Steven Duong is one of AECOM’s youngest associate VPs. He founded the firm’s DFW Design + Planning and Economics practice and speaks across the country, including Austin’s iconic SXSW event and Dallas’ Digital Fight Club, a one-of-a-kind, rapid-fire debate on various subjects. Colleagues say he helps make infrastructure and decision-making more efficient for cities, improving environmental performance and adaptability while reducing full life-cycle cost for infrastructure.

For AECOM, Duong has helped lead several high-profile projects such as the Dallas Resilient Cities Strategy; Braiding the Rio Salado, an award-winning urban design proposal to redevelop the Rio Salado riverfront in downtown Phoenix; and a pioneering regional plan to help the City of Houston cope with the rise of emerging mobility technologies. Perhaps most notably, he led Hyperloop Texas, a project to enable travel between any two cities statewide within 30 minutes.

These are just a few reasons we chose Duong as one of the Texas 2020 Next Generation Award winners. Connect Media’s fourth annual Next Generation Awards recognize young leaders in the commercial real estate industry who are likely to be influential for years to come.

Duong strives to be a mentor inside and outside the office. He’s director of the North Central Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association, the official professional organization for urban planners; a longtime member of Dallas’ Urban Design Advisory Council; and an adjunct professor of urban planning and design at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he teaches multiple graduate courses.

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