2009 30 under 40 winners

Stanley Yee, 37

Principal, Building enclosure consultant, The Façade Group LLC, Portland, Ore.

Yee worked for eight years in the curtain-wall industry in Hong Kong before taking his current position. Building-science and enclosures training is critical to his job, but he recognizes that expertise doesn’t count for much without strong communication skills. “You have to be able to work with your peers, your community, your clients. It’s not just about talking and sharing a dialogue, but about truly understanding what your clients’ needs are, their expectations, and then communicating about whether or not you can meet those needs and expectations. If you cannot, that opens up a whole new level of dialogue.”

Yee’s engineering education had a strong focus on building systems—treating the whole building as a system rather than individual parts. “If there’s one thing that is a problem or issue in the construction industry, it’s that it’s always extraordinarily fragmented. I truly believe we can do it better.” This is why he says he constantly learns, not only from his own experiences, but from those around him. “You learn best when you have the capacity to not only see your own shortcomings but other people’s shortcomings as well, and to be able to harness that. Career development is all about making mistakes, but that doesn’t only include your own mistakes. You can learn from other people too.”

One-word description of the glass industry: Fragmented
One-word description of self: Fragmented
Career history: 2003-present, principal/building enclosure consultant, The Façade Group, Portland, Ore.; 2002-03, curtain wall consultant, Meinhardt Façade Technology Ltd., Hong Kong; 1998-2002, assistant project manager/interim field manager/business development manager, Josef Gartner & Co. Ltd., Hong Kong; 1994-98, design/project coordinator, project manager, assistant commercial manager, Werner Cladding Systems, Hong Kong
Education: 1994, Bachelor of Engineering, building engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec
Diversions: Spending time with his family, backpacking and “my horrible excuse for golf”
Family: Wife, Maebel; daughter, Amanda, 5
Favorite book: “Midnight at the Dragon Café,” Judy Fong-Bates
If a movie were made about your life, who would you cast to play you? Garrett Wang, who played Harry Kim in Star Trek: Voyager
Connections: 133 SW Second Avenue, Suite 200, Portland, OR, 97204, 503/243-2556, syee@facadegroup.com, www.facadegroup.com

 
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