by Jeffrey Stanley
Architect Ife Vanable '99 gets bored easily. One way she combats that is through teaching a class every Saturday morning in architectural design at Pratt Institute, not to college students but to children. "It's done through the Liberty Partnerships Program," she explained. The program, run in universities across New York State, has a mission to reduce high school dropout rates for children who are deemed at risk based on test scores in elementary school.
"I hate that first off," said Ife, "that they're already labeled before they have a chance, but this program is an intervention." Her particular curriculum allows her to use her expertise in architecture as a vehicle to help kids improve their reading and math skills. "I love that," she said. "It's something that's dear to me. And something I loved about BFS was that they taught you how to think rather than necessarily getting a certain score. We use architecture to help these kids do that." Ife also regularly mentors a young girl through the New York City based iMentor program, an organization that links working professionals with students in need.
Her devotion to service might have been furthered by her attending BFS but it was already a family tradition long before that. "My parents and grandparents are all civil servants in some way," she said, "teachers, nurses, construction workers. I was raised to believe that it's important to be of service and to give of yourself and not expect anything in return." She said her friends razz her about having to get up early on Saturday mornings to teach, ruining her Friday nights as a young, single woman about town, but "I really enjoy doing it," she said, "giving back and being part of their lives."
A true New Yorker, Ife was born in the Bronx and her parents and grandparents were born in Manhattan. "I loved growing up in the Bronx," she said. "I grew up not too far from Lehman College right off the Grand Concourse." Her home was a short distance from her elementary school where her mom was also a teacher. "All of my friends were close by. It was a wonderful experience." She recalled late summer nights sitting out on the stoop with friends and neighbors. "It was a lot of fun. All the parents knew each other and all the children, so if one mom was there she was like everybody's mom."
Ife entered BFS in the ninth grade. She had attended a public elementary school and a private middle school in the Bronx. "In 8th grade there was a huge rush for students to find out where they'd go to high school," she said. "My mom and I were looking at boarding schools and private schools." They agreed that these schools were "stuffy in a sense," she said. Their last interview was at BFS. "It was close to my other school in terms of class sizes and the grading system, and we both just really liked it. We had a great first impression even though it was all the way in Brooklyn and I was in the Bronx." On the other hand she'd been traveling to school by subway since the age of 12, "so this was just a little bit further."
Arriving as a freshman had her worried that she'd be an outsider because a lot of the students had grown up in the school and already knew each other well. "There were only a couple of us who came in at ninth grade but it was amazing how embracing everyone was," she said. "Everyone was open and warm to us and wanted to get to be our friends."
She also recalled her appreciation for Quaker meeting. "I loved it. I loved the notion of sitting in silence, and hearing and listening in silence." It fit her personality. She remembers her parents telling her she that had been "very focused as a child, a very quiet baby, not a screamer."
Her eleventh grade science teacher Hyacinth Foster wound up having a huge hand in Ife's career. "Hyacinth was saying when I was looking at colleges to look into engineering. She said, your mind is geared toward the sciences and not something arts based," and handed Ife a brochure about a Cornell University summer program in architecture for high school juniors. Ife applied and was accepted, and BFS agreed to cover half of the tuition cost. "It was that program that helped seal for me where I wanted to go to college," said Ife.
She graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor's degree in architecture in 2005 and went straight to work for the firm Cook & Fox in Manhattan. "I had a wonderful time there," she said, "but it was only about 9 months before I started looking for fellowships. I love school," she said.
She applied for and received a Fulbright Hays Fellowship to work for four months in Tanzania as part of a group project to design housing and infrastructure systems for settlements to be built for the poor. She now hopes the Tanzanian government is able to follow through and move to the building stage, and that she can go back someday and continue her efforts there.
She also spent time at a firm here redesigning New York public school buildings. "I had a lot of responsibility and I learned a lot quickly," she said. "It was unglamorous but essential work," she said of her renovation and restoration projects. "Some of them were landmark buildings with original stone. I learned a great deal there and developed my craft as an architect."
Today she works for FXFOWLE Architects designing projects in international markets including the Middle East and India. "I'm working on an IT park in New Delhi," she explained. "It's kind of a hybrid, an office park with residential, commercial and retail all on one 25-acre site almost like a college campus." Her firm also just opened an office in Dubai.
She looks forward to traveling there eventually but in the meantime she resides happily in Williamsburg, Brooklyn near Bushwick. She urges the current generation of BFS students to "One, enjoy yourself." Secondly she hopes they "value the way at BFS that you're taught to think, not to get an A or a hundred but to problem-solve, to think creatively and independently."