Building Vibrant Communities and Changing Lives At The Same Time

Driven by a conviction to make a lasting change, Dean Landy began One Heart with the aim of providing holistic, long-term support to vulnerable children. Dean, in his ‘day job’, is an architect and partner at Clarke Hopkins Clarke in Melbourne, where he leads the design of new town centres and major commercial projects both nationally and internationally. He has been recognized with awards such as the Deakin University Young Alumni of the Year and various prestigious architecture industry accolades. Dean has also authored a book titled Creating Vibrant Communities. Read on to learn more about this weeks fantastic change-maker, Dean Landy.

Describe your career trajectory and how you got to your current position.

My career has always balanced two different paths but with one common thread; to improve the quality of people’s lives by creating stronger communities. Interestingly that common thread has now brought those two paths together.

I was a Lego fanatic as a kid. I used to build full Lego cities on our large pool table which kids from around the neighbourhood would come and play with. Now, after 25 years in the architecture and urban design world, I spend most of my time designing new cities, towns and large mixed-use developments around Australia. I see this as an opportunity to use my skills to help create more healthy, sustainable communities for people to live, work and learn in.

This work lead me down a path of research around the idea of how we can create more vibrant, liveable places, and in 2017 I released my first book title ‘Creating Vibrant Communities’ which has gone on to sell globally; and again I believe will help others in our industry to shape future communities and future generations.

The other path had always been my volunteer work in developing nations. Had I not pursued architecture down the path I did, I would have followed a career in disaster response/relief, and community development, which is the path that started the One Heart journey. However, over the last 25 years in parallel to my architecture work in Australia, I have also continued to work in India and then across Africa using my expertise to create new sustainable communities for vulnerable children…and evolve it in to what has become the One Heart model.

Interestingly those two paths have now merge where I have been using my 15 years of experience working in East Africa, and my passion to make a positive impact in these regions, and have started working with some of the largest urban developers in Africa to create new cities across multiple countries that will provide high quality, healthy and sustainable new cities, and in the process enable me to spend a lot more time in Africa developing the work of One Heart.

So eventually the two paths have become one!

Can you tell us a bit more about what One Heart is all about?

One Heart is all about empowering children in East Africa to reach their full potential. Our model is a holistic and multi-faceted approach, connecting into a wider global framework set out by the United Nations (UNSGDs) and UNICEF. Our focus is to give a true hand up, not just a hand out, with love at the centre of all we do.

We are currently working in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and through programs in education, healthcare, and supporting loving family homes; and we are working to create a sustainable model that will see thousands of children’s lives improved, but also have a positive social, economic and environmental impact in the communities in which we work.

There are currently 400 children in our schools and rescue homes. Some are boarding students, some are in our community scholarship program whereby they still live at their home with a single parent or guardian, and others who are orphaned or coming out of abusive situations and are cared for in the One Heart rescue homes. We plan to grow this to tens of thousands of children in our program.

A unique part of our work is in establishing income generating sources within each country we work to help empower local teams, and also break the cycle of dependency that can easily evolve in internationally funded projects. Through a series of farms, a guest house and future Vocational training centres, we will be able to continue to provide nutritious food to our kids; provide opportunities for skills training; but also generate a consistent income to help offset some of our in-country operational costs.

The other part I love about One Heart is being able to share the experience and impact journey with others through the slightly extreme volunteer experiences we have created! These of course help generate funds, but more importantly connect people here in Australia with our work in Africa, and connect them to something worth real purpose. The Run from Poverty; a running experience over two weeks in kenya, and the Trek from Poverty; trekking Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, are both bucket list items for many people, and are truly life changing experiences.

Take us through a typical day of work for you.

As a partner of a B-corp certified architecture firm, ClarkeHopkinsClarke (CHC), with around 180 people in our team, and as the lead partner on many large scale projects, its safe to say there are never two days the same…but everyone is full of creative challenges.

A typical day will see me juggling multiple projects, but in my role it is mostly engaging with clients, master planning new precincts, and then fielding many questions from the various architects and urban designers working on all of the projects I lead.

Towards the end of each business day here, I normally start to engage with the CHC Kenyan projects where the team is just starting their day over there, as well as the One Heart teams in each country. Given we have independent boards in each country, most Thursday afternoons are taken up by a rotating schedule of in-country and then the Australia team board meetings.

The biggest challenge in my career was making the jump from micromanaging people and the design of every project, to letting go enough for others to explore their creative ability, and give them room to learn and be stretched…and in doing so freeing up some of my time to be able to look at more strategic aspects of both CHC and One Heart.

 If you could go back in time, what piece of advice would you give yourself as you first embarked on your career?

I feel fortunate that there aren’t any opportunities or ideas that I haven’t pursued during my career and I have always sought to ensure I continuously push myself out of my comfort zone, and I remain driven to make a bigger impact.

Perhaps a piece of advice to myself would be: don’t shy away from asking others to join you on the journey, or contribute to the fundraising. I think One Heart would be further progressed had I been bolder in asking people the bigger questions, without thinking what they might think of me when I’m always trying to raise money to rescue more kids. In reality, I’ve learnt that if our heart is focused on serving others, then other people can see that and often want to get on board to help you…but the answer is always ‘no’ until you ask! 

How do you unwind after work?

Once I’ve had a bit of time with my kids (11 and 15 year olds), if I get the chance to unwind, it’s a cup of tea, some chocolate and a little bit of Netflix…the brain needs some downtime! 

What was the last thing you watched, read or listened to?

The last thing I read was a book called ‘The Promise of a Pencil’, which is about the journey of a young guy from the US who followed an idea he had after seeing a need in India for something as simple as a pencil to enable a young boy to get an education, and went on the establish over 200 schools around the world. I always like reading biographies as I’m inspired by stories of people who have faced challenges and persevered to see an amazing outcome…it encourages me to keep going.