So my whole family were engineers. My father, my uncles, my stepmom. Electrical, mechanical. One uncle was a contractor. Everyone in the house either built something or kept something running. I was the same way, just from a different angle. I wanted to know how the wiring worked and why the room felt the way it did when you walked in. I took things apart and tried to put them back together. Everyone else stopped at the system. I kept going until I got to the feeling.
— I was a music teacher first.
Piano, saxophone, choir. I directed at First Park Music Conservatory from 2000 to 2004. Four years of teaching kids how to listen. I didn't know it then, but I was learning how to design buildings. I just hadn't picked up the pencil yet.
NJIT for architecture, minor in communication. I was already working at John Perkins' office while I was in school. We had one client, Mack-Cali. I managed their architectural work across North Jersey, Southern New York, Eastern PA. Big portfolio. Corporate real estate. Learned how the machine works. Did some development work along the way too. By 2012, Green Stories took root.
— On the name.
People ask about the name. It's two things.
Green is the easy one. Sustainable design, energy efficiency, respecting what you're building on and building with. Stories is the one that matters to me. My grandfather was Thomas Joseph Reynolds, from Jamaica. My mother's side, Thomas Hansford was the first free Hansford. In my family, in Black families, in Caribbean families, you didn't learn things from a manual. Someone told you. Someone sat with you and told you how things work, what happened, who you are. That's how knowledge moved. Through telling.
That's what this studio is. That tradition sitting next to LiDAR scanners and drone photogrammetry and 3D-printed models and VR headsets. New tools, same purpose. Make sure the person across from you understands what we're building and why.
— What we do now.
Right now the work is multifamily housing, adaptive reuse, commercial, mixed-use, hurricane-resistant coastal design. The code stuff. IBC, NJ UCC, zoning. I know it cold. I've been in the room when it mattered and couldn't afford to be wrong. Contractors call us because if we drew it, they can build it. You earn that one set of drawings at a time.
The team is Black and Latino. We work in Newark. The city is 46% Black, 37% Hispanic. We speak English, Spanish, and Portuguese because the people we work with do. Two percent of licensed architects in this country are Black. I think about that every time I sit down with a young person through the NAACP ACT-SO program and show them this is a career that exists. That someone who looks like them is already doing it.
I co-founded the New Jersey Chapter of NOMA. Served as VP. Eagle Scout with 2 Palms. Warden at my church. I've testified at council meetings about affordability. Sat on zoning boards. None of that goes on the drawing set, but all of it shows up in the work.