Season 7 Launch, AMA with the Women Architects Collective

A Evelyn Lee. I'm Evelyn Lee.

B And I'm Janine Chastain. We're collaborating on curated conversations to explore how the industry of architecture is changing.

A Together, we'll find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. Welcome to Practice Disrupted. Hello, Liz, listeners. Hello, Janine.

B Hi, Evelyn. Hi, Disruptors.

A Welcome to season seven of Practice Disrupted. This is episode number 121, and I don't know about you, but seven has a special place in my heart. It was my jersey number for most of my high school career playing soccer. And even though we passed the hundreds last season, this marks three years since the podcast launch, so I think that's worth celebrating.

C Yeah.

B Happy anniversary, Evelyn. We are three years old.

A It's the youngest thing. It's the youngest thing right now that I'm fostering and growing, so that's kind of exciting.

B Yeah, no, I was reflecting during July that it was our three year mark, which is really hard to believe that we started this in 2020 and have produced as many episodes as we have. So I think that is a huge thing to celebrate. And you know, we have a lot of new listeners to the podcast, so we thought that today's episode, we could kick it off with an AMA or ask me anything. We've brought on our friend Joanne Loy, who is going to be a moderator for today's discussion and ask us questions about the podcast and our careers and help guide us on this ama. So welcome, Joanne.

C Thank you. Thanks for having me.

A So I'll do a quick brief introduction and then I think we will welcome you back later in the season as a full guest and talk about your path. I think your path has been really interesting and you're doing a lot to help architects out there. But anyways, so the more formal bio is. Joanne Loy is a licensed architect turned marketer in tech. She's also founder of the Women Architects Collective. We will link to that collective down in the show notes. You can join for free through Facebook and now has over 4700 members, which I didn't realize. Congrats on that.

A And on top of that, she also helps architects build their personal brands with clarity and confidence. So thank you, Joanne, for moderating this conversation. Take it away.

C Yeah, well, thanks for letting me ask you all the questions that we have because I've always been on the other side of a podcast. Get an interview. I've never actually asked people questions, so this will be my first time. But what I did is I sourced a bunch of questions from The Women Outcast Collective. So this is all questions coming from our members. I thought it would just be a fun way to do this interview for you guys.

B Oh, that's fun. Thank you.

C Yeah, they're all community questions. So the first questions that everyone had was what do you look forward to?

A Yeah, this is such an open ended question. Like what do I look forward to in my day? Or what do I look forward to in life or in the profession? No, I think right now actually immediately I'm looking forward to the start of school. I think all of the parents are feeling the summer session right now. And while Janine has had the wonderful. I almost want to say luxury of taking time off, I feel like during the summer parents are like double duty, trying to manage kids summer schedules. So that's what I'm immediately looking forward to. I don't know if that gets to the heart of the question, but we'll start there.

B Yeah, I'm not sure what angle to take this from because initially I was thinking we were asking about what do we look forward to in the podcast. But I guess in general. Yeah, as Evelyn mentioned, I'm kind of wrapping up a summer sabbatical. So July was a month off for me. I was working half capacity and just kind of trying to recharge creatively around the podcast. And so I'm. Right now I'm embracing my last week of July as that comes to a close. But I'll be looking forward to a couple of trips that are coming up in the next couple months for both work and for fun.

B So we're gonna go to Indianapolis in August and then I'm going to Hawaii in October, which will be fun. Oh yeah. And Evelyn and I will be in Texas in November.

C So many trips. And I love. You used the word creative recharge because that's. I feel like no one ever talk about that. But that's a very important thing to do when you're like constantly creating content for the podcast.

B Yeah, I, I definitely needed it, but I don't know if you experienced that too, Joanne. But you know, with as many shows as we've done, sometimes like my creative energy just kind of gets depleted and then so Evelyn and I have baked in some breaks just to help with getting that reboot started, which has been really good.

C Yeah, I do get that because I do create a lot of content and sometimes I just get so burned out from keep talking about the same thing over and over again. Like right now I am taking a break from LinkedIn after posting every day for A very long time. So I guess right now is also a good time for my creative recharge.

