Publish and Flourish: Pursuing Research, Innovation
and Engagement during Your Professional Career

Gregory Benz, ND Arch '76
Senior Vice President, WSP

Pursuing research, innovation and engagement in your professional career can lead to exciting opportunities, accelerate your professional development, and make your life more interesting and enjoyable. Several examples from a four-decade long professional career will demonstrate opportunities and strategies for undertaking research, exploring ways to advance technical practices and procedures, participating in professional organizations, and getting published.  In the process, you might get to see the world and make a difference.  

Greg Benz is Senior Vice President with WSP (formerly Parsons Brinckerhoff). Greg has 40 years of experience as a transportation planner, designer, and project manager.  His experience includes project around the globe and throughout the United States.  He was the first recipient of the William Barclay Parsons Fellowship in which he advanced his research in pedestrian circulation theory, and subsequently held several leadership roles in research and professional organizations. Greg began his professional career with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame, 1976 and a Master of Urban Planning from Princeton University. He is Register Architect, a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, Fellow of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, and Emeritus Member of Transportation Research Board. 

His spouse of 40 years, Ann Greenburg Benz, Bachelor of Architecture, Class of ’76, was in the first class of women accepted to ND. Both of their children are ND graduates – Mike (’09) and Virginia (’12).