While both men received an undergraduate degree from Rhodes College in 1968, they parted ways after graduation. Pounders headed off to Harvard University, where he received a Master of Architecture from the Graduate School of Design. He then worked in the New York and Boston offices of I.M. Pei and Partners for two years, before settling with Nathan Evans Pounders & Taylor for more than 20 years.

Williamson received a Master of Architecture from the Studio of Louis I. Kahn, Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. He then returned to Memphis, where he was design principal of his own firm. In 1986, the architect took a two-year sabbatical, and went to work for Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown in Philadelphia.