To recognize and celebrate the 43 AIANY women who have accomplished the important milestone of obtaining licensure last year, AIANY WIA Committee held a special event after the February Committee Meeting, with “In Dialogue With… Newly Licensed Women Architects of 2020.” Following the monthly committee announcements, we kicked-off with a virtual toast, and featured eight women from the “Class of 2020”. Tania El Alam of Perkins Eastman, Lisa Martinez, AIA of Grimshaw Architects, Irina Matos, AIA of Workshop/APD, Wells Megalli of Deborah Berke Partners, Alicia Rebadan, AIA of Arquitectonica, Theresa Saad of Hart Howerton, Jenna Wandishin, AIA of Moody Nolan, and Arielle Siegel Weiss of Urbahn Architects, all shared wonderful tips and stories of their unique paths towards licensure. They spoke about several challenges encountered, lessons learned, advice and resources for the licensure journey, professional and personal aspirations. Recurring advice from the night was perseverance, not being discouraged by hurdles and failure, and leaning on communities at the workplace or the several ARE study groups in the city and online, for support. And not to forget to have a nice breakfast sandwich before a group study session and to be rewarded with a yummy Shake Shack burger after an exam, whether you pass or not…

A highlight from the meeting was a presentation of gender parity trends in licensure over the past 20 years in New York City. Arielle Weiss, of the AIANY WIA Media Communications Team, compiled and shared graphs and charts comparing licensure statistics from the five boroughs. These are included with the AIANY February Committee Meeting Agenda. The graphs and metrics can also be viewed on her blog here.

The valuable ARE resources shared by the recently licensed architects are:

We thank our eight volunteer architects for being so generous and sharing their journeys with us!

The AIANY WIA February Committee meeting agenda, Around Town & Related Events, Topics, and Good Reads can be viewed and downloaded here.