuing. Who knows where the architectural world will lead me but who doesn't love a blindfolded adventure?

I find it fascinating that 50% of people don’t have an inner voice. As I write this tiny personal bio, I’m unsure if having an inner voice is a blessing or a curse. Regardless, I'll always have myself.

I have two modes: one where I observe, absorb, and sometimes overanalyze, and another where I get tired of my internal dialogue and shut it down, which often turns off my filter. It's a risky choice. For instance, today, I've rewritten this bio numerous times, debating whether it’s too silly, too simple, or too honest. At my core, I am determined, stubborn, thoughtful, and cheerful.

I am a grateful mother to Ashton, a beautiful and independent two-year-old who brings joy and wonder into my life every day. I am a partner to my husband, Josh, a devoted and passionate individual who provides unwavering support and love. Together, we share our home in EaDo with Barley, our affectionate and lively mini golden doodle.

Living in Houston for the past 10 years, I am still adjusting to the intense heat and humidity. I have a deep appreciation for delicious food, beautiful climates, and breathtaking landscapes, particularly those of New Mexico, which continually inspire and rejuvenate me. In my free time, I enjoy experimenting with new recipes, exploring the city, or doing projects around the house. These hobbies not only enrich my life but also provide a balance between my professional aspirations and personal fulfillment.

Hello there! Welcome to my corner of the internet. I am a strong-minded and critical thinker who ponders about anything every day. I have a strong passion for sports, a healthy lifestyle, traveling, and personal improvement many of which I live through in my daily life. When I'm not busy I try to help out people, sleep, and mostly try to find something to create a better me. I'm here to share my experiences, insights, and maybe a few laughs along the way.

We had everyone in the office write about themselves. So, as I'm writing this all I hear in the background is the clicking of keyboards and the stress of my staff trying to figure out what to say about themselves. This also started with shooting Nerf darts across the conference room as inspiration. That's the kind of on-the-spot awkwardness I'm all about.

Is this in first person? Is this in the third person? Are we pitching ourselves? I also really want to eat Jeff's chocolate donut right now. It's within arm's reach, but I'm pretty sure my blood sugar isn't going to like that. Martina is playing with some toys outside the office right now. It makes a whirring noise, but at least she's entertained. I don't think she likes me. That's ok.

This entire exercise is a hot mess, but seeing everyone taking the time to do it is neat. I always hate going to websites to find someone, and either the website only lists "Executives", or they have all of the staff as a list, or they have their staff with photos, but the descriptions are generated by the marketing staff and tend towards uniformity. Let's try something different. Let's grab everyone and stick them in a room and make them write about themselves with little to no prompt and see what's up.

Omar is looking at the ceiling right now. He may be lost. Emily is looking for direction and a prompt. This entire page of the website is about getting a glimpse into our world and our people transparently. It's part of the ethos of the company and the brand - yeah, a bit of proselytizing - but it's appropriate at this point. I went to answer an email.

This is a bit of a cop-out, but this internal monologue is the best way I can think of to introduce myself. We'll update this from time to time, but for now - welcome.

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Welcome! I will be your friendly guide to my bio. By day, I am the Operations and Human Resources Director of this fast-growing, fun-loving architecture firm. Some call me the Team Mom. I started my career in HR (before computers – gasp) working for a very large Houston-based electric company. By night, I am a domestic goddess – cooking dinner, playing with my pups, catching up with my two grown daughters, and visiting my husband about our day.

On weekends I can be found working in my yard and vegetable garden, visiting craft breweries with my husband, enjoying all kinds of puzzles – jigsaw, logic, sudoku, all kinds. Some things I love are playing games, sewing, being outside, being in air conditioning, helping others, and loving my family and friends. I am a native Houstonian – born and raised.

I love to travel but don’t get to as much as I would like. At one time, I thought I wanted to be a chef, but now I just cook for those I care about. I believe food only comes out tasty if it is prepared with love. I come from a Sicilian-American family on my father’s side. My grandmother made meatballs and gravy on Sundays. Yes, we call it gravy, not sauce. I have and still prepare a lot of family recipes.

Thanks for taking the time to get to know a little about me.

"Hello! My name is Yesika Soto. I was born in Mexico City but have lived in Houston for the majority of my life. I am the oldest sister and one of two Architects in the family. I love to travel – beaches, architectural monuments, and mountains make up my top destinations. In my free time, you may find me reading a random fiction book, sketching out my dream house, or playing a friendly tennis match with my husband."