A Yeah, I did, I did the same. Like I had this goal that I set my for myself at the beginning of 2023 to post every day. And I did so consistently for like five months. And then I'm like, you know, it's okay, people are not going to go away. The algorithm does suffer a little bit when you don't show up as regularly, but I needed that break for myself. So.

C Yep, yeah, it's important. So the second question people had was about your MBAs and how old were you or where were you in your career when you pursued an mba? And I think people just want to know like I guess what happened or what makes you get an MBA in one one point in your career.

B I think I talked about this in an interview with Amy Stone that I had this notion that I wanted to get a business degree while I was still in architecture school and as an undergraduate. But when I actually decided was, I think it was about three years into my career. And so my story is that I basically, I tried to enter the profession. The recession was really terrible at the time and it wasn't a good time to be entering the profession as a new graduate. So that caused a lot of problems. And I ultimately, within that initial three year mark, decided that I wanted to start looking at MBA programs. And I toured all these different schools across the Bay Area to check out what the programs at Cal were like. Stanford, Golden Gate.

B I think I even looked at University of San Francisco.

A Not the Presidio. Just kidding.

B I think I looked at Presidio.

C I can't remember.

B I looked at them all. I ended up picking Mills because Mills College, which is a. It's changed now. It's been acquired by North Eastern, I think.

A Oh, I didn't know that.

B Yeah, was acquired as a satellite campus for Northeastern in Boston. But it was historically a women's college. Julia Morgan actually famously started her career doing some buildings on that campus and it was a great place for me because I was excited about that they were supporting women entering careers in leadership. So I would say I was early in my career. But now marks the 10 year mark since I started my MBA this year. And it was like fall 10 years ago that I was transitioning and getting ready to go to my orientation about this time of year. So it was a very positive experience for me and I really enjoyed it. How about you, Evelyn?

A So I, I was 20, I think I was 20. I was like 28 when I started my MBA program and ultimately I had hit this point in my career. I worked in firms, and then I had left to go work at Public Architecture, which was a nonprofit organization. I was having all these conversations with other nonprofits about the types of services that architects can provide. I realized between those conversations, between how involved I'd been in the AIA the five years leading up to that time that we were caught in the cycle. And one, I couldn't figure out why we were so poor at selling our services and explaining what we do as architects. But personally also, I hadn't found my place in architecture. And I was asking the broader question of is this still the right path for me? And I literally used my first year of the MBA to see if I was as passionate about other paths.

A So I actively. There's actually a lot of architecture and design and real estate related functions that happen at MBA schools. I don't know if most people know this, but there was literally like a green building club, there was a real estate and development club. And I actively, everybody's like, you're an architect. Why aren't you joining these clubs? And I was like, because I'm taking a break to see if there's anything else out there for me. And what I found stepping away is that I actually missed pieces of the profession and the people in the profession. So that was the realization that happened when I got my mba. But it was really, I hadn't found my place in the profession and I needed to use the MBA to see one, is there other places? And then two, kind of the full circle moment was, okay, what is my voice in the profession and how do I continue to engage even if I can't find my place? That was a really long answer, I think, for both of us.

C But that's good to know because I think, like you said, we don't know how to sell ourselves. And the business of architecture is not taught. And some people are thinking about getting an mba. And what would you say is the value RI for like a traditional practicing architect to get an mba and should they even do it?

A Yes.

B I'm trying to figure out how to answer this one. This is a big one to unpack.

C There can be a whole episode on the value of an MBA for architects in particular.

A No, it's interesting because I literally just sent over a draft to an article for my next archetizer article, and it was really all about why architects don't focus more on business operations. And I think, you know the bottom line for return the ROI on Any architect getting an MBA is architecture practice first and foremost is a business. And we don't spend any time or very little time learning about how to run a business. And in order for us to be able to build the projects that we want to build, I think we have to know how to run, run a business. And even that even goes to like ensuring that we're having the right conversations and speaking with our in a way that they recognize the value that we want to bring that we can bring to the table for them. So I mean, I think the ROI is tenfold and even if you don't pursue a full time mba, I think the profession at large would benefit from more professional development focused on business and entrepreneurship. You know, it's funny because if you consider like all of the professional development that architects usually engage in, they're all project related like building materials, building technology, how to manage better buildings, what type of delivery are we using on this, this project? But, but again, in order for us to even have those projects, it's, it's a business first.

