Women Principal Group

Women Principals Group

Roundtable Notes
April 21, 2010

Purpose of WPG:
Women Owners come together to support, educate and promote ourselves within the greater design community and provide mentorship to other women in the industry of varying age and position..


Round Table Discussion Topics:
Listed below are categories of topics for our roundtable discussions
Practice
Design
Leadership / Community

Practice Topics:
Business / Financial Planning
Dee Rendleman, Gensler, Finance Director and Regional Operating Officer for Gensler’s Southeast Region, CPA
Business Model
Economy / Development / New Services
Demographic Trending
Legal / Liability
Sue Yoakum, Attorney, AIA
Marketing
Social Media
BIM
Flex Time - Performance Goals
HR / Office Policy – Office Hours, Part-Time Staff
MBE / WBE Certification
Building a Lifestyle or Firm

Design Topic:
Meet / Discuss Design with local and regional Peers
Katherine Lee Schwennsen, FAIA, Associate Dean, College of Design, Iowa State University
Julie Vandenberg Snow, FIAI, Julie Snow Architects, in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Rocio Ramero
EB Min, Min Day, Omaha, Nebraska
LEED / Sustainability
Competitions

Leadership / Community Topics:
Meet with local leadership
Annabeth Surbaugh, Johnson County Kansas, Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners
Kansas Women’s Business Center
Mentorship Opportunities

Life and Work Balance

We had a great turnout for last week's WiD Mentorship luncheon. Amy Slattery, founder of WiDKC and architect at BNIM gave a preview of her presentation about Life/Work Balance and the panel discussion she will be participating in at the AIA National Convention. She discussed examples of policies in practice by employers to promote the balance between life & work. What types of policies does your company have in place that works or doesn’t work?

Amy also discussed the shift in professional practice and mind set that we need to take in order for the design & architecture industry to become inclusive. What can we do as individuals and even on the business level to make this happen?

Click here to view Amy's presentation

WiD-KC winner of the best craft award!

This year WE CARE event was sponsored by Herman Miller, The John A. Marshall Co., and Geiger. The purpose of this event is to help 5-12 year olds make crafts to give their friends or family for Christmas.

We were helping the children make sock snowmen this year. We made 100 snowmen and Wid-KC was awarded the best craft award.

Thank you for all your support!

WiD-KC Receives National Recognition!

We have some exciting news to share! Women in Design - Kansas City has won a Diversity Best Practice award from the American Institute of Architects. Our submission will be recognized during various events at the AIA 2009 National Convention and Design Exhibition in San Francisco. The theme for 2009, The Power of Diversity: Practice in a Complex World, speaks to the goals of the Diversity Recognition Program. The submission will be on display for peers to read, discuss, and take back to their own communities.

Check out the submission on our website:

http://www.widkc.org/WomeninDesignKansasCityDiversityApp.pdf

WiD-KC

Women in Design: YouthFriends Mentorship Luncheon

We had a great turnout for last week's WiD Mentorship luncheon. Gayl Reinsch from YouthFriends came to speak about the many opportunities they offer, and I'm very excited about the interest generated. I think that Women in Design will definitely be able to contribute to this program!

There are many programs she spoke about. Several people were interested in the classroom speaking opportunity and/or the team mentoring choices. The program is very easy.....one just has to fill out the application an indicate their "needs" as in location, times, interest, and type of mentoring they want to do, and then the YouthFriends organization will locate the best fit.

Please remember to identify Women in Design towards the bottom of the application, especially if you are interested in the team mentoring program.

The website for these applications can be found at:
http://www.youthfriends.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html

AIA 08 Convention - Women in Deisgn

I met a great group of women in Boston and we're starting to make some national connections with other Women in Design organizations across the country.

One afternoon session was just devoted to WID stuff. I’ll try to give a summary here of everything.

Part One : The Work

Tamara Roy, Maryann Thompson, Jinhee Park, and Shauna Gillies Smith presented their design work – see pdf posted here: \\jupiter\Support\5210 Professional Organizations\WIDKC

As a woman architect, I’ve tried to influence how we work, when we work, and why we work. But does being a woman change the design itself? Should it? (Tamara Roy)

In her students work and in the profession Maryann Thompson thought she saw a difference in the way men and women design – she thought women (in a huge generality that she admitted to) were more often designing spaces where men were more typically interested in object making. Her work is a lot about the spaces between, and about creating active spaces.

Jinhee Park’s work was much more theoretical and simple.

Shauna Gillies Smith was with Martha Schwarz and now has her own company called Ground – very interesting landscape work. She skipped over a slide (and I didn’t get a chance to ask her about it) that showed a Quadruple Bottom Line: People+Planet+Profit+Culture(aesthetics) It was also interesting that she considered her work in landscape (which is typically about space) to be more about form making (opposite what Maryann Thompson had observed!).

We then broke into small groups facilitated by individuals for the panel and we just discussed why we were here, what we were doing in our firms and what we hoped to gain from this forum. We made good connections and I think learned that BNIM has a great policy for flexible schedules, which we should celebrate. Many were interested in learning from us. We are far behind many of these firms in terms of diversity however, Sheply Bulfinch has close to 50% women.

Part Two : Statistics & Strategies

A great presentation of the statistics that are available – more accurate data gathering needs to happen. It’s still quite disturbing the amount of women leaving the profession after graduation from a design school, and while the numbers are creeping up, minority numbers are actually DECREASING! I’ve asked for the powerpoint and will post it when available.

Part Three : Leadership & Call to Action

A panel discussion about leadership from the Boston Women Principals Roundtable (which I thought was pretty cool even existed)..

Becoming a Leader: self awareness, integrity, optimism, action.. “Your ambition & dedication must be stronger than your weaknesses and fears”

Being a Leader: communication (the ability to communicate a vision) creating your own future, building team trust (acting as a conductor), translating the vision of a client, knowing your firm’s “elevator speech”

Passing it on: Tell people how much you love your job, recognize leadership qualities, discern talent from politics, do not seek replicates of yourself, find people to complement each other, provide critical reviews and clear pathways to leadership, provide opportunities

We broke into several small groups again to discuss goals on the personal, firm and AIA level and then presented our discussions to the larger group. Kara and I represented BNIM (and KC) well and both presented for our groups. (Yeah!!)

Individual:

It was pretty cool to have Beverly Willis in my group http://www.bwaf.org/ - she’s one of the pioneering women in the last fifty years and has now established a foundation to expand the knowledge of women’s contributions to architecture. Her foundation organized the Women in Modernism exhibit at MOMA last year and is working on one to be in conjunction with the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit in 2009 at the Guggenheim. She asked that we all apply for grants and write more about our contributions.

Other personal goals: reconnecting with mentors, finding the edges for different project types, cross-pollinate and increase communication

Firm: (working on text)

AIA: (working on text)

On a related note, I just got a book signed by sarah susanka – author of not so big house. She has a new one called the not so big life… just read the prologue and it looks like a good one – we might think of bringing her to KC for a WID thing..

Amy

Family Friendly Policies?

A group of us from the 2008 Convention are working on a proposal for '09 on Family Friendly Policies.

Does your firm have a good one in place, and what have you found is successful?

(Amy Slattery)