Ray is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a past chair of the Committee on Design. He was chair of the Inner City Task Force of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) and is currently a member of its board of directors. He is also chair of the board of the Seaside Institute, a co-founder of the Seaside Pienza Institute, a member of the board of the Institute for Classical Architecture/Classical American, the advisory board of the Charles Moore Foundation, the Center for Urban Redevelopment Excellence, and the Western European Foundation. Recently, Ray was awarded the Seaside Prize for Innovation and Revitalizing Inner City Neighborhoods and Transforming Public Housing Projects into Mixed Income Neighborhoods.

For more than 20 years, he taught urban design at the Yale University School of Architecture. An engaging, popular speaker in both the U.S. and Europe, Ray has also published prolifically throughout his career, most recently as a principal author of The Urban Design Handbook and The Architectural Pattern Book (both published by W. W. Norton & Company).

Ray earned Bachelor and Master of Architecture degrees with honors from Carnegie Mellon University and a Diploma from Centro per gli Studi di Architettura, A. Palladio, Vicenza, Italy. He received the John Stewardson Award and a Fulbright Grant for study in Italy early in his career and continues to travel extensively to sketch and study urban space. His drawings have been exhibited in the U.S., France, and Italy. His drawings and writings are published annually in a series of books entitled “Pages from a Sketchbook.”