B Yeah, good answer. One of the things I'm looking forward to this season is we're going to do some episodes featured around professional practice. And I'm taking our listeners to an event that's happening in Indianapolis next month that is actually going to be 16 professional practice teachers coming together behind NCARB to talk about the education of professional practice and architects. And what I learned last year being at this event was during one of our discussions, Phil Bernstein was up there talking about how professional practice is distilled down into one singular class that you take in your education in architecture school. So everything that you're supposed to learn about the business of architecture and managing practice, leadership skills, contracts, negotiations, is one semester of your entire educational experience. It's not enough like professional practice teachers are trying to cram in the requirements for accreditation that are tied to that class. And that's leaving a lot of additional content on the table. And you see, well, at least it's obvious for Evelyn and I the gap that's showing up in our industry where design education is so overvalued and so over promoted in terms of how we're training architects and the business elements of their education are so undervalued that it's disproportionate and it's unfortunately resulted in people who run practices that genuinely don't know how to run businesses which negatively impact their people.

B And while there are great architects out there that do know how to run businesses, I just think that to Evelyn's point, the education and the training that we could be providing around finance and management skills could be so much more robust to help further our industry.

A Also, the interesting thing is in research for this article and I need to look at it closer, but the NAB requirements are so focused around contracts and the legalese of the interaction between protecting architect. But you and I always talk about architects being risk averse and I feel like the professional curriculum is immediately set setting architects up to say like these are my limits even within practice. Because it's like here's what we're going to do to to protect ourselves. So we're going to wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and like that. That risk aversion is like built into the curriculum.

C No, I agree with you too. It's like the like you said, everything we know about practice is basically they just condensed it into this one little book that we all have read about practice in architecture. And it's hard for anyone coming out of school to understand how to like just practice architecture as a business. And it's always surprising to me because most firms in our industry are small firms. That means there are a lot of firm owners who are entrepreneurs, but they never learned how to be an entrepreneur.

A And they don't consider themselves entrepreneurs. I think is like the bigger thing, right?

C Yeah, they consider themselves an architect, designer and entrepreneur kind of always come in the last place in their identity. And I always like to think about a firm or in your career. There's like your projects, your practice and your personal development. And I love that you guys focus on practice and I kind of focus on the personal side. But how would you suggest someone who can't probably afford to get an MBA because it is expensive to learn about the business and practice. Of course they can listen to your podcast, but anything else that they can learn just in their day to day life on practicing a firm, I would

A say that there are a lot of different alternatives, even pathways within if you, if you really want an mba, there's a lot of different ways to do that. And we should probably actually link our conversation with Amy down in the show notes. It's a previous episode where we actually did a deeper dive on her path and how she got an MBA while she was a working mom. I think like a working new mom. So there are schools out there and this is true of Janine's. Well, I'm not going to talk about her executive MBA experience, but Janine was working full time when she got her her mba. And a lot of people that actually go to the school that I graduated from, Presidio Graduate School, are also working full time while they're pursuing their mba. So I think there's a lot more flexibility in the programs out there.

A They actually, for Presidio, they actually don't really truly care if you go through with a cohort of others. If you want to take one semester a quarter and that's all you can manage and it takes you X number of years to get your mba, they're fine with that. They just want you to participate in the curriculum. But yeah, I don't know, Janine, if you wanted to add.

B Yeah, I mean, I think so. A lot of people are like, oh, should I get an mba? And yeah, it's a huge investment. So think of it as, you know, if you decide to do an mba, that's really an investment of an experience to go deep into the subject material and kind of immerse yourself in the content. And for, I think based on what Evelyn said, and definitely for me, it was a very personal decision to do it. But if you're looking for less expensive, less life commitment around an mba. Where I started was with books, and I started picking up a new business book every time I was going through the airport or, or when I was going to a bookstore. I would just, like, collect business books on different topics that I wanted to learn about. And there are so many, and they're really great.

B You can also pick up Harvard Business Review magazine, and they also have an online subscription that you could check out their past articles. I actually think that their articles are a wonderful resource that any architect could check out to learn about key topics that are relevant to any business right now, is what I mean. And then of course, podcasts like that is one that I've always been very focused on as a free educational tool. Harvard Business Review has some podcasts. There's a great one called Anxious Achiever, which I like for all the type A people out there, even some of my favorite authors, including Adam Grant and Brene Brown, they have multiple podcasts that focus on different topics. So it's really easy to find topics that you're interested in. And I would just start with something that you want to learn about. Like, so maybe it's negotiations.

