AIANY Women in Architecture Committee Meeting

*This meeting will take place as a conference call. Please join the meeting via this Zoom link.*

Dear Friends of the AIANY Women in Architecture Committee,

Do you want to be an agent of change? How can you contribute to improving the culture of our profession?

After our regular announcements for the April Monthly Committee Meeting, AIANY WIA is honored to have Mary-Margaret Zindren, CAE, the Executive Vice President at AIA Minnesota as our special guest speaker to present the Culture Change Initiative.

Changing the culture of the architecture profession is key to creating equity in the profession and in the built environment. The Culture Change Initiative is an intensive and ongoing effort to examine the current state of the culture of the profession, to define the desired culture, and to determine what will accelerate progress in achieving that desired culture. This 2-year-long research effort, led by AIA Minnesota and prompted by the #metoo movement, involved deep engagement with more than 70 demographically diverse architects, architectural designers, and students. The research leveraged insights from the AIA Guides of Equitable Practice, as well as systems thinking, complexity theory, adaptive leadership, and intercultural development. AIA Minnesota recently launched a national “community of practice” to take action based on this research, where community members observe patterns of behavior within the profession, experiment with systems interventions, and share learnings from those experiments. This initiative has been shared with dozens of firms, schools of architecture, and architecture organizations since its findings were unveiled in November 2020. This session and this initiative are not just for firm leaders – the work of culture change is everyone’s work and there are opportunities for all to contribute to creating the desired culture of the profession, for the betterment of the architecture community and the broader public we all serve.

A Q&A session will follow the presentation.

EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO JOIN US! We look forward to seeing you and thank you in advance for your participation and support.

Vivian Lee, FAIA and Rosalind Tsang, AIA | AIANY WIA Committee Co-Chairs

The committees of AIA New York are the foundations from which the Chapter positions itself in the field of architecture, whether through discussion, advocacy, policy making and development, event and exhibition planning, or other endeavors.

Committees meet monthly, usually at the Center for Architecture. AIA members, AIA associate members, and general public are all welcome to participate.

If you have questions or are considering attending a meeting for the first time, contact each committee’s co-chairs for more information at aiany.org/committees.