This previous weekend, Lakisha Woods quietly left her place as EVP/CEO of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), simply three years after taking up the function. Woods introduced her resignation in December at an in-person all workers assembly, moments earlier than a champagne toast and annual vacation get together.
“There was an audible gasp,” stated one present staffer who spoke to RECORD anonymously. Lower than three months earlier, the AIA Board of Administrators issued a press release of help for its embattled chief, and she or he appeared to have weathered the storm that had begun in early 2024 with allegations of mismanagement. Additionally in September, the AIA introduced a Nationwide Ethics Council (NEC) investigation directed towards “varied stakeholders” for trying to “publicly discredit the EVP/CEO and wider Board.”
As a signatory to a letter by former presidents of the AIA that was vital of Woods, Jim Lawler would presumably be a goal of this investigation, however he and different former presidents say they’ve by no means been contacted by the NEC. “The ethics committee is meant to check unethical actions by architects in observe or in service,” he says. “It has nothing to do with criticizing authorities. Criticizing authorities is what the members are imagined to do. Members are supposed to determine, is that this affiliation working for us, or is it not working for us, and if not, why?”
Present workers members estimate that between a 3rd to 50 % of AIA staff have turned over on the AIA throughout Woods’ quick tenure, culminating in early September when the AIA laid off 16 % of its workforce, some 28 workers members. “The ambiance has been considered one of concern and dread,” stated the nameless staffer. “You may’t have as many layoffs and re-organizations over the course of a three-year interval and never get up each single day questioning when you’re going to have a job. I don’t know if anybody on the board realizes how demoralized the workers is.”
However some actions Woods took as a frontrunner had been widespread with workers, in accordance with individuals nonetheless on the AIA, together with offering end-of-year bonuses, a remote-first work coverage, and providing half-day workdays on summer time Fridays. However filling the funds hole left from the sale of AIA’s profitable contract paperwork enterprise earlier than her tenure turned Woods’ defining mission. The sale has been roundly criticized by members and workers. “As soon as they moved towards promoting these paperwork, that was it,” says Phillip Neuberg, chair of the AIA’s Public Architects Data Group. “The cash stream was off.” A press launch asserting Woods departure performed up her means to proper the AIA’s fiscal ship by rising top-line income by 41 % and authoring the group’s first balanced funds since 2020, in addition to spiking membership rolls over 100,000 for the primary time ever.
However members and workers felt that Woods’ push to run the AIA extra like a enterprise and enhance income went too far and was selectively utilized. “The truth is that we’re not a enterprise, we’re a membership group, and a variety of these selections didn’t put our membership first,” stated the nameless staffer. “Cash has been the one factor ever expressed as a motivating issue.”
A slate of recent membership classes voted on on the 2024 conference was additionally meant to spice up income by providing AIA credentials to hundreds of thousands of individuals. The AIA anticipated new tutorial and worldwide membership classes to boost $1.2 million in membership income. The potential viewers for the proposed Internationally Licensed AIA member class (which might lengthen AIA membership to internationally licensed structure professionals with a sound non-U.S. structure license) was reported to be 2.7 million individuals. AIA membership was not satisfied. A tutorial class drew about 30 % help. The worldwide class couldn’t attain 10 % help. One member took the ground on the assembly to boost issues that the Internationally Licensed membership class was “successfully promoting the AIA credential.”
Modifications to how the AIA operated its Data Communities (program particular curiosity teams) that made them much less impartial additionally alienated a few of its most energetic and vocal members. Throughout Woods’ tenure, members and workers say the AIA assumed management over Data Communities’ means to fundraise for their very own programming, in an effort to “standardize” them in order that they might be “simpler to regulate and reign in,” in accordance with Etty Padmodipoetro, a member of the Board Data Group (a liaison between the Data Communities and the board) and a board member in 2023. Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, 2024 Chair of the Public Architects Data Group, says this meant they’d “no means both to boost or spend any cash on our personal.”
Way back to 2023, Data Communities had been advised that “we’ve got to investigate and re-evaluate every thing,” says Padmodipoetro. There was a scarcity of transparency over how budgeting protocols labored, how they could change, and the way a lot leeway Data Communities must elevate their very own cash. Finally, she says the AIA backtracked and did enable some funds autonomy. However the specter of this modification, given the lengthy lead time of conferences and occasions, made it troublesome to plan something, and AIA workers and management additionally floated the concept of consolidating or eliminating some Data Communities, making a “sense of hysteria,” Padmodipoetro says.
“The AIA is doing a variety of good issues,” she provides. “It’s simply that it must be very clear in exhibiting that it’s member-centric, relatively than company.”
“Just about every thing is being monetized,” says Public Architects Data Group member Ed Gauvreau.
Maybe essentially the most constant disconnect reported by members and workers has been that nobody in AIA management has defined, past baseline fiduciary duties, why or how operating the AIA like a enterprise would translate into higher member providers and a extra profitable AIA. “I don’t assume there was an efficient connecting of the dots, each internally to workers and externally to membership, about how elevated income and operating the AIA like a enterprise would profit the occupation,” stated one other nameless staffer. It is a important cultural shift from a non-profit skilled affiliation based in 1857 that historically put programming and schooling for members above boosting its personal income, and dissent shouldn’t be stunning.
Some really feel Woods pushed change too rapidly. As a result of the AIA is a membership group, Woods didn’t have direct management over the those that comprise it, that generate its occasions, programming, and information base. She did not safe membership’s help for the modifications she wished to make, and her place turned untenable. When she encountered resistance to dramatically altering the tradition and ethos of the establishment, she flailed into head-scratching tactical errors, just like the abortive NEC investigation, that additional sapped her credibility.
Former Architect of the Capitol Stephen Ayers took over as Interim EVP/CEO on Monday. The AIA declined to touch upon Woods’ resignation or its seek for her everlasting substitute.
Zach Mortice labored at AIA Nationwide from 2007-2014