B Maybe that's your entry point into what a business education is. And you just start with reading about what books might I read to learn about negotiations or communication skills, and you'll find a ton of resources.

C Yeah, I love that because podcast is. Is kind of what I used to learn. Everything about branding and Marketing and made my career switch. And, like, sometimes you don't have to get a degree to learn all these things. Especially nowadays you can find everything online. So, moving on from your mba, the next question from our community is around the aia. We actually got this question a lot, a lot of. Especially for young architects.

C They might have just gotten their license or they're just figuring out, like, should I join the aia? What? Like, why? I guess for both of you, especially for Everlyn, like, why did you get involved in the AIA at the first place? And what value did you get? I love it.

A Why? Especially for Evelyn. Just kidding.

B Well, you're going to be the next

C AIA president,

A by the way. It's been so funny because everybody who reaches out to me is just like, oh, your schedule must be so overwhelmed. Like, the. The. Like, you might. I might as well still be a nobody at this point because, like, I don't. Like, like, staff is like, you're not going to get assigned anyone until next year. Like, I'm not.

A I'm not on the board. So I. I don't know. I. I feel like I was bracing for, like, a, oh, gosh, what's going to happen? And everybody else is like, she's getting inundated. And the truth is I'm. I'm not. I'm having to keep myself busy at the moment.

A I always saying this jokingly and lovingly, is Jason Del Pierce, when he was president of AIAS at Drury University. And I don't think anyone outside of Drury calls him Jason Dell Pierce anymore. It's just Jason pierce. But the AIAs experience was so great for me. And, you know, I knew that when I left architecture school. And you wanted to get a mentor for the. What was an idp, now axp, that you should actually. It's actually preferable to get a mentor who is not in your firm.

A And I was like, well, how do I find another architect? I went down to my local aia, and like any good AIA components, they. If you ask them for a committee that doesn't exist, they ask you if you want to chair that committee and form it. I turned them down at the time, I think, because I didn't think, how could I chair a committee? I just graduated out of school, but that was the beginning of my relationship for and with the aia, and it's been there my entire career ever since.

B Yeah, similarly, I got involved. Well, I was a student leader through the AIs in school, and then that tied me into my local AIA chapter, where they had a mentorship program where students and professionals were matched. So again, mentorship kind of was the common theme that pulled me in professionally when I was elected AIs president. You go to Washington, D.C. for a year. And I worked out of the AIA building, which is currently under renovation. So the AIs folks aren't there, but our office was there. And I got to work with the AIA staff and volunteer leadership for probably like a year and a half or was.

B It's a year term. But like, there's time, like leading into the position where you're shadowing as president elect. And so I had a really great experience learning about the AIA national aspect of aia. And then when I went to San Francisco, the mentorship program was again, kind of my anchor point into getting involved with my local chapter. Just trying to meet people and connect with people. And I would say that the best reason that I've stayed involved is because of all the people and friends that I've made. You know, I've made some of my, like some of my best friends live all over the country and they're members of different AIA chapters. And I guess I still believe that it's a great venue to prompt change.

B I know not everyone believes that, but I think if you understand how to navigate the organization, you can lead really substantial changes.

C Yeah. And I actually always wished I had gotten involved with.

A It is not too late.

C Maybe when I was in school, because I never, I guess no one ever told me, like, your network is actually really important when I was younger and that meeting people, especially as a student, because you don't probably get to meet a lot of people when you're a student, like in these organization really does help, I think, think in the long term for your career. And like speaking of just for younger architects or students, like, how can they get involved with the aia? Because that's like. I feel like a lot of people see the AIA and this a huge organization. There's so many things you could do. And it's like, how do you get started? Yeah.

A So I'll jump in. I hope I'm not misquoting membership. I believe your fifth year or your last year in an accredited program within school, you are allowed to join the aia. What is that? Hopefully at still a discounted rate as an associate member. So you can actually become an associate member before you even leave school if you're interested in having that title. But I think there's so many different. I would say there's so many different committees that are looking. That are actually really excited, I would say, thankfully, and I'm feeling it more of Generation Z and the younger generation coming into the profession.