I have been in the profession for about 10 years now and recently licensed in the past 2. I have worked on projects of all shapes, sizes, and programs. From the beginning of my career working on small church additions to later working on world-class airport terminals I have seen a multitude of project types.

Architect. Artist. Creative. Runner. Traveler. Dog Lover. Tattoos. Being an Artist in the profession of architecture makes me want to find the creative moments and bring the most life I can to a project. I love to sketch, doodle, and draw about every project to understand what it is and what it wants to be. In meetings, museums, and planes, I am doodling constantly and let the pen see where it takes me. It's how I think, how I actively listen, how I get ideas out of my head fluidly on paper.

I heard that a desk can usually describe a person and my desk is filled with random trinkets. There are anime art posters, cat stickers, Mario Piranha plant Legos, pastel art pens, a pink desk mat, a K-pop girl group calendar, and random colorful bird figurines. It’s fun and vibrant – I am definitely going for a cute aesthetic. I enjoy childhood-like things, and I think of myself as someone who stays young at heart.

Hi, my name is Emily Nguyen and I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. Intro..... school..... I am your typical millennial who makes her whole personality about her dog.

My dog's name is Millie. She's a Bernese Mountain and Golden Retriever mix. She's 4.5 years old. She's a certified therapy dog. We do a lot of therapy visits to local libraries and assisted living facilities throughout Houston. At our local libraries, we allow kids who have difficulty reading to read to therapy dogs. The act of reading to a therapy dog creates a non-judgmental environment for the kids. This helps them be comfortable and gain confidence in their reading skills. Now. more than ever, I believe that reading skills at a young age is so important. At assisted living and memory care facilities, we go around to allow senior citizens to pet the therapy dogs. Doing so starts a memory for the residents and provides joy. Doing these therapy visits is so fulfilling to me. To see both Millie and people with so much joy from a simple gesture.

Besides Millie, I do "enjoy" running. I've been running since 2009. Only started running half marathons in 2023 but can't wait to do more. I started running every single street in the Energy Corridor when COVID-19 hit. This helped to get out more. Not only that, I started noticing a lot of things that we as a community can start helping with and city planning. It's unfortunate to see torn-up sidewalks, a random ending sidewalk, or just none. I want to advocate for a safer pedestrian environment for both runners and residents. I haven't been traveling for a while but I do love it. I've been to Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, and some of Europe. My favorite part about traveling is learning about different culture's histories.

So that's me.

Greetings, I come from a humble background in Waco, Texas where I learned the value of working hard. We would often build things in my dad’s shop from scraps of metal or build bridges over a creek. Along with a love for drawing, these events put me on the path to building in Architecture.

I am a fan of efficiency and simple designs with an emphasis on clean details. I also have an affinity for technology, I programmed Autolisp for AutoCAD early on and loved getting into Revit and BIM early on in 2008. I love to play paintball and rollerblade in my free time. Have a wonderful day.

Ciao! I'm a design professional who has the most fun creating conceptual sketches and exploring how architecture can evoke emotions and shape habits. Outside the office I enjoy weightlifting, nerding out on productivity and organization strategies, and studying religious topics from time to time and seeing how that all could tie into design.

Traveling is a big part of my life these days with a soft spot for Italy; I enjoy exploring different cities to analyze how architecture influences human behavior and comparing lifestyles abroad to home here in Texas.

Originally from the colorful and hot city of Maracaibo, Venezuela; I now find myself adding a touch of southern spice to my life in Houston, Texas.

From a young age, I discovered I was drawn to the intricate design of buildings and tried to understand how they were built. This curiosity led me to pursue my degree in architecture where I fell in love with creating and finding ways to understand the ways people live in spaces. However, beyond long hours in front of the computer, I discovered another way to explore my creativity and change my pen for a spatula.

You will also find me chasing after my energetic little one and three fur babies running around the house. I’m all about family, food, and adventure, whether it’s exploring new cities, buildings, or even recipes. I’m always on the move and moving keeps my ideas fresh.

My love for architecture stems from watching my dad design and build furniture- I inherited his skill for drawing napkin sketches. I was born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico but raised in San Antonio, Texas, so I love going back home to both. I’m happiest when I’m watching The Office with my cat Kevin and drinking a cup of coffee.

