Women's Leadership and Gender Equity in Architecture

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a membership organization for licensed architects with over 90,000 members and 200 global chapters. The AIA advocates for the value of architecture and provides professional development resources to its members. Many mid-career women architects leave the profession or struggle to rise to leadership positions. As a result, the AIA enlisted a Capstone team to develop new resources and programming that will provide greater membership value to its mid-career women members. The team worked collaboratively with the AIA to put forth recommendations, which include leveraging their national conferences, web portals, educational modules, and network of component offices. The team also delivered an environmental scan of women’s leadership best practices and a final report with recommendations for the AIA to implement over the next two to four years to bring greater leadership training, awareness, and support to their mid-career women members.