Events Calendar

We welcome Anne Zaki and Melissa Smith to an alumni + faculty panel discussion for rich conversation about Calvin’s impact as lived out through their careers.

Melissa Smith ’06 is an architect and urban designer based in Ahmedabad, India, and a founding partner of BandukSmith Studio, an award-winning practice working across architecture, interiors, landscape, urban design, and heritage conservation. She also serves as Adjunct Associate Professor at CEPT University. She holds a B.A. from Calvin College, where she graduated as an Honors Scholar with a double major in German and Asian Studies and minors in Art History and pre-Architecture, as well as Master of Architecture and Master of City & Regional Planning degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Since founding BandukSmith Studio in 2011, her work has focused on locally grounded, climate-responsive design across projects including public spaces, housing, and adaptive reuse of historic structures, earning recognition in 2025 as one of South Asia’s emerging architectural practices. At CEPT, she helped develop the Bachelor of Urban Design program and continues to teach while pursuing research on evolving urban environments and climate adaptation; her work has been widely published and exhibited internationally.

Anne Zaki ’99, grew up in Cairo, Egypt, in a pastor’s home and has been involved in ministry leadership since her youth. Selected at 16 to attend Pearson College in Canada, she later studied at Calvin University before earning a Master’s degree in social psychology from the American University in Cairo. She and her husband, Rev. Naji Umran, served in ministry in Egypt and North America after completing their M.Div. degrees at Calvin Theological Seminary, and returned to Egypt in 2011 with their four sons. Anne has worked as a psychologist and counselor since 2000 and spent 13 years at Calvin University supporting global and multicultural worship initiatives. She has taught since 2013 at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, and earned a PhD in theology (preaching) from Fuller Theological Seminary in 2022. Her interests include global church life, mentoring, ministry development, and the arts.

With faculty participants:

Craig Hanson, professor of historical studies, Calvin University

Jim Ludema, dean of the School of Business, Calvin University