A And they want to hear what you have to say about your path and about what you want to get out of your work experience. So reach out to your local chapter, see if there's a committee that you can get involved in. And then I think we just missed it. But every year around the second quarter of the year, there's a call for national leaders, and there are so many different committees. I was involved and chaired the National Associates Committee. So that is a committee that's really focused on those that are on their path to licensure and how do you support one another? And then I went on to chair the Young Architects Forum, which the technical definition of the Young Architects Forum is everyone licensed 10 years or less. We know that we could be kind of. I don't know if everybody who is a part of that category considers themselves young anymore, but those are really professionals that are trying to support, like, what's next, where to.

A What does the future of the profession look like? The Young Architects Forum, and they have representatives from every single state in the US and the international presence is growing bigger too. So there's a lot of different ways to get involved.

B Locally is a great place to start, too. You can get involved with your local component, whether that's in your city or state, and try to join one of their emerging professional groups. And if that isn't working, I would recommend going to an event like go to your regional conference for the state. Or like in the Southeast, we have Aspire, which is a conference that includes several AI components. Those are amazing places to go meet people and get the experience of why these events can be so meaningful. Go to conference next year in D.C. go check out a city and get a chance to go tour it and do architectural tours. It's really a fun time.

C Yeah, it's actually really fun to go to those conferences. And the next part of this whole question is kind of broad, but people were asking, what insights do you think from the tech industry or other industries could help to improve the profession of architecture? And this is kind of broad, but I guess any reason, insights you want to share from any conversations you have, even before.

A So here's how I'm going to approach this question. You know, there are so many experiences and I've used this. There's so many experiences that I've had in tech. And when I say I moved to tech, for those of you who are Tuning in for the first time or don't know anything about my background. I'm not in tech tech doing bim. I've left practice. I am on the strategic operations team at a company called Slack Technologies. And I'm focused on building a better employee experience that is inclusive of the built environment.

A But I'm actually not even on the real estate team at all, which is where I feel most architects actually land. They land somewhere in real estate and workplace services, on roos in a big organization. I don't serve as the owner's rep. I have completely like. But there are experiences that I've learned in my work that I think it would be so helpful for architects to adopt for one of them. Just like the onboarding process. I was lucky enough firm if I had everything I needed when I sat down my first day, right. I remember one company being really excited about the fact that they were able to get my business cards printed before I showed up at the office.

A But, you know, we could provide a much better onboarding process that could actually help employees or employers retain individuals. Because I think it's some astonishing statistic. Like people decide within their first three months, like whether or not that company is a stepping stone for their next opportunity or whether or not they feel it's a company for them to build a career in. So just little things like that. There's so much we can learn from other industries. I also feel like architects in many ways think that what we do is so special and unique to us that no one else, especially people outside the industry, can't come in and help and support what we do. From a business operations perspective. There's a lot of people that I've seen like hire like even a social media manager, and then they've quickly, like turned around and fired that social media manager because one, they weren't seeing the results, or two, they're like, I can do this better.

A They're not communicating in the voice that is really communicating our value. And I think what others and other industries do well is they really understand their limitations of where their expertise is and where they actually need help. I feel like in a lot of ways, architects want to do it all and they believe they can do it all well. Not to say you can't do it all, but we inherently, for some reason believe we can do it all well. And I think that that's where we struggle to say, hey, there's lessons that can be learned from others. There's other industries that are looking to really build and deliver innovative teams and are striving to be more innovative and are as design focused, if not even more design focused than architects. And we can learn from that.

C I think that's so true. It's like architects just, I think most of us can't let go of that control, especially on the practice side. Even though we don't know much about practice, most of us, but we don't take the time to learn. But also took the time to see if we can hire out and let other experts do what they're good at doing so we can focus this time on doing what we're good at doing, which is like designing and architecture.

