Hello, my name is Abi Brown, and I am an architect in Washington, DC. I spent the last five years serving on the AIA National Young Architects Forum. I was chair of the YAF in 2021 and community director before that in 2018 and 2019. Evelyn is re-envisioning how we create value beyond by thinking about how we broaden the tent to include people not working in traditional firms.
I think this is really critical, and that hasn’t been a focus of AIA. I have friends who have stepped out of traditional practice and are doing things that are architecture adjacent, and I know that they often feel really isolated. They don’t feel like AIA is welcoming for them.
Finding new ways to reach out and ensure that we’re supporting people who are doing different things is crucial. It’s critical to have that diversity of thought in the institute to keep it relevant and to keep it from feeling like an organization that only looks inward, having someone like Evelyn with an outside perspective.
Is important to keep us fresh and thinking about things we’re not seeing every day in our firm and the work we do on projects. But what’s even more critical is her long track record of bringing that perspective to different groups within the aia. I look forward to what Evelyn brings to the AIA as a 101st President.
