Life Lessons, Design Lessons

(Above photo by Elliot Mandel)

This article originally appeared in the June 25 issue of officeinsight.

I have a drawing I made when I was 12 years old. It’s a house — a “mansion,” as 12-year-old me called it. Looking at it now, I would rethink pretty much everything: the palette, the furnishings, all of it. But here’s what I would keep: the tennis court, and a very ambitious triangular bathtub, Kohler-inspired!

That drawing tells you something about who I am. Even then, I was dreaming in spaces, thinking about how people would move through them, feel inside them, live inside them. I didn’t have the words for it yet. But the impulse was already there. That impulse carried me through to a decades-long design career. I think of my career as a series of sketches. Postcards from a longer journey, each one shaping a narrative for how I see the world and how I lead.

Hand-drawn colored architectural floor plan overhead showing rooms, courtyard, red circular atrium, pool, tennis court, patios, gardens. — This drawing was created by 12-year-old Bill Bouchey.

Image courtesy of Bill Bouchey

As a teen in the late 1970s, I walked beneath the brutalist arc of the Egg Theatre in Albany, New York. Something cracked open in me. Around that same time, my father — an engineer at GE — started bringing home glass samples connected with strange gooey materials, challenging my siblings and me to test them. Those samples and experiments led to a patent: the first porous glazing sealant for skyscrapers, helping save the façade of the John Hancock Building from shattering. My father taught me that materials have stories. That good design starts with understanding what things are made of and why that matters.

In 1987, I left interior design for two years to work as a laborer and apprentice carpenter. I entered buildings through the service entrance. When I received my Union 157 card and the coveted Klein tool bag, which is essentially the Birkin bag of the construction world, I understood something I haven’t forgotten: Leadership is grounded in respect. For the work, and for the people who make it real.

Bald middle-aged man wearing round eyeglasses and a black ribbed sweater, smiling warmly with arms crossed against blurred background. — **Bill Bouchey, FIIDA**
**IIDA Board President**
**Design Director**
**Gensler**

Image courtesy of Bill Bouchey

Then came September 11. I was a design director at Mancini Duffy, working in the South Tower that morning. Our entire team made it out (with difficulty) and survived the collapse.

What I learned that day about leadership wasn’t about stepping forward. It was about stepping aside, making room for those who needed more, because they had it worse. Not everyone was as fortunate as we were. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is be quiet and let someone else be held.

Leadership is an investment in others. And the return is exponential.

In my practice, there’s a moment I live for, early in a project, when the page is still blank and the team is gathered around a table, in person. The room is full of ambiguity. But it’s the richest kind, pregnant with possibility. That’s where design really begins. Not in what we create ourselves, but in what we make possible for others. The measure of leadership isn’t what you build. It’s what you empower others to build.

That’s what the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) has always meant to me. It’s a beacon. Not just an association, but a place where leadership is developed through participation, collaboration and community. My daughter, Simone, and my partner, Dr. Bernard Bierman, remind me of this daily. Leadership is about listening, showing up and creating space for others.

Bald man in black embraces smiling woman with short gray hair, white glasses and pleated skirt beside a podium labeled IIDA onstage. — Bill Bochey is announced IIDA's 2026-2027 Board of Directors President.

Elliot Mandel

As IIDA’s new president, I’m committed to three priorities.

First, sustainability — strengthening IIDA’s voice where design policy and climate action intersect. Second, elevating IIDA as the profession’s primary trusted knowledge authority, including championing the licensure our profession deserves. And third, expanding programs like Design Your World and the Certified Design Futurist program — investments in who we are becoming.

Young designers and emerging leaders are not the future of this profession. They are the profession, right now. Our responsibility is to create space for them to lead. None of us arrives at leadership alone. I am grateful to everyone who shaped my path, including my Gensler tribe, my mentors and my collaborators over 40 years, and for the trust each of them has placed in me.

Let me leave you with this: Leadership requires presence. It requires action. It requires us to step forward — first. As a design industry, let’s lead with intention. Let’s invest in one another. Let’s build a future where design, and the people who practice it, truly thrive.

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