From navigating day to day work/life challenges to mapping strategic career goals, charting your professional development, assessing periodically, and correcting your course can increase the likelihood for sustainable career satisfaction and success. During this quarter's workshop, you will gain insight from architect leaders who have used career mapping tools to navigate goals, options and challenges within their own career trajectory. You will learn and apply tools for strategic goal setting in your professional development as well as techniques/ideas for the immediate challenges of reconciling work/life conflicts which have more impact than you think. Working together, participants will map these macro and micro career mapping approaches highlighting connections between individual goals, prioritizing in both personal and professional contexts for realizing a rewarding and positive results.

Join us at AIASF on Thursday August 17th.

Registration is $25 for General Admission and $20 for AIA Members

Light Food & Beverages will be provided.

CEU's - 1.5 Credits

#EQxDChartYourPath Event Agenda

6pm - 6:15pm Registration and Networking

6:15 - 7pm Intro & Panel Discussion

7pm - 7:35pm Charting your Path Workshop

7:35pm - 7:45pm Report Back & Conclusions

7:45 - 8pm Networking and Clean-up

Meet the Career Mapping Mavens!

Jill Bergman, AIA, ACHA, EDAC, LEED AP

Principal, HDR Inc.

Jill is a Principal at HDR, and a leader in healthcare facility design. Jill holds her architecture licensed in California and is an ACHA board certified healthcare architect; and that is a good thing because she tried and failed at a career in standup comedy. Her background is all healthcare projects, mostly large firms, mostly large projects, mostly medical planning. She attended Clemson University for both her BA in Design and M.Arch, Architecture + Health program. She believes architectural design is a team sport; that hospitals are small magical cities; a short, well run meeting is a thing of beauty; and the intersection of data and buildings will grow exponentially in the next few years. In her past, she has taught residencies with the bay area LEAP Architects in School program, served on the AIA San Francisco Board of Directors, the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health National Board of Directors, chaired the Scholarships and Fellowships Committee for the AIA/Academy of Architecture for Health.

Lilian Asperin, AIA

Associate and Project Director, WRNS Studio

Lilian values a firm culture that embraces collaboration, connection to the community, risk taking and fostering talent. As an Associate and Project Director for WRNS Studio’s San Francisco office, she helps lead the design process and build teams that deliver aspirational outcomes. Lilian attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with honors. After completing her studies, Lilian worked at architecture firms around the Bay Area, including Stanley Saitowitz, the City of San Francisco’s Bureau of Architecture, SOM and NBBJ. A leader within the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), she organized the first-ever Hackathon for MOOC’s as part of the Pacific Regional Conference and continues her involvement with the organization as Council Program Chair. Lilian also acts as Co-Chair of AIA San Francisco’s Equity by Design, a call to action for both women and men to realize the goal of equitable practice and communicate the value of design to society.

Workshop Moderator

Annelise Pitts, Associate AIA

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

Annelise Pitts is a designer with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in San Francisco, CA. In her design work, she has collaborated with clients and interdisciplinary design teams on programmatically complex design and planning projects. Recent projects include the UC Davis Large Lecture Hall, and campus planning for Dominican University of California.  As a member of the Equity by Design core team, and the group’s current research chair, she is responsible for the development and oversight of the Equity in Architecture Research Project. She looks forward to sharing the results of the 2016 survey at this year’s symposium. Annelise spends her time outside of work exploring California’s ski mountains, running and hiking trails, and traveling with her husband.

Learning Objectives - 1.5 AIA CEU/LU

1. Participants will be able to analyze data from career dynamics survey results, identify issues and frame problem statements related to pinch points in career dynamics.

2. Using examples shared by session leaders and question prompts participants will develop methods for articulating and negotiating professional development goals with senior leaders/employers

3. Participants will determine how to identify resources and prioritize workflow into immediate, short-term and long-term milestones.

4. Participants will assess work/life conflicts and learn strategies to better navigate challenges in their professional and personal lives.

This year, EQxD will be featuring Quarterly Topics for deep dive rumination, discussion and action!

Save the Date Wednesday, February 8th 6pm-8pm at AIA San Francisco

Disrupting Implicit Bias: Workshop Summary (#EQxDisruptBias)

Everyone has implicit bias. We develop our biases through our environment, the people we engage with, and the culture we grow up in. These interactions shape the expectations we have for ourselves, colleagues, and even potential clients. Thus, bias can have a major impact on the design process and desired outcomes in our profession. Additionally, reflecting on our own “Bias Blind Spot” is critical to building empathy and foster a culture of open communication. We will explore implicit bias in design and practice through research and storytelling. We will examine our “Bias Blind Spots” in small groups, and share resources to increase our awareness of bias in our workplace and foster strategies for tangible change.

