I was really close friends with Natalie de Blois, the first woman to be an Associate Partner at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill here in Chicago. Her career was really different than mine. She was super talented, but she worked in the corporate structure. She told me that once she and SOM Design Leader, Gordon Bunshaft, were going to a project meeting. He told her that he didn’t like her dress and she went home and changed it. That was not like Natalie; she was a super independent person. But she was willing to put up with the BS to get the rest done. Also, she had four sons, and I didn’t know women architects who had children. So, looking at her career was really fascinating. And then I had a friend, a colleague, Ken Groggs. He was one of the founders of the National Organization of Minority Architects. We were in AIA together. When I met him, I had just started my practice, and he had just started his. He and I were talking, and I was telling him how hard it was for me to find clients. I didn’t even know who to talk to. And he said, “Come over to my office.” I sat across his desk, and he took out his Rolodex. He said, “Okay, do you have a pencil? I’m going to tell you who to call.” He had been in government for years doing public work — being the client — and he gave me his entire Rolodex. That influenced how I practice architecture. I think it made me more collaborative. I recognized that it’s not what I can do — what I can accomplish — it’s convincing other people or helping other people. Frustrations, disappointments? One thing people may not realize about our profession is how many buildings you draw that don’t get built or how many interviews you go to for projects you don’t get. There are probably thousands of those disappointments on the way. Especially when you’re starting a practice, they can be extraordinarily personal. And so, yeah, I had the same hurt as every other architect. There are problems women architects have that are unique, and they come from the culture of the firm. Those things are real, and they affect everything that you do in the office. I don’t think it is as blatant now. I had a senior partner chase me around his desk, trying to give me a birthday kiss when I was 21 years old. It’s like, what do I do now? Even if you were pretty confident about yourself, what do I do now? And what did you do? I think I kept running! I think we went around and around and around that desk many times. I flunked my first college design course because the Teaching Assistant told me that he didn’t think women should be architects. I expected to have some resistance, and coming from this girls’ school, I was prepared to break all doors down, but I wasn’t expecting it to be that blatant. In a way, it makes you more resilient; it makes you more determined to do it. I had to appeal to the Dean and get my grade changed. Those are frustrations of a different kind. I’ve been in my own practice for 40 years and have a few accolades on my side. But as recently as four years ago, we were the design architect to a big engineering/ architecture project, and the architect on their staff told me, “Don’t talk in the meetings unless I tell you to.” He said the same to our partner in charge of the job, who was also a woman. So I thought, “Okay, we know what’s happening here.” The interesting thing, though, is that nobody’s willing to cross him because there’s still this sort of patriarchy that exists in architectural firms, especially ones that are more traditional. Beyond that, architecture is not easy. Basically, you’re trying to convince people to trust you with millions and millions and millions of their dollars. When people say, “Oh wow, that’s really a nice building,” I see what I didn’t get done. “Don’t they see that detail?” or “Don’t you see where they cut costs?” or “This piece is not as perfect as it should be.” I truly believe architects are optimistic because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t do this. Was there ever a point in your career where you had to just take a leap of faith? When I started my office, that was a leap of faith. I was Director of Design for a company in Chicago, and we merged with another company. I was pretty unaware, but I soon found out that there was a fight to predict who was going to be the director. I lost before I even knew I was in it. I got a call from a couple of the clients I was working for. They said, “We still want you to be our architect.” Honestly, I had never thought about opening a firm. I was more interested in the project than I was in building an office. And I remember thinking, “Well, maybe this isn’t such a weird idea.” I went to the bank and opened a checking account for my business — that was a huge leap of faith for me. What did it take to make it successful? That client, which was a local college, gave us a commission, and immediately right after that, probably a half dozen 15
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