Below is the talk I gave at the Boomerang Reception held on 12/20/2009 at the CSUF Smitcamp Alumni House. I was the first speaker of the evening. The other speakers were Mayor Ashley Swearengin, CSUF President Dr. John Welty, FUSD Superintendent Michael Hansen, and FPU President Merrill Ewert. It was an honor to be included with such a prestigious list and take part in trying to attract talented professionals to boomerang back to Fresno. There was over 100 potential boomerangs in attendance.

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Welcome back to Fresno. My name is Kiel Famellos-Schmidt. I am here this evening representing Creative Fresno as the vice chair to the board of directors. And you were greeted at the door by our membership director, Andy Hansen-Smith.

Creative professionals are in the business of new ideas. This includes artists, architects, designers, scientists, among others. Another term used is “knowledge workers,” who make their living developing or using knowledge. Creative Fresno’s mission is to engage creative professionals to create a stronger community.

To that end we have numerous projects that encourage the lifestyle our constituency desires. Our mural project that has paid artists to create over a dozen murals downtown. We brought the global phenomena, Pecha Kucha Night, to Fresno to showcase the work of local designers. We organize monthly Blenders to connect creatives. We host an online listserv, MindHub.org, for creative discussions. In October, we held our second annual music festival of 40 local bands. We also partner with other organizations to create events like this Boomerang Reception that we are at today.

All of this is united by a membership of creatives that all have interesting stories. I’ll share a piece of my story about how I boomeranged back to Fresno after being educated at UC Berkeley and working in San Francisco, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Sri Lanka.

Three years ago, this week, I moved back to Fresno after two months of volunteer service in Sri Lanka. It was not long after the devastating tsunami that hit the island nation as well as an ongoing civil war. I spent my time amongst the tea lined hills of a town called Nawalapitya, to design an orphanage and community center to help fill the needs of a devastated people.

It was during my work in this beautiful but embattled landscape that I came to a realization. All of these challenges that I was trying to fight around the world, poverty, homelessness, unsustainable growth, access to resources, and access to quality and healthy housing. They all existed in my hometown. Not only did they exist in quantity, but I was intimately familiar with them from my childhood and young adult life.

I did not move back for the satisfaction of being a big fish in a small pond. It was not my family asking me to move back, they wished me to explore the best opportunity wherever it happened to be. I chose to move back to Fresno because I believe I’m uniquely suited to make an impact here, more than anywhere else in the world.

In these three short years, the impacts of my efforts can already be seen:
I joined Creative Fresno and organized the Pecha Kucha Night. The event’s 1 year anniversary this January 11th is entitled Benchmarks and Milestones. We built awareness of local design talent and introduced many creatives, who now regularly collaborate.

I founded and curate archop, a quarterly architectural exhibit and lecture series, accompanied by a built environment news and opinion website, archop.org. The exhibit in its third year, the website one year old. We’ve reached over 12,000 fresnans, who now know more about architecture and quality design.

26 other citizens and I co-authored the City and County of Fresno 10 Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness. The plans first year goal of moving 100 chronic homeless individuals into housing has been met under the Swearingin administration

And most recently in November, with my partner Shaunt Yemenjian, starting up an architecture and urban design firm called Spacio Design with offices in downtown Fresno and Los Angeles. We have projects of various scales from Los Angeles to Hawaii. And we are taking advantage of new technologies and our city’s low overhead to be competitive with a global reach.

If you have the skills and passion to make Fresno a better place, I want to personally invite you back.

I now have the pleasure of introducing this city’s passionate and diligent mayor. Recently she was one of five mayors invited to Washington DC to attend President Obama’s job summit. Ensuring that our city has access to all the resources it needs

During her campaign for mayor, Ashley had given a response to a question that rang true for me. The question from a well respected architect, Paul Halajian, was “How can we get the talent here that we need?” Her answer was that the best and the brightest will be attracted because this is a rare place where young, intelligent people can lead and shape the future of this entire region. That is why I am here.

Please join me in welcoming Fresno Mayor, Ashley Swearengin.