Celebrating Women at MV+A

As part of our effort to celebrate Women’s History Month here at MV+A, Project Architect Prova Zaman-Haque convened four of our esteemed firm Associates for a candid conversation about their experiences as women in the architectural profession and how their experiences at MV+A have informed and contributed to their professional development.

Below is an abbreviated transcript; please note that minimal paraphrasing and [bracketed] insertions have been utilized for readability. To watch the full discussion, please click HERE to visit our YouTube channel. Also please visit our other various social media feeds over the next few weeks as we plan to post out-takes from the entire discussion there as well.

Intro by Prova Zaman-Haque

In honor of Women’s History Month, I wanted to celebrate the women I work with directly and who have been amazing mentors for me at MV+A since I have joined. It has been a pleasure to sit with four of our Associates to talk about their career journeys, struggles and learnings. They spoke about their experiences working in the industry and offered advice for future generations of women considering a career in architecture.

Prova Zaman-Haque: What’s it like been for you working at MV+A? Women make up 60% of our team, your thoughts?

Eleanor Krause: In terms of the culture here at MV+A, no one is treated differently because they’re a woman or because they’re of different ethnicity or religion, or anything else. I think one of the reasons why we have such an incredibly diverse office is because it’s not an issue. We don’t go looking for that. We look for good people who are going to fit into our culture and who are going to do the job.

I will offer one little anecdote about a younger woman who is a Project Architect here. She does not have children. But I can remember her telling me that she knew that she had found a home at MV+A when Kalinda was promoted to Associate while she was pregnant.

The fact that her pregnancy had nothing to do with how she was doing her job and what her future in the firm was. And I think that speaks volumes to how MV+A responds to women, and to everyone in terms of their lives outside the office. Same thing with men who take time off when they have a baby. I think there’s just a sense of treating everybody the same and rewarding good work.

That’s how we try to build that culture and the firm. I mean there are four of us on this call who are Associates and there are 8 Associates in the firm. Half are women, and that wasn’t by design. That was just because there’s a lot of good women here, that’s it.

Kalinda Gathinji: It’s the only place I’ve ever worked where the stress is just from the work itself; it’s not from the people, so it’s just like a very easy place to work. And for me, it’s been a really good fit and they’ve been very supportive of me. I’ve done extracurriculars like teaching at Catholic University. I will be having my third child here. I had my second one here as well. Through the years I’ve been very well supported and the flexibility we have really enabled me to achieve the balance of life that I was looking for while still.

Ameneh Amirhakimi: One of the things I wanted to say is that I heard someone say that it’s life changing for someone where they work because it kind of bleeds into their entire life situation. One of the things that I mentioned in one of my mentor chats was that whatever is good for you is ultimately good for MV+A. So, this is the approach we’re taking when helping and supporting people in the office. We build our own careers, so we are able to shape our own careers. We encourage people here to look beyond and look for opportunities that are created here. They are celebrated.

Prova Zaman-Haque: As a female leader, what has been the most significant barrier in your career? Have you been confronted with gender-related roadblocks in your career?

Carole Twitmyer: There were a few kinds of blocks that I experienced. There was a firm that I worked for where literally I was told to my face: “well we don’t support or mentor women because they just leave, we just don’t.”

I want to talk about one statistic that affected me during the recession in the 90s. The firm I was working at during that time laid off twelve people. And I think we probably were one third women overall and 2/3 men in the firm. They laid off twelve [women]. You could say that, yes, some of those women probably were the weaker links, so I suppose, but not by that percentage. Do you know what I mean?

When I was first qualified, you had to take a whole weekend apart and then a lot of times travel to another city because they didn’t offer the test in your city at that time. It’s so much easier now to take it piece by piece. Not that the test is any easier but taking piece by piece gives you an opportunity to retake a piece like within a month. You used to have to wait a whole year if you didn’t pass one portion of your test. So that part is definitely more flexible and definitely working in everyone’s favor to get licensed.

Kalinda Gathinji: As a working mom, and having gone through this career path, many of my friends who were very talented architects coming out of school and entered the Architecture profession did end up changing career paths when they had kids. It’s a bit stereotypical but it is somewhat accurate.

