Many people have stories to share about how Habitat for Humanity changed their lives by changing where they lived, but Habitat SKKC volunteer Dee is one of the people who credits Habitat for changing her life by inspiring her career trajectory. From an early age, Dee’s mother instilled in her the importance of giving back to your community. Growing up in Boulder, Colorado, Dee joined her mother on the build site of their local Habitat affiliate (Habitat now requires that all volunteers on construction sites are age 18 and older), and she continued to volunteer in high school and college.
Volunteering took a personal turn when Dee’s friend’s mom applied and bought a Habitat house. She adds, “I remember a few times that we went and worked on my friend’s house, and it was such a cool experience. When Julie and her mom got to have the opening of their house and even going over there and playing, it struck something very deep within me: We came in and helped work on this house and now you get to live in this place. It was a good, safe place for my friend and her mom.”
When she was first on the construction site, something clicked: “Looking at drawings and seeing them do framing and everything, that was a spark to my curiosity. I was very curious about the whole environment.”
Afterwards, Dee began asking her mom and her stepdad, who worked in construction, questions about working in this industry. She was inspired by her time onsite, and her mom encouraged her to look into architecture as a potential career. She is now an architect with MG2, a global architecture firm and supporter of Habitat SKKC’s work.
Every year, MG2 holds a Day of Giving, where staff are given paid time off to volunteer with the organization of their choice. Dee recently joined her colleagues for a planter box build day at Habitat SKKC’s Yarrow Cottages neighborhood at the 2025 Day of Giving. Because they were a large group, they took an assembly line approach to building the planter boxes. Dee hopped around different tasks and encouraged the other volunteers.
She explains, “It was great. They pushed out a bunch of planter boxes, and it was exciting to see that finished product. In architecture oftentimes when you start, you don’t get to see the results. In tasks like this, it’s really rewarding to see a plan, work through it as a team, and then see the results and know that it’s going to a good cause.”
Now a mother herself, Dee already looks forward to the day her six-year-old daughter will be old enough to start volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. “It was influential to have my mother do that for me, and I’d like to start doing that with her. It’s paying it forward and exposing my daughter to the idea that this is the way that we start helping each other out,” Dee says.