Noel always combined business and architecture in his studies, starting with Junior Achievement in high school while he was also enrolled in his first architecture classes. He went on to earn both an architecture degree and an MBA, working at architecture firms the whole way through. “I always knew I was going to combine the two, I just didn’t know how, exactly, it would work out,” says Noel, who serves as Perkins Eastman’s Director of Business Operations. His previous work, which has taken the Missouri native through ten different cities over his career, has included architectural project work, project management, office director, and operations management. By continually keeping one foot in the architecture world and the other in accounting / finance, he says, “I have the ability to translate business information in a way that architects can understand it.” The way he sees it from an operations standpoint, “we’re not a road block; we’re a support system. The business side of architecture is not in competition with the creative side.”

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Noel works with Perkins Eastman’s Project Management Council, teaching project managers about finances, marketing, and the other “soft skills” of business development.