A Career Built on Gratitude

Through a planned gift, Steve Riojas, M.U.P./M.Arch ’80, aims to offer students opportunities like he was given

Steve Riojas’ career in architecture and urban planning spanned the automotive, education, and tech industries and took him around the globe as a designer and business director before he retired in 2022. Not one to sit still, Riojas, M.Arch/M.U.P. ’80, then launched his own consulting studio in 2024.

To this day, he credits his success to having the opportunity to study at Taubman College, thanks to a full-ride scholarship he received. Now he has decided to honor that opportunity with a planned gift to the college.

“I have to give to the university,” Riojas says. “If it wasn’t for its generosity, I might not be where I am today.”

A Life-changing Offer

Riojas’ journey into architecture started while working with T-squares and parallel bars in his high school drafting class.

“There was a certain balance of creativity and logic and rules and order,” he says. “I really kind of fell in love with that discipline.” 

He attended Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan, for his undergraduate studies, where his interests grew to include large-scale planning. After earning his bachelor’s, he was accepted to U-M’s newly formed dual-degree program in architecture and planning. Deciding to attend wasn’t easy.

“I came from a modest family,” Riojas says. “My parents had put me through undergrad, but they had my younger brother to put through school, so I was kind of on my own.”

He wrote a letter withdrawing his application and shifted his focus to working and saving money. But when the university’s reply came with an offer of full tuition and a stipend through a program for students with financial need from underrepresented backgrounds — Riojas’ father was born in Texas to parents who had immigrated from Mexico — he jumped at it.

“I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was such a generous offer,” he says. “I absolutely took it and moved to Ann Arbor.”

Riojas thrived at Michigan. He fondly recalls late nights in the studio with classmates, Saturdays at the Big House, and immersing himself in campus culture. Studying under renowned architect Gunnar Birkerts taught him discipline and drove him to do his best work.

“I can’t say I was his class star, because I don’t think I was,” Riojas says. “I worked really hard to please him.”

From Town Halls to Tech Centers

After earning his dual master’s degree, Riojas got a job with an urban planning and design firm in Detroit. He quickly learned on the job about the importance of public speaking, writing, and appreciating different perspectives, as he addressed residents at town hall and planning meetings about changes in their communities.

“It was a maturing process for me that sharpened my sense of empathy, to always imagine what it’s like to be in the other person’s shoes,” Riojas says. “That attitude took me a long way in my career, just always thinking about the other person, the client, your colleagues, your employees.”

Soon, Riojas missed designing buildings and dreamed of seeing his ideas get built. After three years in planning, he applied for a job he felt unqualified for at Southfield’s Giffels Associates, where lead designer Harutun “Harry” Vaporciyan took a chance to bring him on and mentor him. There, Riojas worked on large-scale automotive and tech-related projects, including the Chrysler Tech Center in Auburn Hills, Toyota’s first U.S. assembly plant in Kentucky (which included travel to Japan), and an early semiconductor facility for IBM in upstate New York.

“I was developing this portfolio in really high-tech buildings. Some of them were first of their kind,” Riojas says. “It was complicated and very challenging, but a lot of it was very gratifying.”

In the late ‘80s, Riojas met his future wife and moved to where she lived in Chicago. Working for Lester B. Knight & Associates, he expanded his portfolio to include work on state-of-the-art research buildings for the U.S. Department of Energy, including the Argonne National Laboratory research and development center, best known for its work on particle acceleration. 

Designing Strategy, Building Teams

Riojas later transferred to San Francisco, where he and his wife raised their children. In 2005, he joined employee-owned, global design firm HDR as a regional director for science and tech.

“My job was becoming less about designing and more about building a business, developing strategies, being the principal in charge of projects,” he says. “I shifted from being a designer and a planner to being a leader of teams.”

As new opportunities and challenges were presented, Riojas raised his hand to take them on. He rose through the ranks as national and, eventually, global director for science and tech, supporting teams in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and across the U.S. When he retired 17 years later, the company’s science, tech, and education business had grown from around $35 million to more than $120 million amid challenges such as the global financial crisis and Pandemic.

Transitioning to retirement was hard for Riojas, who enjoyed the fast pace and purpose his work gave him. 

“I was making the world a better place in my own little way, being a small part of these research projects and education facilities, ” he says. “Then I went to zero, and I started wondering, ‘What am I going to do? I have too much energy.’”

When his former employer invited him to consult on a project, he established Studio Riojas. While that project didn’t materialize, he found purpose as an external board member for other architecture firms, sharing his wealth of experience to help them grow.

A Full Circle Gift

Over the course of his time with HDR, Riojas built a “nest egg” investing in the company’s employee stock ownership plan. When he and his wife began estate planning recently, he knew immediately that he wanted to give back to Taubman College. With his planned gift, he hopes to show gratitude for the opportunity he was given and make a similar impact on future students. 

“It’s come full circle,” he says. “The university was a big part of kicking off my career,  and I look forward to helping other students find that same success.”

— Eric Gallippo