How to Advance in Architecture and More from the 2017 AIA Women’s Leadership Summit

The presentations and stories hit close to home: The survey findings by the AIA San Francisco Equity by Design committee that female architects earn less than their male counterparts. The choice that Sara Phillips, AIA, architect of the U.S. Naval Academy, faced between having children and maintaining her career trajectory. The slight from a past professor shared by Dina Griffin, AIA, president of Chicago-based Interactive Design Architects, to forego planning a rigorous college curriculum since she “wouldn’t be majoring in architecture.”

On Sept. 15 and 16, about 400 women and a handful of men listened to the challenges and lessons shared by a roster of accomplished architects, designers, and entrepreneurs at the fifth biennial AIA Women’s Leadership Summit (AIA WLS), held this year in Washington, D.C. Despite its share of personal accounts, the sold-out event—with a 300-person waitlist—was not dominated by stories of discrimination or sexism in the white male–dominated field of architecture. Rather, it focused on how obstacles can become opportunities to grow, to right a wrong, and to, per the summit theme, “create tailwinds.” Several of these lessons follow.

It’s Not How You Fall, But How You Get Up
Hearing the accomplished speakers candidly share their personal journeys helped the AIA WLS attendees realize that it’s OK to fail, to ask for help, and even to take a break from architecture.

International design-build-develop firm Perez president Angela O’Byrne, FAIA, discussed how the New Orleans–based firm nearly went underwater when Hurricane Katrina flooded all but two of the firm’s projects. At one point, the employee roster comprised just O’Byrne and a bookkeeper. But by taking risks into new territory and investing the firm’s profits into vertical growth, she made the firm—and herself—more resilient. Perez now has 12 offices and is a leading contractor for USAID projects in Afghanistan.

In the panel “Career Journeys Beyond Design,” Emily Marthinsen, AIA, talked about her decades-long search for “a job that was a fit,” she said. Broke, she took an administrative position at the University of California, Berkeley as an office manager following a friend’s advice that “sometimes you have to be in the place where there is opportunity.” Marthinsen eventually moved into capital projects and worked her way up to assistant vice chancellor and campus architect.

In her keynote, Griffin encouraged the audience to ask for help when they feel discouraged. “I am here because someone cared enough about me,” she said.

Get Involved at the Leadership Level
Joining a professional organization, such as a local chapter of the AIA, is easy. But effecting change requires involvement at the leadership level. This was the message shared by many speakers, including Rosa Sheng, AIA, who after years of leading Equity by Design, set her sights on the national stage. “The most important thing to me was to get AIA on board,” she said in AIA WLS’s opening keynote. In 2015, she co-wrote “Resolution 15-1: Equity in Architecture,” which set in motion the formation of the Equity in Architecture commission, later succeeded by the Equity and the Future of Architecture committee to research and promote equity in architecture with the resources of the AIA.

Sheng encouraged the audience to access and share the 2016 Equity by Design survey findings on firm practices and culture; to start an equity in architecture committee within their local AIA chapter; and to sign up on organizational mailing lists to stay current on the profession.

Griffin also encouraged the audience to become involved at the board level, quoting advice from her former mentor, Chicago architect Alan A. Madison: “You can’t kick out the dents of the can from the outside.” After working mostly in computer drafting early in her career, Griffin told her then-boss that she wanted field experience, which led to her earning her licensure and ultimately to her participation in the AIA, the National Organization of Minority Architects, and the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards.

Accept that Work–Life Balance is a Fallacy
The notion that work can be separate from life only leads one down a path of frustration, many of the speakers noted. When asked about her work–life balance in the AIA WLS “Capital Clients” panel on design opportunities in the public sector, Kathleen Ferguson, now a senior adviser for the Roosevelt Group, point-blankly said, “I have none,” and noted how her 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. work schedule during her nearly 35 years in the U.S. Air Force meant that her husband picked up and dropped off their kids from school.

Fellow panelist Phillips said that her demanding position at the Naval Academy led her to concede that “having children wasn’t going to work for me in my career. … It was one of the biggest life-management decisions I made not only in my career, but also in my life.”

Not having children doesn’t exempt one from caregiving responsibilities, Rebecca Barnes, FAIA, University of Washington’s university architect and associate vice provost, pointed out in the session Career Journeys Beyond Design. Like many adults with aging parents, she had to take care of her elderly mother while working.

The topic of parenthood hit a nerve with attendees, particularly in terms of perception. Working fathers tend to be viewed favorably by their supervisors and colleagues while working mothers are less so. This bias manifests in significantly lower wages for female parents, as shown in the Equity in Design survey results, despite studies that find working mothers are more productive than their colleagues.

AIA WLS presenters suggested those who are in leadership positions—both women and men—should set an example by setting bounds for expected work hours, offering flextime and telecommuting options, and developing structures to on-ramp designers returning from family leave.

