Six-part series, each Monday from November 7, 2016 through December 12, 2016

While women make up over half of the field at graduation, they only constitute between 15 and 18 percent 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, the workshop teaches 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

“I finally found my voice and am growing in more ways than I ever thought possible. I reached my six month goal of being promoted four months early–and ahead of the regular promotion season. I’m extremely excited about this (somewhat) new journey and still shocked that it happened so fast!” - Brittney Prest, Dyer Brown Architects

“I've always been a typical woman who is afraid to ask for what she probably deserves, and feels guilty about it. When I went on maternity leave with my first child, I felt like I didn’t ask for anything beyond the bare minimum offered. Now I’m using the concepts I learned in the workshop to think about both what I want, and how I can make that into something that’s appealing for my firm. I feel more empowered and don’t feel like I’m losing my spot on my project the same way I did the first time around.” - Stacey Chapman AIA, Ann Beha Architects, Inc.

“I realized I was letting opportunities just come to me instead of choosing the career path that I wanted. I was spending a lot of mental energy on the things that I don’t enjoy and don’t want to do. I can see a clearer path to what I want for myself professionally in the next five years–and am now developing my mentor network to figure out how to get there.” - Jennifer McGrory, Perkins+Will

“The workshop actually has changed the way I have been speaking. I actually can be that fun, easygoing person, and still have that adult voice. I feel a lot less fear and anxiety, and I’m less afraid of the consequences than I used to be. My advice to other women? Don’t wait twenty years before you start this process for yourselves.” - Shonali Rajani

About Mia Scharphie
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 may be able to 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.