I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. I now reside in Houston with my wife Lauren and our standard poodle Bourbon. I was raised by my Vietnamese Father and American Mother. Growing up I developed a sense of pride in being a first-generation Vietnamese American. I am extremely thankful to have grown up in not only a diverse home but also such a diverse city that gave me an appreciation for so many cultures.

I learned my work ethic from seeing my father work towards his American Dream and my passion from seeing my mother work 40 years in lower education. With these influences, I went on and started my career in Oil and Gas hoping to achieve my own version of the American Dream. Even though my degree was in petroleum engineering my career had taken me down the path of upstream oil and gas data analytics, process enhancement, and system accounting for start-ups to large multinational corporations. I was able to use my engineering mindset and apply my career background to help my brother achieve his American Dream of opening and growing his architectural firm.

After almost eighteen months of doing this, the firm grew 10-fold and at this point, I saw my background role of an advisor move into handling many functions throughout the firm. I finally told my brother that I could no longer keep up with his business adequately and continue to pursue my career goals. I told him I would begin to search for someone to step into my role full-time and help transition them into the firm. At this point, my brother asked me a question that would change the trajectory of my whole career. “Come work with me”. After much more discussion and the passing of shock into excitement, the answer was yes. I have now been here coming up on a year and we are continuing to grow.

As the firm has grown so have my responsibilities. We are still in a start-up mentality, and we all wear many hats. I now oversee all financial, accounting, marketing, and business development items for the firm. As we continue into the future my brother and I’s American Dreams have aligned to grow Project Luong to Do More for our staff, clients, and community.

When in doubt… pinky out. From a small town where the mayor doubles as the sheriff and the judge, I made my way like the Clampets to Houston. But my investment isn’t in Texas tea… It’s architecture. I make buildings good and enjoy a good Netflix binge. I try to bring positive energy to everything I can, even when it's yelling at Revit for a “user error”. As the great philosophers wrote all those years ago, “Live, Laugh, Love”, now let’s make some architectural magic baby.

During the fall semester of my 5th year in Architecture school, something world changing occurred: ChatGPT was released for public use. Within 6 days, it reached 1 million users worldwide and brought about the commercialization of AI in just about every industry. This caught my attention and led me to explore other AI programs that could be used in Architecture such as: Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.

On top of arch viz, parametric design, and digital fabrication, I was now interested in Artificial Intelligence as well. However, AI took importance over everything else because of how profound its effects have been. I have become a little concerned with the possibility of a technology that could someday perform our jobs better than we can, but there’s not much I can do about the inevitable development of Artificial Intelligence and robot automation. Until then, I will continue to play with my toys to see what cool things can be done with technology in Architecture.

Hi, I'm Krystel, but feel free to call me Krys. I'm a graphic designer, photographer, videographer, mother, wife, daughter, and a very dedicated and passionate professional. In my free time, you can find me playing tennis, binge-watching a whole season of Friends, or simply spending time with my loved ones and fur babies, Mandoca, Leo, & Coco.

Whenever I'm not taking pictures, you can find me playing tennis, binge-watching a whole season of Friends, or just spending time with my loved ones and furs babies, Mandoca, Coco & Leo.

Twenty years ago, I was walking down Eye Street in DC and had to step around planting beds arranged in the sidewalk so that it appeared the concrete was being removed square by square and replaced by flowered beds. I can’t really explain why but that brought me hope. 

So many aspects of our lives we have no power to change. The design of the built environment is one we can. I believe that the design of our physical environment is important and impactful to people’s lives in ways that we don’t always recognize or fully appreciate. Creating designs that inspire, delight, or make peoples’ lives even slightly better is what I choose to spend my life doing.

Hello, my name is Chris. I was born and raised in Houston Texas. Working in the oil field for 10 years. I am a master electrician. I have been doing electrical work for 10 years. I have two children.

When I arrived in America as a young man who was a boat person from Vietnam, I had visions of the “American Dream”. I spoke little English and had nothing to my name. Fast forward 2 years and my Father-in-law said – You can be anything you want. Don’t let anyone stop you. That inspired me to step out and pursue what I wanted to do as an entrepreneur.

I worked hard first establishing an upholstery business and then purchasing small homes and apartments to lease. During that time, I realized that I was able to do most of the repairs needed with just a little ingenuity and lots of trial and error. As my children grew, I began having them work with me and instilled in them a firm work ethic of always striving for the best.

My American dream has now been achieved as I watch my children become the passionate professionals they are today.