A big part of that is that women are not well represented in the higher ranks of most architecture firms—despite the fact that there tend to be a lot of women down at the staff level. This does two things. First women in the leadership often makes decisions without the specific needs of women in mind. Second, it makes it seem like you can’t ask for things that you need, even though at a lot of places you probably can [ask for] more than you think. One example of this is that maternity leave is never spoken about in an interview, so every woman of childbearing age walks into a new job having no idea what the benefits are, but no one will ask that in an interview either because you don’t want your future boss to even think you are considering having a baby. So it isn’t part of the negotiation equation. It makes that specific benefit far less competitive.

For me personally, I went back to get my master’s degree because I wanted to have options. I thought that once I had a family, teaching at a university might offer better balance with trying to raise kids, so that was always my off ramp. Then Covid happened. For the first time in my career, I have the flexibility to handle all my responsibilities. I can work a little less one day and work longer another day so that I can show up at the school and engage more in the day to day for my kids, or I can work from home if I have a sick kid and keep things moving on my projects without the stress of negotiating who has the most important meetings that day. This has been a complete game changer for me and my family, and it has allowed me to stay fully engaged in my career while at the same time being the mom I want to be at home. It gives me tremendous hope for women in the profession going forward.

Clockwise from Upper Right: Prova Zaman-Haque, Kalinda Gathinji, Carole Twitmyer, Ameneh Amirhakimi, Eleanor Krause

Prova Zaman-Haque: MV+A’s leadership team is half women. Why do you think companies would benefit from having more women at the top? How does MV+A benefit?

Carole Twitmyer: It is really important to see someone else ahead of you doing the job that you would like to do. It’s not just so you can learn to do it, but also because it’s just possible to imagine that so for yourself.

Ameneh Amirhakimi: One of the main attractions for me coming to MV+A was that they had a female Principal who I looked up to and she was my mentor for years and I was able to think of her as my role model. It is important to have mentors when you graduate from school and want to get into this profession.

Architects don’t get paid as much as some other professions do. I think having worked in like three different firms in the US, each firm had their own different culture, but in each one of them I had good role models and the last one in MV+A was like the perfect situation. She had been raising a kid as a single mom and worked hard to where she got to. So that’s a good example that I had in my mind.

I am hoping that we continue to create a more dynamic work environment for people who start here because this is going to be what they’re going to look for when they join.

Kalinda Gathinji: At MV+A the culture is just very healthy. As an employee, not just as a woman.

As a manager, I draw a lot on my experience as a parent. Like when you’re a parent, you have to pull yourself out of the situation and try to see the whole picture and not get so focused on the day-to-day or at the moment so that you can keep your head clear in tough situations. That has helped me a lot just in terms of when I’m in different situations or difficult conversations.

I think now that I’m a manager, there’s so much of our job that’s just logistics and trying to figure out [the pieces] if I’m trying to get from here to there, what is the sequence of things I have to organize to get there? And it’s not that different from what I’m doing to try to get out of the door in the morning, there’s a lot of logistics and sequence and all of that that I’m doing.

That problem solving skillset does get applied in a lot of different ways, and having to be able to multitask and address lots of problems [all] at once. You just kind of figure out how to triage and work from there. And everyone here can do that easily as well as I can; but I don’t know if women are actually more equipped to do that or not. I think there is stuff that I’m doing every day that kind of helps reinforce those skills.

Prova Zaman-Haque: Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?

Eleanor Krause: I would say first, don’t limit yourself to go forward. Jump on every opportunity you’re given. If someone asks you for something to be done, be the first one to put your hand up.

Carole Twitmyer: Advocate for yourself. I think it’s one thing that women don’t do or weren’t taught to do, but you must advocate for yourself. You must ask. You will never be given something unless you ask for it. Asking the question just gives you the opportunity that it might happen. Doesn’t mean it will, but it might so.

Kalinda Gathinji: I’m with Carol on the advocate for yourself. The other thing I would say is just get licensed ASAP. Knock it out. And then that way, your career is open wherever you want to take it from there.

Ameneh Amirhakimi: Don’t put yourself in a box before other people push you in. And because we’re in this day and age that we have to be a little bit more conscious of long-term plans like where we are going. Read two books, Essentialism and Effortless. And those are going to be your role models. You need to find out what is essential in your life and try to do them with least amount of effort. Efficiency in your life is going to help you in your career. Doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman.

We can see the progress we’ve made in the industry and, at MV+A, thanks to our inspiring and resilient team of women who break barriers every day, and we continue to commit to bringing diverse voices to our table to ensure a more equitable environment within our firm and more innovative work for our clients.

—Prova Zaman-Haque