Ken Sanders - Voices of Design Leadership

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If you want to learn something, read about it. If you want to understand something, write about it. If you want to master something, teach it.

– Yogi Bhajan

One of the most rewarding experiences of my architecture career was co-leading three separate classes of Gensler University (GU), the global design firm’s accelerated leadership development program. In addition to collaborative workshops, office visits, and virtual meetings, students of each class heard from influential speakers who included clients, consultants, educators, and researchers. Today, most of those GU graduates are leading Gensler offices or their own firms. Helping others achieve success has been central to my leadership roles at multiple design firms and served as a key motivation for writing this book.

Recent events provided additional encouragement. Here in the US, we are finally confronting the lingering discrimination in our society and our shared responsibility to address it. But the architecture profession has much more work to do. The nation’s largest minority-owned architecture firm, Moody Nolan, was appropriately recognized in 2021 by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) with the Architecture Firm Award. MASS Design Group, an innovative non-profit focused on serving the underserved, earned the same award in 2022. Of the ten firms recognized between 2011 and 2020, however, over two-thirds of the Principals still leading those firms are white men.

Today, it is more important than ever that we showcase and learn from design leaders who look like the world, and who bring diverse life experiences and cultural backgrounds to their work. Individually, each of the sixteen people interviewed for this book stands on their own as a successful and influential design leader. Collectively, they express what design leadership in our profession can and should look like.

Prior to Gensler, I worked at four other exceptional design firms. In chronological order, they are: EHDD; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; LPA; and ZGF Architects. Of the five firms including Gensler, four were honored by the AIA with the Architecture Firm Award. One of the four has earned the honor twice and the fifth has earned the AIA California Firm Award twice.

I mention these awards not to burnish my own reputation; in fact, I have joked with colleagues for years that all five firms earned them while I worked elsewhere. I mention them to highlight my good fortune. I have had the opportunity to collaborate with – and learn from – hundreds of talented design leaders over the past forty years.

During that time, I have observed the most effective way in which design leaders can share what they learn is through storytelling. Relatable stories are what young professionals most often remember and apply to their own careers, more than company policies, guidelines, or checklists. When they hear personal stories from a design leader who inspired a client, seized an opportunity, discovered a key insight, made a difficult decision, or creatively overcame an obstacle, they better retain and more effectively leverage the lessons and insights.

And that is why the sixteen individuals featured in Voices of Design Leadership speak in their own words and tell their own stories. My authorship role is not to represent their points of view with excerpts, but to engage in conversations that allow each person to express themselves in open dialogue.

Among thousands of talented and influential design leaders around the world, how were these sixteen selected? In addition to demographic diversity, I sought to include a variety of leadership roles: architect, interior designer, research leader, urban designer, educator, sustainability advocate, and business executive. Some are founders or co-founders of their firms, while others are second, third, or fourth generation leaders.

The types of firms are diverse as well: for-profit, non-profit, single-discipline, multi-discipline, and client. They are engaged in a range of geographies, market sectors, and project types, and vary in size from less than 25 people to over 5,000. The two clients, Google and The Walt Disney Company, are substantially larger, with over 140,000 and 200,000 employees, respectively. The oldest design firm, Perkins&Will, was founded in 1935. MASS Design Group, the youngest, was incorporated in 2010.

The sixteen leaders are a blend of old friends and new. I began by reaching out to individuals who inspired me during my own professional journey.

Marsha Maytum, for example, I have known for over four decades. We met at EHDD in 1980, where I started my first job after graduating from UC Berkeley. Marsha made a lasting impression with her talent, generosity, and gracious personal style. Today she is a Principal at Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects.

I met Wendy Rogersin 1987 while I worked at LPA, when she joined the firm as a new graduate. Wendy has always been passionate, curious, and eager to embrace new opportunity, and her journey from intern to CEO at the same firm is an inspiring one.

Sharron van der Meulenand I worked together at ZGF’s office in Portland, Oregon, during the 1990s. In 2019, Sharron became one of the first women partners in ZGF’s eighty-year history. As her responsibilities expanded over the years, she always maintained her authentic leadership voice: smart, modest, funny, and optimistic.

Three design leaders I befriended during my seventeen years at Gensler. Andre Brumfieldis a Principal and Cities & Urban Design Leader and currently serves on firm’s Board of Directors. Barbara Bouzawas co-Managing Director of Gensler’s Los Angeles office and is now President, Walt Disney Imagineering, at The Walt Disney Company. I met Michelle Kaufmannwhile she worked at X, the research subsidiary of Google, and we collaborated on two projects for Google Real Estate and Workplace Services (REWS). Today, she is Head of R+D for the Built Environment at Google.