Date: February 19, 2021
Location: Virtual
Led by: Juliane Trindade, Assoc. AIA, LEED Green Associate | Page Southerland Page & Rebecca Meyer, AIA Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, LLP
Session Downloads: CKLDP 2021 Session 01 Leading Together

The first CKLDP session, titled ‘Leading Together’ explored what leadership is and what impacts positive leadership can have on the individual, project team, firm, and community with insights from various points of view. The program consisted of three separate presentations. The first focused on determining what each scholar’s individual leadership style is, and how to analyze and apply the results from the LSI test. The second taught and empowered individuals to recognize and advocate for equity in the design profession through leadership outside of traditional office roles. The final presentation was a leadership roundtable discussion where scholars will be able to listen and discuss with three accomplished architects their path to leadership and how it applies to their project teams and firms

The first part of session was led by Cable Clarke, President of Clarke Consulting in Washington, DC., which is an international consulting firm, founded in 1994. Two weeks prior to the session the Clarke consulting sent the CKLDP group an online self-assessment to complete. Mr. Clarke explained that LSI was created to understand oneself and defined the Circumplex, a graphic tool within the assessment that showed test’s results, measuring 12 specific patterns or styles of thinking, behaving and interacting.

The second presentation was led by Pascale Sablan, FAIA, NOMA, LEED AP, an Associate at Adjaye Associates. She is the 315th living African American female architect in the United States to attain her architectural license. She is the 2020 President-Elect of the National Organization of Minority Architects, the 5th woman to hold this position of leadership. She is also on the AIA NY Board of Directors.  She is the Founder and Executive Director of Beyond the Built Environment, LLC, positioned to uniquely address the inequitable disparities in architecture.

Ms. Sablan began by introducing herself and giving an overview of her career and the presentation. She highlighted one incident that fueled her desire for change in the industry. Google results for “great architects” showed no results for women or African Americans. Ms. Sablan described how this disturbed her and how issues like this gave birth to the Say It Loud movement.  Her goal was to inspire the next generation of architects and leaders so she came up with new ways to engage with local communities by making the exhibits more visible. She concluded by encouraging the class to participate in some of the different platforms that advocate change.

The last activity of the session was a leadership round table discussion led by a group of panelists:  Anna Barbour, AIA, LEED AP BD+C; Michael Marshall, AIA, NOMA, NCARB; and Robert Perry, AIA.

Anna Barbour, AIA, LEED AP BD+C is a Senior Project Manager at Beyer Blinder Belle in Washington, DC. She is an active member of the AIA NOVA, and is the current Co-Chair of the Women in Architecture Committee.  Michael Marshall, AIA, NOMA, NCARB, is the design director and principal of Michael Marshall Design. His career spans almost three decades. Marshall volunteers his time presenting lectures on architecture and serving on architecture advisory boards. Robert Perry, AIA is a principal at Page Southerland Page. Robert has over 37 years of experience on both national and international projects.