JJ Rivers, 34

JJ Rivers’s architecture career began at 15. From his start in the mailroom of the small architecture firm where he first interned, Rivers went on to study architecture at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of Maryland. 

Now he’s a principal and a studio director at international juggernaut Gensler, as well as its Southeast region mixed-use development leader, where he manages 55 people and oversees 1,000 employees across eight offices — from Miami to Philadelphia — from his post in Washington, D.C. 

After a decade at the architecture firm, Rivers now works on master-planning developments both nationally and internationally as well as designing mixed-use, sports and entertainment developments. These range from the Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts in Virginia — the only major performance venue in the U.S. inside a national park — to the proposed Philadelphia 76ers arena. 

Rivers has been at work on Under Armour’s new mass timber, 280,000-square-foot headquarters in Baltimore, too, and is excited by the possibilities a project like this presents for the future.

“Seeing a building of that scale and size in mass timber, it really announces itself to the city of Baltimore, to the broader East Coast, saying ‘Hey, this is the future of how we should be designing,’ ” Rivers said. The building is eyeing a late 2024 opening.

Rivers acknowledges that his job is as much about design as it is about relationships between himself, his clients and his teammates. 

“I’m a decent architect, but when I can sit around a table, whether it’s clients, consultants or folks at Gensler, and understand their points of view and their perspectives, it helps me bring out the best in others,” Rivers said. “I am very much a we, versus I, kind of individual.”