Interview with John Cary
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-07-05 12:16
Meet John Cary, who has pioneered a career at the intersection of design and social innovation.
Name:
John Cary
In high school, I would have been voted “most likely to be…”
John Cary before there was John Kerry.
Current occupation/title:
Speaker, Writer, & Nonprofit Advisor, contemplating my next big venture.
A song on the soundtrack of my life:
"Fix You" by Coldplay, for better or worse.
When I was young, I wanted to be:
Geddy Lee, bassist and lead singer of the band RUSH. True story.
What was your first job?
A caddy at a country club where all my friends' families were members.
What’s your favorite career mistake?
The idea of a "favorite…mistake" feels like a misnomer, but let's just say there have been a number of times in the past year or two of my career that I've known in my gut things weren't as they seemed, and yet I allowed others to persuade me to stay the course. Subsequent moments of realizing I can and should trust my gut become so affirming.
What socially significant career accomplishment are you most proud of, thus far?
I'm most proud of my book, The Power of Pro Bono. It's the first design book to ever give clients or users of buildings an equal voice. It sounds crazy, but there's no other book even approximating it; design books historically have paid little more than lip service to clients and users. The 40+ projects in the book are bold, colorful, and utterly beautiful. They turn the idea of architecture and design being just a luxury on its head; all of the projects are for nonprofit organizations--think community centers, health clinics, libraries, schools, and the like. I conceived of the book while still at the helm of an organization that, in a very well-intentioned way, was trying to do many more things than it could reasonably achieve; this book followed my instincts to focus on what I saw as the most reliable and scaleable of our programs—the aforementioned pro bono design program—and the results speak for themselves.
What is one book that significantly influenced your path and why?
One Day All Children..., Echoing Green Fellow Wendy Kopp's story of founding Teach for America, without question, inspires me beyond words. One of my life's dreams is to launch a comparable post-graduate fellowship program that uses design to improve theplaces in which people learn, live, work, and play.
Who is one person whose changemaking career you greatly admire and why?
Aaron Hurst, founder of the Taproot Foundation, is the first person that comes to mind and someone I deeply admire. Over the past decade, he's gained such an amazing view of the nonprofit and philanthropicsectors—both the amazing contributions made by each as well as the ongoing challenges they face. He is able to think big, but also get things done. Yet what I admire about him most are more mundane attributes like his responsiveness and follow-through. Aaron and his team have built Taproot into the largest nonprofit consulting firm in the world, engaging thousands of professionals to give of their time to worthy nonprofits—and as far as I can tell, they're just getting started.
Bio:
John Cary's first book, The Power of Pro Bono: 40 Stories about Design for the Public Good by Architects and Their Clients, was published last fall and represents the culmination of his nearly seven-year tenure as Executive Director of San Francisco nonprofit Public Architecture. Under his leadership, The 1% pro bono service program of Public Architecture leveraged an estimated $25 million in donated services annually. John served for the past year as President & CEO of Next American City, a national nonprofit and quarterly magazine focused on the future of cities, and he's most proud of their recent double-issue focused on the topics of new media and service. John is also a senior fellow of the Design Futures Council, a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, a resident of the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, and was most recently the 2011 commencement speaker for the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. You can read more about John's ventures and interests in his new blog www.publicinterestdesign.org.
