In his words--

"I always want people to understand who I am beyond what they see here in America. Because a lot of who I am is really in the slum. The true definition of Joel is really the fabric of the slum. I can't separate what I do now, what I think, how I think about people, how I engage our clients, how I teach, I can't disconnect that from my experiences in the slum."

"Part of the missing element within the Architecture profession, in my opinion, is the idea of understanding what drives and makes a built environment in terms of the cash flow. It has always been a missing equation in how architecture is taught. So I would argue that understanding cash flow and how it actually gets what we envision built, should have been part of the very DNA of the profession in the first place. Real estate and architecture should have never been two different professions.”

"There is always an opportunity to question what you know, anytime you encounter what you don’t know. And I say that because I’m always going to be pulled to a place of questioning what I already know anytime I encounter a new client in a different context... All my preconceived notions have to be tested every time I encounter a new culture. So I do think that I have a desire to really create something new and a new way of thinking about urban design and our built environment, but I also totally understand that I do not want to bring Uganda to America and I don’t want to take America to Uganda.”

"Fundamentally, it comes down to, how do I interact with you? How do I interact with a stranger? Or, it will come to, how do we see each other? That’s going to take a little while. How we see each other is so radically important in shaping our built environment. And I think the conversation about how we see each other and how we talk to each other , how we interact, how we resolve conflict with each other... should be at the forefront of how we design the cities that we live in. Because that’s the cultural fabric and layer that makes the built environment.”