2017 EQxD Chair Julia Mandell, AIA will be the moderator of the panel with a fresh roster of panelists to provide diverse insights on how to Disrupt Implicit Bias in their work. Rosa Sheng, AIA will provide a brief intro to topic to get things started.

Meet the Panelists for #EQxDisruptBias

Helen Bronston - Associate and Architecture Discipline Lead at SmithGroupJJR

Helen serves as Director of Architecture for the San Francisco office of SmithGroupJJR, where she is an associate.  Raised in Wisconsin, she holds a BA in Anthropology from Yale, and an MArch from Harvard, where she was awarded the AIA Adams Medal. Over her 26-year career she has worked exclusively for non-profit educational, healthcare, and governmental organizations, for that is where she has felt she can do the most good for the greatest number of people. She is currently serving on the board of directors for Joan’s House, a newly-forming shelter for transgender women who have been incarcerated. Her experience transitioning gender as an architect was profiled in the San Francisco Business Times on 12 June 2015. Unable to leave school behind, Helen is also very slowly writing a PhD dissertation in History of Architecture at UC Berkeley.

Sandra Vivanco - Principal, A+D, Architecture+Design

Sandra is founding principal of A+D, Architecture+Design, a San Francisco firm characterized by design excellence as well as innovative community-based processes. Published widely, Vivanco is sought as a Latino cultural expert with profound knowledge of modern art and architecture in Latin America. A Professor of Architecture and Diversity Studies at CCA, she is a Mission resident, an avid dancer, a mother of two public school graduates and is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.

Michael D. Thomas, Esq. - Associate, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.

Michael is an Associate with the global law firm Ogletree Deakins in their San Francisco office.  He represents employers in all aspects of employment law.  He also works with employers on diversity and pay equity issues.  Michael has studied mindfulness, meditation and yoga with a focus on healing and self-regulation.  Recent publications include “Preventing Workplace Violence by Examining Trauma and the NFL” which incorporates mindfulness, meditation and body awareness in preventing workplace violence, and “How Employers Can Root Out the Influence of Unconscious Bias in Compensation Decisions.”  Recent speaking engagements include: Inclusion 2.0, “Intergenerational Trauma, Diversity and Inclusion;” Tech Inclusion Conference, “Awakening to Inclusion;” Association of Corporate Counsel event at Google, “Best Practices for Promoting Fair Pay;” Kaiser, Continuing Legal Education, “Implicit Bias” panel and lecturer, Berkley School of Law, “Mindfulness to Disrupt Suffering and Bias.”  He has a B.A. from Bucknell University and a J.D. from Boston College.

Ming Thompson, AIA - Principal, Atelier Cho Thompson

Ming is a principal of Atelier Cho Thompson, a San Francisco-based design and concept firm, engaged in the art of architecture, interiors, graphics, brand strategy, furniture, installations, and exhibition design. Ming and her partner Christina Yoo formed their firm with an aim to transcend the conventional boundaries between these disciplines, resulting in a richness borne of the cross-pollination of ideas and strategies from across this spectrum of design. Ming studied architecture at Yale University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design and has worked for large and small firms around the globe.  As a practicing architect, Ming is focused on bettering human experience through design; she insists that good design must occur at all scales, from the building to the furniture to the logo, and everything in between.  Outside of architecture, Ming serves on the Board of Trustees of the Yale-China Association and the Alumnae Council of The Madeira School, and teaches at the California College of the Arts.

Panel Moderator 

Julia V. Mandell, AIA - Architect at Wilson Associates

Julia is an experienced architect and planner with broad project experience in architecture, urban design, and landscape design. Currently designer and project manager at Wilson Associates, a design/build/development firm in Oakland, Julia’s recent work focuses on innovative commercial and residential projects that serve as urban catalysts. Julia is also very involved with AIASF’s Equity by Design, serving as the group’s 2017 Co-Chair. Previously, Julia worked for four years with SWA Group on large-scale urban design and landscape work in China and Houston, Texas. She received her Master of Architecture from Rice University and her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Columbia University.

Implicit Bias 101 Presentation

Rosa T. Sheng, AIA - Senior Associate, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, AIASF 2018 President-Elect

Rosa is an architect with over 23 years experience, that has led a variety of award-winning and internationally acclaimed projects, from the aesthetically minimal, highly technical development of the glass structures for Apple’s original high-profile retail stores, to the innovative and sustainable LEED NC Gold–certified Lorry I. Lokey Graduate School of Business at Mills College in Oakland, California. As founding chair of Equity by Design and President-Elect 2018 of AIA San Francisco, Rosa has led Equity in Architecture Surveys in both 2014 and 2016, authored AIA National Resolution 15-1 in 2015, and served on the Equity in Architecture Commission in 2016. She has presented nationally and abroad including Boston, New York, Lisbon, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Seattle. Equity by Design has been featured in Architect Magazine, Architectural Record, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, TEDxPhiladelphia and KQED/NPR.