According to the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, 27% of the architect's population in the USA are women. This statistics support women at MSR design in Minneapolis: The majority of the company's employees are women and its property is 62% female.
The CEO of MSR, Traci Engel Lesneski, says that the company has always campaigned for the inclusiveness. In the year in which MSR was founded in 1981, only 3% of the architects in the United States were women, so that change would be slow. When Lesneski became a principle at MSR in 2006, she was the first and only woman in the ownership group. Lesneski, who became CEO in 2020, is now one of four women with ownership shares.
“We have no programs that are specifically available for women,” says Lesneski and realizes that the 40-employee company is Klein. “But in general we try to give women the opportunity to lead the architect or to be the architect who designs the exterior of a building – which sounds like a little thing, but in our profession there is an bias that female architects work on the interior and male architects take care of the envelope.
According to Lesneski, the company reacts to the needs of its employees in terms of labor policy. “If someone wants to take a vacation, we are very courteous,” she said, “and it includes all genders.”
Another somewhat more formal initiative within the company is a focus on the development and training of managers.
“The skills we want to develop are what many people would call soft skills, which are often considered to be more feminine – the ability to connect with people, listen, communicate well, put themselves in the shoes of another person, lead with empathy,” says Lesneski. “Sometimes our projects can be controversial and at the end of the day not all ideas can be recorded. The more trust and cooperation we have, the better the entire company is.”