B A really obvious example that I heard one time in a meeting that astonished me was this architect was saying how he didn't want to listen to the finance person because she wasn't a licensed architect and that they wanted to maintain authority over that decision making with the project management and the finance because ultimately they're the project architect. And I was like, oh man, wow, that is so weird. Like, first of all, you should absolutely every architecture firm should bring in finance consultants or hire someone on staff that understands finance because it's probably one of the weakest areas that we struggle with as an industry and there's so much to manage around it. But the idea that just because you're licensed means that you're going to have more insight than someone who's trained in accounting and finance is strange to me. Like, that is not a good way to think about managing your business. And you should be relying on people who have expertise in these subject matters to help expand what you're doing and, and doing it in a very collaborative way, but not in a thinking about it from higher arctical standpoint.

A But that's not an unusual reference point. Like, like, I wish, I wish that doesn't happen as much as it does, I guess is what I'm, is what I'm trying to say when I was also going to say like, I think what is funny is, you know, we complain all the time. I hear architects complain all the time about, to our clients about like they don't understand the process. Like, I can't pull a permit in one in 24 hours. Not because I can't do it, but because the building permitting office is like months behind. Right? Like, I can't, I can't get you through that process any sooner. No level of expertise can do that. And we turn around and we do that to our consultants that we hire.

A Right. Like you launched us out on Google Ads yesterday. Like, I want to See a client tomorrow, right? And we turn around and we say, like, we like managers, we have problems managing the expectations of our own clients, but then we expect the same level of performance, the unnatural same level of performance out of our consultants, which we actually, the same way the clients don't have an understanding of what we do. We don't have an understanding of the timing that it takes to see the fruit of those things, too.

C I've seen that a lot, especially working with architects on their brands and design. And because I think branding is part of, I guess because it's designing is still creative. And a lot of architects think they can also do it themselves. And that, like, makes me struggle a lot when I work with them. And I would send them a logo and that they might not like it, and after, like, many rounds of revisions, they would just sketch a logo and, like, send it to me and be like, this is the logo I want. And I think a lot of times architects, like you said, always say, people don't see the value in our profession, but it's also that we don't see values in other people's perfection in their expertise. And I think that's a mindset we have to change as a whole to really, like, respect and value other people's expertise so that other people will respect our expertise in reverse. And kind of like you said Everlyn earlier, like, you see that a lot more in the tech industry.

C We're much more, I think, willing to collaborate and find these other experts to help the business. But enough of my complaining about this. Another question from the community that it's kind of a bigger, deeper question that they were asking, like, is there anything that you regret and I assume is about your professional career?

A I would say that in the moment, there are absolutely moments where I'm like, I regret X, Y and Z. But if I look back at the entirety of my career and what got me here and all of the big decisions that I made along the way, I was really doing it in pursuit of where I want to head to. So. No, but I mean, I think, yeah, I think you make decisions all the time where you're like, oh, you know, maybe I shouldn't have joined the firm. Maybe I. Maybe I shouldn't have taken off so much time out of the profession to pursue my mba. You know, maybe my voice isn't as relevant. I think everybody is human and everybody in the moment will say, like, I really regretted this, but.

A But I'm very happy with where I am in my career. And I. I don't know if I could have gotten to this place had I not have traveled the path I did.

B That's exactly what I was thinking in response to this question. I was thinking, like, yeah, there's definitely things that if I could, I'd do differently. But without those things and going through the process of learning the things that I didn't know at the time or facing the adversity and hardship that I experienced early in my career, I don't know that I'd be the same person without those experiences. It's the process of going through those moments that has gotten me to this point where now I feel strong enough to run my own business, that I feel confident enough to talk about my experiences, to run a podcast and feel like I know what I'm saying. You know, for me, the recession really hurt a lot. And I told Evelyn heading into this season that I feel like a lot of things on the podcast have been reflecting back on those last 10 years. I've been trying to recover from feeling a setback in my career or feeling like I'm not. I wasn't as far along as I wanted, or I had some experiences that weren't so pleasant.

B And I just. It was hard. And it, you know, so it's like, it paints a lot of the things that I talk about on the show sometimes, or you can hear it in the inflection of the conversation. And that's because it was. It put me in survival mode for many years where I was struggling and it wasn't a great time, and I was fighting to stay in the profession, and I was living paycheck to paycheck, and I needed a paycheck when I got laid off, and I needed a paycheck when I changed jobs. But the lessons that I gained are also really valuable. So it toughened me up. It taught me an incredible work ethic.