Leslie Gallery-Dilworth, FAIA, author of Luck Is Not a Plan for Your Future (Balboa Press, 2014), put it frankly: “Work–life balance is bullshit. Don’t strive for that.” Work is a part of life, she noted, so separating the two is a losing endeavor. Instead, we should “focus on the possibilities and not your limitations.”

Step into Politics
Many presenters and audience members pointed out that, until they have to, businesses will be loathe to offer paid parental leave, as the rest of the developed world does. And that will require legislation. But women hold only 20 percent of the 500,000 elected office positions in the United States, said Emily Liner, a senior policy adviser at the Washington, D.C., think tank Third Way and volunteer advocate for She Should Run.

Women in office are more likely to introduce bipartisan measures and to advocate policies to support families and social welfare issues. Liner challenged the audience to consider putting their names on the ballot and to ask themselves: “What makes your blood boil or your heart soften? What community or national issues do you find yourself talking about? What do you find yourself wishing elected officials would do differently? Why do you care about these things?”

For a lighthearted but succinct read, see She Should Run’s See Jane Run parody, See Joan Run (free).

Speak the Language of Business and Power
Keynote speaker and Leading Women CEO Susan Colantuono honed in on what it takes to enter the C-suite. “Leadership,” she said, “is using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in others.” Her organization’s research has found that managers perceive men and women as equally talented in personal greatness (“the greatness in you”), and women to excel at extracting “the greatness in others.” However, it is the final third of her three-part leadership definition that is key: Managers believe men outperform women in “achieving and sustaining extraordinary outcomes.”

Colantuono offered the AIA WLS audience three tailwinds. First, women have to “don [their] mantle of leadership.” Men are more willing than women to delegate responsibilities and use professional networks to advance a business, she said. “Unless it’s obvious that you’re developing relationships that bring business in or retain business for the firm, you’re at a disadvantage. … You may be doing it, but unless it’s visible, management does not care.”

Second, women need to “speak the language of power.” Leaders, Colantuono said, must have business, strategic, and financial acumen. “You must not just understand the line items of a P&L [profit and loss sheet]—you must also understand the story those numbers are telling.” Leaders must be able to answer the question, “What do you do to make the company grow?”

The “language of outcomes” is also critical in, say, a client meeting, Colantuono noted. For example, a chief operating officer is likely to be less excited to hear about the architectural program than the fact that their building will be delivered on time and on budget, and that facilities staff will be trained and ready to operate it on Day One.

The final tailwind Colantuono offered is to “invest energy in level-appropriate development or advice.” If one’s career path has stalled, she said, one must take the initiative to start networking, find a mentor that will earn sponsorship, build strategic outside relationships, and develop leadership and communication skills.

Arm Yourself with Data
Arguments for more attention to equitable practices in firms are stronger if a business case can be made, said Shepley Bulfinch president Carole Wedge, FAIA, in the panel session, “Making a Difference with Equity: A Business Approach.” Wedge cited the 2015 McKinsey & Co. study “Diversity Matters” that found that diverse companies are 2.5 times more successful than less diverse companies.

Meanwhile, the AIA is planning to study the relationship between design quality and diversity per the recommendation of the AIA’s Equity in Architecture commission. Emily Grandstaff-Rice, FAIA, a senior associate at Arrowstreet who chaired the 2015–16 commission and is now co-chairing the Equity and the Future of Architecture commission with Sheng, says the AIA wants to collect data on the makeup of firms and project teams that submit for its myriad award programs. “It is not a criteria for selection,” she stressed, “but we’re collecting the data. We’ll see in five to 10 years.”

Change the Status Quo
Aniela Unguresan, cofounder of the Economic Dividends for Gender Equality (EDGE) Certified Foundation, noted that the fundamental cause of workplace inequities “is our conviction that organizations are meritocracies.”

She offered five questions to spark dialogue about gender equality in firms: Where are the men and women in the organization? Does the organization proactively manage gender pay equity in both base salaries and base salaries plus cash benefits? Does it provide sponsors (someone with leadership capital who can vouch for another person) along with role models? What is the impact of the firm’s policies, practices, programs, and formal commitments on making its culture more inclusive and its numbers more gender-balanced along the pipeline? And finally, does the firm have those uncomfortable conversations on what needs to change in the organization?”

“Change is sparked by disruption,” she noted. When organizations start addressing equity issues, more often than not the “root cause was a disruption that stopped the organization’s ability to function”—such as a new CEO, a class action suit, bad press, or simply a probing question by a discerning employee.

The 2018 AIA president-elect, Carl Elefante, FAIA, a principal at Quinn Evans Architects—and the first two-time AIA WLS male attendee—ended the summit with a challenge to the energized crowd. “The only thing you need to be a leader is that you need to care about something. Go out there and be a leader.”