Life Lessons from the Centennial Olympic Games
February 16, 2013
Back in 1995, Linda Thomas-Mobley was an attorney at a boutique law firm in Atlanta. As the summer Olympics were scheduled for the following year there, she decided to volunteer for the Olympic Committee. Instead of being allowed to volunteer, she was hired as an assistant project manager. Shortly afterward, the Olympic Village’s director of construction left. Because of Dr. Thomas-Mobley’s law degree and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering, and her experience as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps, she was given that position.
She hired and directed designers, project managers, and thousands of construction workers to bring the village to reality. It consisted of dining areas, service centers, meeting spaces, practice and training venues, temporary competition venues, entertainment areas, housing, security, and utilities covering 270 acres on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. She got the entire project done in 28 days.
After the games, she oversaw the demolition of the temporary structures and the dedication of the permanent ones to the school. It was there, in 2000, that she obtained her Ph.D. in Architecture, with a focus on the indoor environment.
Dr. Thomas-Mobley used everything she learned from her Olympic Village experience as the associate chair of the School of Building Construction at Georgia Tech and, more recently, as the chair of the NewSchool of Architecture and Design’s construction-management program. She described her mission: “to boldly endow design-sensitive students with not only knowledge of how to manage the 21st-century construction project, but also infuse them with a passion to lead the industry toward greater sustainability.”
In November of 2012, Dr. Thomas-Mobley was promoted to Dean of Academic and Student Affairs, and is now serving all of the students, faculty, and staff at the NewSchool.
Come to the FSDA’s February meeting for a success story of Olympic proportions.
(John Mann)