B It taught me patience and persistence and speaking up for myself. It taught. It taught me how to have confidence in myself. It taught me professionalism, even the things that I thought I knew what professionalism meant. It refined what my professionalism is for how I show up now. It taught me how to deliver at a very high level, how to navigate uncertainty, how to be my own advocate, how to listen to my authentic self and who I am and to understand my own strengths and to lean more and more into those strengths as I go forward. So I think it's good. I can't change it.

B But I think the moments when I felt really like I was struggling the most, the only thing I wish I could do is go back as the person I am now and tell that person, like, a few words of encouragement and mentorship that I needed in those moments. But otherwise I think I wouldn't be here in the way that I am today.

C I love that. Like some. I think the best piece of advice anyone have someone has given me, probably I think it was a few years ago, is like, whatever decision you make in your life and whatever path you go on, like life will continue and somehow everything will work out and you become the person that you become just based on the path that you go on. And I think oftentimes we get stuck in making a decision and we're so like, especially me, I'm a very indecisive person because I'm so afraid of, like, what the consequences is. But like you said, we learn things from whatever path we decide to go on and just shape the experiences that we have. So, like bringing everything back to your podcast practice disrupted. Now that you're in season seven, can you tell us a little bit about how has the podcast evolved over the seven seasons since its beginning?

B Okay, so in 2020, we were living in a pandemic. I don't know if you all remember, it was a very strange time. So we were creating the podcast and we knew we were going to create the podcast independent of the pandemic. But because of the pandemic, it really, it was kind of like a lifeline to having something to keep us going during a really weird time. And the conversations were really, the context was how much the pandemic was disrupting architecture firms. So that emerged pretty early. And then when the pandemic was over, it swung back to like, how are firms kind of untangling? After the pandemic, I listened to our old podcasts and I can hear from an editing standpoint, like we could tighten things up for sure. Like I could go back in and easily edit a lot of our past episodes and make them a little bit cleaner.

B So if anyone's listened to our old episodes, the old format included an intro, the interview, and the close that we would try to recap. Like key takeaways from the interview. We have completely shifted away from that format. It was a time consuming. We would be recording multiple times just to get all the content we needed. We probably like over talked and didn't need as much content as we thought we did. And it just was really inefficient way to create content. So now what we do is we just do our intro and go right into the interview.

B It's all in one recording. And then we only ever seldom have to do some like re recording and touch up. But we've just learned a lot about how to make it more efficient, how to trust ourselves more in the creation of the content. And I think we become more comfortable as hosts because, like, I think Evelyn and I have grown in our partnership in this and understanding what each other is good at in interviewing. So we played our strengths and we understand our content more now that we've done so many episodes, we understand what the purpose of the show is and like the direction that we're trying to create in. What do you think, Evelyn?

A I think we've also gotten a little bit more relaxed in how we approach each season for our own benefit, if that makes sense. I remember. So Janine had always been this really. Janine had always listened to podcasts. And even, even as a podcaster, I, I would say that I probably am not an avid podcast listener. Trying to think to myself, I was like, is that like a bad thing to be? But I was a soccer player and not a soccer watcher, so that's. I don't.

B Similar.

A Similar context. Except for the Women's World cup, which I recommend you all tuning into now because the US Women are going after the title for they'll be the first team in history, men and women's side, to win three titles back to back to back if they do this. So pretty miraculous. So I do follow that. But anyways, this is where we could have tightened things up, but I feel like it's okay on this episode. But Janine, you know, came forward and she's like, we need to have like a storyline and a structure to the content. And for a while we of stuck to that. But now, and we also like struggled with like, oh, we're going to do 20 episodes, or, you know, how are we going to do 20 episodes? And then now I think it's much more like we are getting a lot of invites of people who want to be a part of the podcast.

A And Janine and I have to think about our audience and what they want and the type of messaging and the type of episode that we want to have. So there's been a few instances where architects come to us wanting to talk about X, Y and Z, and Janine and I will. They might be friends or we might have read something else that they've said and we're like, that's really interesting. We don't actually talk a lot about project work on the podcast, but, you know, can you Talk about how you run your firm. So I guess that's how the podcast has continued to evolve over time. I think we are also trying to be a lot more relevant with the stories that are coming out today or what's top of mind for people. So hiring and retaining talent, an impending recession, what that means and have those kind of topical conversations. We talked to the Architect Workers United about their efforts to support unions and firms.

