ARTFUL DESIGN
CONSTANCE VALE
Constance Vale works at the nexus of art, technology, and architecture, and creates new ways of making communities beautiful, livable, and interesting. Vale, an associate professor and chair of undergraduate architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, is among the architects designing a house for the On Olive redevelopment project, a collection of architecturally significant homes in Grand Center. Construction on Vale’s design, a twist on a “dogtrot” home with a breezeway flowing through the middle of the structure, is set to begin this year. “It’s a huge honor to work on the project,” Vale says. Vale’s dedication to urban innovation isn’t limited to a single home. Along with colleague Yevgeniy Vorobeychik, a computer engineer, Vale recently set up the WashU Mini City, a 3,000-square-foot city center built at 1:8 scale. The goal is to use the miniature urban area to test and troubleshoot artificial intelligence applications that direct self-driving cars and other autonomous vehicles, as well as to reimagine what transportation networking can look like in cities of the future. Many American cities suffer from a lack of transit options that are accessible to everyone, and St. Louis is no exception. For those who don’t own or can’t afford a car, Vale questions if there are ways to increase transit access, while also making bus and train routes more dynamic to meet people where they are. “I think this can revolutionize the way we think about moving around in a city,” Vale says.
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BUILDING OPPORTUNITY
PASTORS KEN AND BEVERLY JENKINS
Pastors Ken and Beverly Jenkins of Refuge and Restoration Church are taking a grassroots approach to creating opportunities. The couple has been striving for the past decade to create the R&R Marketplace, a resource hub in North County. The first phase opened last fall in the former Springwood Plaza in Dellwood. It now houses organizations focused on innovation, workforce development, finances, health, and child care. “The idea is to not just give stuff away or create services,” Beverly says. “The goal is to create meaningful opportunities for people to advance with their own upward mobility.” The couple asked neighbors what they wanted from a resource center, in order to help them gain insights into what would be vital to the community’s success. “We didn’t want to do things the same way and expect different results,” Beverly says. “For us, innovation is, ‘How do we attempt something that maybe hasn’t been done this way before and not be afraid of failure?’” The next phase of the project is the multiplex, which will house the Jenkins’ church, a black-box theater, commercial kitchen, library, computer lab, and a small café. Eventually, they’d like to add a rooftop garden. Anyone can come into a community with the idea to serve, they say, but it takes intimate local knowledge to create sustainable growth. “You can’t innovate if it’s something other people can’t realize or embrace,” Ken says. “Innovation happens because people can see something that’s possible.”
“The idea is to not just give stuff away or create services,” Beverly says. “The goal is to create meaningful opportunities for people to advance with their own upward mobility.”
CREATING PATHWAYS
ANJIE SANFORD
BIOSTL
Anjie Sanford knew from a young age that she wanted to be an entrepreneur. After earning a bachelor’s degree in biology, she told her mother that she wanted to open a beauty shop. “My mom said, ‘Nope.’ She told me she’d worked hard to get me into STEM and that I needed to go into an industry where there’s job security,” Sanford says. She took her mother’s words to heart. Although Sanford did open her own business (and another one after that), her mother also helped her recognize the potential of a career in bioscience. Today, at BioSTL, Sanford helps individuals from underrepresented communities see a future in bioscience. With the support of Christina Green, vice president of human resources and finance at BioSTL, Sanford established the Pathways program, which attracts scholars from diverse backgrounds to work in the bioscience and agricultural innovation sectors. The program exposes college juniors through post-doctoral students to competitive opportunities with world-class bioscience companies in St. Louis. Pathways focuses on scholars from historically Black colleges and universities and aims to build an ongoing pipeline from these schools to some of the region’s top companies. “We find the diamonds in the rough,” Sanford says. “We break down barriers and show the candidates that St. Louis is a great place to live and work.”
MAKING MUSIC
ALONZO TOWNSEND
For Alonzo Townsend, building community for musicians is more than just a business—it’s a calling. Townsend is the founder of The Townsendx3 Agency, as well as a partner with the Kranzberg Arts Foundation’s Dark Room and a member of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ New Works Collective. He sees his role in supporting and managing such renowned artists as Tonina, Mvstermind, and Denise Thimes as a bridge through time, connecting present-day musicians to a rich legacy in St. Louis that includes his parents, blues legends Vernell and Henry “Mule” Townsend. “We have to make sure everyone understands why we’re doing this work,” Townsend says. “The heritage is here; the bloodline is here. We are literally the heartbeat of American music.” Townsend works toward the future by keeping an eye on the past. He empowers St. Louisans in all aspects of the music business by helping create and share infrastructure, connecting them with opportunities and support. “We’re going to build an ecosystem so you can find whatever that lane is where you can make it your bread and butter,” he says. Townsend says his goal is to show that St. Louis is as much of a music city as Austin or Nashville. “The more voices that we hear and the more faces we see,” he says, “the more undeniable we are.”
“We have to make sure everyone understands why we’re doing this work,” Townsend says. “The heritage is here; the bloodline is here. We are literally the heartbeat of American music.”
SEWING SEEDS
DR. GEORGE WORRALL
DEEP GRAIN
St. Louis wasn’t originally part of George Worrall’s plan. The agricultural engineer and England native was finishing up a doctorate in agriculture with an emphasis in remote sensing at the University of Florida in 2022 when he went to a conference in Malaysia and met someone who would change his life’s path. “They told me if I was looking to do agricultural geospatial work, I should move to St. Louis,” Worrall says. “About a week after I graduated with my Ph.D., I did.” His company, Deep Grain, provides geospatial intelligence on crop production and conditions. Using weather and satellite data from above, the technology can help make projections on such things as cocoa yield in West Africa. He has combined a knowledge of plant physiology and engineering skills to create a yield-prediction platform. After he arrived, Worrall moved his company into T-REX, where he found a community of like-minded colleagues at its Geospatial Innovation Center. Missouri’s geography—in the middle of the country, close to croplands—also helps him stay in close touch with his agricultural roots. Worrall thought that when he left academia, he had given up the chance to have cutting-edge conversations about agriculture. At T-REX and the Danforth Plant Science Center, however, he’s found others who share an interest in the latest advances in plant science and agriengineering. “If people are interested in this kind of work, I would encourage them to come to St. Louis,” he says.
