Six-part series, each Monday from March 21, 2016 through May 2, 2016 (BSA Space is closed on April 18, 2016)

While women make up over half of the field at graduation, they only constitute between 15 and 18% of licensed architects and firm leadership.

Take part in this 6-week ‘bootcamp’ to learn the skills and frameworks necessary to face this challenge. During these practical sessions female designers will learn to celebrate their value, how to communicate and negotiate with confidence, and be proactive about career ambitions.

Created and facilitated by landscape architect Mia Scharphie, The Build Yourself+ Workshop is a highly personal training in the skills and inner confidence that female designers need to succeed in the industry and allied professions.

Through a unique, challenge-based format, we teach skills and frameworks for:

advocating for yourself;
identifying the value you bring;
communicating and negotiating with confidence; and
being proactive about your desires and trajectory.

The Build Yourself+ Workshop is an opportunity to invest in yourself and your professional and personal development, while building a network of supportive women doing the same.

Click here for a link to the syllabus (PDF).

What participants are saying about the Build Yourself+ Workshop

“A major strength of the workshop was supportive environment that I felt immediately when walking into the room. Another strength was the challenge model that allowed us to constructively tackle a series of issues over the course of the workshop. I found that helpful and encouraging.”

“This course was a kind and refreshing reminder that self-improvement can be challenging but doesn’t have to be a grueling horrible act!”

About Mia Scharpie
Mia has worked for the landscape architecture firm GroundView, and the SWA Group, as well as for Public Architecture, the public interest design firm based in San Francisco. Passionate about design as a tool of social equity, in 2012 Mia cofounded Proactive Practices, a research collaborative that identifies and publicizes emerging business models of socially entrepreneurial design, and she recently served as the Northeastern University Architecture Department’s first fellow, investigating emerging models of innovative design practice.

Mia is trained in facilitation around issues of gender and in cross-cultural contexts, and has spoken extensively and run workshops across the country including at the Association of Community Designers, and A Better World by Design, as well as the University of Pennsylvania and UT Austin. Mia received her master in landscape architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and her bachelors in Urban Studies from Brown University. Her writings on issues of equity in design have been published in the Christian Science Monitor and GOOD.

For those who qualify, 12.0 LUs are available for full attendance.

*Workshop Payment Details
Professional development funds exist at many companies, and we encourage women to find out whether sources of support for taking this workshop exist at your practices. We are committed to making the Build Yourself+ Workshop affordable for any woman who is committed to making this investment in herself. To that end, we provide partial subsidization for women who need it to take the workshop. We ask anyone requesting a scholarship to send us a request in writing telling us why the assistance is needed and what price you can afford. We ask that you request the minimum scholarship that will allow you to attend, so that we can accommodate others who are in need.