A You know, so maybe we need to bring on someone from Snoheta at this point, but things like that too, I think we also try to bring to each season

C and for season seven coming up, like, what should people look forward to?

B I think one of the things that's important to me is always to kind of have intention behind our episodes, behind the season. And I think I'm really interested in getting us into more solutions. Like, one of your questions was, what can we learn from these other industries to help improve the architecture profession? I'm really interested in answering that through our episodes and getting more and more specific about what people can actually do. I don't like it when our episodes are too markety and just high level. And I think people are really looking for substantial content. And so I want to bring on interesting people who can help us answer those questions with depth.

A Yeah, no, I agree. I think, and we've said this so much, even throughout this episode, like, architects are really good about talking about everything that's wrong with our profession. And I think in order to combat that dialogue, it's really time for us to talk about what can we do to fix those things in a very proactive way. And the exciting part about. I feel like one of the most exciting parts about that conversation is people actually are willing and ready to try new things and are open to that. So I would, you know, so our hope is to kind of deliver on that energy and how we can really change and evolve practice going forward.

C Yeah, I love that because I think some of my favorite podcasts are always the ones that give you, like, step by step actionable advice instead of more high level, big picture content. So I'm really looking forward to that more.

B One of the things I was thinking about this summer also, Evelyn, is that, you know, both of our backgrounds kind of are from this direction of writing and narratives and storytelling. And like, Evelyn was a writer in her career for a long time or she was doing it in addition to her career and similarly, you know, doing marketing. And even before that, I was kind of doing things that tied to that, like through writing and journalism somehow. We've been able to translate that interest over into podcasting. And so I think that this is. This forum is very much about telling a story about our industry and where we're at and kind of reporting out on the things that are going on in our top of people's minds. It was really cool because we were at a 23 in San Francisco, and we had an architect from Colorado come up to us and tell us that they love the show because it's, like, reflective of what's going on right now in the industry. We're picking up people from different cities and even internationally that are talking about how they're approaching things that are happening in real time right now in our profession.

B So I think we will continue to try and take that lens of, you know, what's. What's current and what's. What are different people and what are different perspectives related to these issues.

C I think that's all the questions we had from the woman, I guess, collective.

A Yeah. So I think to end this. To end this. You know, Joanne, we mentioned that we would love to have you back on for a later episode, but you do have something in the work that I am very passionate about and Practice of Architecture is actually partnering with you on. So did you want to quickly, before we depart, tell our audience about the upcoming Mental Health Summit and how they can participate and be involved? And this is not just for women architects either. It's for everyone.

C Yeah. For those who don't know, I'm putting together the Mental Health in Architecture Summit. It's going on September 23rd, 24th. So hopefully when this episode aired, you should be able to, you know, join the. The summit. And the link is Mental Health Summit. Co. We have great speakers who are talking anything about mental health, work life balance, but also speaking of, like, practicing architecture, like, how do they build a firm culture that supports better mental health in their employee or even at the employee level? Like, what can they do for themselves to avoid burning out and overrun? Which is, as we all know, a big problem in our industry.

C And like we talked about earlier, like, how we always complain about things. And part of the reason why I'm doing the summit is that I want to help find a solution. And I thought, like, creating a platform or an event where people can talk about this and show what they're doing themselves in different firms, their own personal development on how they're dealing with their mental health issues, but also just generally like, work life balance. How do you find that balance in your career? So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. And Evelyn is helping us with the CU credits for Practice of Architecture for the summit, so we're excited to get that started.

A Thanks everyone for listening and be sure to tune into the rest of Season seven every Thursday we drop a new episode for the next 20 weeks. We'll take a week off for the Thanksgiving holiday, but be sure to check out other seasons in the meantime.

B Hi Disruptors, if you like the content from today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practiceofarchitecture.com podcast.

A Be a part of the conversation by joining us, our speakers and others in the community@practiceofarchitecture.com community.

B Our social media handle is practiceofarc. That's practiceofarch. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a DM and say hello.

A Thank you for joining us on Practice Disrupted, a podcast by the Practice of Architecture. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.