Time is valuable; why AIA?

As an emerging professional, I have found that participation in AIA has been invaluable to my personal and professional growth. While attending the University of Oregon, I was very active in the school’s AIAS chapter and found it to be an outlet for my passion for helping others. Architecture school is hard, and whatever you can do to remove unnecessary barriers and lift up your classmates makes it just the tiniest bit easier.

I am also passionate about the local community, and was appointed as director of Freedom by Design, the design-build community service arm of AIAS. I loved working with community organizations and campus leaders to design and build projects that addressed physical, socio-economic, cultural and accessibility barriers. After graduating, I sought a way to continue this work, and AIA provided that opportunity.

Through my AIAS network, I learned of an opening on the AIA National Associates Committee as the Utah State/Territory Associate Representative (STAR), a role that helped me bridge the gap between academia and licensure. Serving alongside 54 fellow STARs, I found a strong national community and became deeply engaged with the AIA Utah chapter, where I was eager to elevate the voices of emerging professionals and advocate on their behalf. The encouragement and support of my AIA peers were instrumental in my pursuit of licensure, culminating in the completion of the ARE and my licensure last June.

Now, as a licensed architect and director of AIA Utah Emerging Professionals, I remain deeply committed to sharing knowledge, expanding access to resources and reducing unnecessary barriers to licensure. According to NCARB, only 27% of architects are women, and only 20% of architects identify as a person of color, with only 1% of architects being black women. These disparities are why I continue to choose AIA and invest my time in service to the profession. Through advocacy, mentorship and community-building, AIA provides a platform to shape a more equitable profession and, in turn, a more inclusive built environment.

Favorite Utah space, built or natural:

Run-A-Muk Off-Leash Dog Area in Park City! It is a beautiful 43-acre dog park with over three miles of trails, and my corgi loves to run across the wide-open space like a graceful water buffalo on the plains.

Favorite book:

“The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath is a novel I often return to, and it has had a huge influence on how I view the relationship between my womanhood, my career and my mental health. My favorite passage is:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Mantra:

In college, we had an assignment to write a personal manifesto, which I still carry with me. It’s inspired by the 1991 Riot Grrrl manifesto, a seminal text for punk-rock girls. It goes: 

“BECAUSE design shapes lives, we strive for spaces reflecting all.

BECAUSE we wield the power to redefine spaces as stages for inclusivity

BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody in an environment that empowers the marginalized.”