Wishing you the happiest of holidays!

Writing these articles is validating. Brainstorming with my helpful writer/ editor helps me reconnect with why I do what I do. It clarifies my way forward, and most important, it helps me connect with you. More than an editor, Jennifer Lader, a writer with the Architect Marketing Institute, calls me every few weeks with a broad suggestion for a piece. She has come up with the same idea for other architects in our elite international Mastermind group. As we individualize it for me, I start to feel enthusiastic about the “why”.

After we work to make the topic my own, either I will take off writing about it or Jennifer will send me a draft to rework. A gentle editor, she lets me express things in my own voice. This comes naturally to her; having started out studying anthropology before becoming a writer, she wants to know how other people see the world. 

Jennifer helps find the stories that would matter to readers. She wrote a press release about transforming my business and contacted the AIA’s Architect Magazine. The interviewer focused on what it was like being a young female architect starting out in 1980. This led to some grateful letters from younger women facing the same issues. It was a thrill to be in this national magazine and know that I’d encouraged other women in the profession. 

An article you may have enjoyed was called “Metrowest Magic.” I never would have thought about writing about magic, but Jennifer’s topic reminded me of how a renovation design which actually reduced the square footage became more than the sum of its parts. The end result was better than the clients had imagined. 

For “Lessons of Trees and Sun: Light in Architecture,” Jennifer asked me to come up with a phrase people know me for. I thought of how my young daughters and their friend teased me for always exclaiming about the beautiful light in the trees on the way to school. What would that have to do with architecture? We found the connection and the resulting article got published in an anthology. 

Jennifer encouraged me to tell that goofy story about my kids, just as I encourage you to express who you are in the places where you live, work or play. I could go on about the process of drawing out your narrative for a design, but for this moment, with Thanksgiving here, Jennifer deserves the limelight and thanks. 

What is the story that permeates your family or organization? Let’s find it together ... and turn your story into a beautiful project. “The result will be better than you can imagine, every time.”