What is the Most Effective Way to Make Change?

Gina Ford, FASLA is a landscape architect and Co-Founder of Agency Landscape + Planning. She is a thought leader, educator, writer and activist for women in the profession. With two decades of practice under her belt, Gina highlights the value of landscape architecture and public spaces. Her work has been awarded by American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Planning Association and AIA, among others. She is also the recipient of BSA’s 2019 Women in Design Award. We met Gina for morning tea to chat about her multitude of experiences as well as what keeps her up at night these days. Take a look at what Gina shared with us below.

Gina Ford, FASLA

You have been a proponent of breaking barriers for a while. How did you get into this?

I had the great pleasure of going to Wellesley College – and there, being part of a community of women – I lost any sense that I should be treated lesser than anyone. Usually, bias and exclusion are so subtle. Living and learning in an environment where gender bias is removed from daily life makes it all the more visible when you are in the world.   

I joined Sasaki when I graduated at 21 and became a principal at Sasaki when I was 31; I was a new mom too. I was the only woman in the landscape principal group at that time. It was December of 2007, and we had an off-site strategic retreat to talk about a future vision for the landscape practice. During a break in the agenda, we had a restroom break. I was in the women’s room by myself, and next door I could hear all the others – all men – talking and laughing. I had this moment of real loneliness; Here I am all by myself. So, I went back in and said, “Maybe it should be part of our vision to talk about how we diversify this group.” It unleashed a lot of discussion about how frustrated they were, that they had tried hard and still could not retain female leaders. They didn’t understand what they were doing wrong.

From there I started doing research. I did a series of discussion forums at the office about diversity and women’s issues. Slowly it became other things - learning from other firms, benchmarking, leadership development, and developing research. I did that for so long and I’m proud of all the work and change we made. But, at some point, the advocacy grew bigger and more national. I lost the desire to push against that existing system – and, as usually happens with women leaders who advocate for other women, there was backlash. So, Brie and I, steeped as we were in that conversation as women principals at Sasaki, started imagining what it would be like to exert our talent and energy instead into making a practice MADE by and for women to thrive. And once we saw it, we needed to make it. Agency.

Backing up a little, how did you get into architecture?

I come from a family of makers - my dad is a blues musician and artist; his whole family are artists and actors. My mom is from an Italian-American family with a really strong work ethic; she did a lot of domestic crafting - stained glass and sewing. When I was a kid, I did a lot of sewing clothes and costumes, and I think about these domestic crafts, the craft of making, was a way into architecture. I knew I wanted to do something creative in college. I also knew I could do math, so I found my way to architecture.

I went to Wellesley and graduated with a BA in architecture and architecture history. It was a Wellesley - MIT joint program, and I got my job at Sasaki through my MIT professor who thought it would be a good fit. I joined Sasaki mostly to do CAD work in the landscape department. And then I was there for 21 years. I went for my Masters in landscape architecture at Harvard in 2000 which Sasaki supported. I went back and became a principal in 2007, practiced for the next 10 years. Three of those years, I served on the executive committee, the highest form of leadership at that time. I wouldn’t trade a minute of many of those years. The work was exciting and the firm felt energized and introduced me in various ways to the team that is now at Agency, including my business partner Brie, who was also a principal in urban planning.

One of the things I have always loved is teaching and practice. When I was a new principal, I was also teaching at Harvard and RISD, then in Nebraska and now in Austin, Texas. Brie teaches at Harvard now, and we welcome this as an important part of our culture. We feel it is the best way to get to know the next generation; their work habits and strengths.  

Becoming Principal as a new mom and only 31 - wow! What challenges did you face?

I was a hard worker, talented, and I felt there was a real eagerness to try and figure out a way to make a working mom / principal role work. The leadership was very flexible with me my first 2 years. It actually helped to be a principal with a new baby. I felt a little more empowered to make my own schedule. I remember doing my first big project as a principal at the firm and doing conference calls at bath time. Finn would be distracted in the bathtub and I would be on the call muting and unmuting when the water was running. I also had a pretty wonderful network - my mom was local, my husband’s retired now, and my siblings are big supporters. I think the motivation of being the only woman for so long and especially a young working mom, which was unusual there, kept me motivated. I felt responsible to show others it could be done.

And when I started doing research to show why women were leaving, I slipped easily into advocacy mode. It is a motivating thing – to feel like you are fighting for a cause. There is a bigger purpose. I was grateful that leadership – for a long while – felt like they were in a place where they could receive that feedback.  And I thought, “I can show them what it will take to help women stay in this work environment.” At the same time, I thrived on building a team - hiring and bringing in others, both men and women, through my teaching.

What projects stand out as having truly shaped your practice?

My first win as a principal was a riverfront master plan in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was supposed to be a small project but turned into one of the biggest in the office at the time. While we were there for the kick off of the project, the city had a major natural disaster and flooded. We were present for that – including getting evacuated from our hotel. The project turned into a great blessing during the recession – for the next four years, we had a big team at Sasaki helping with all parts of the city: infrastructure, flood protection, urban design, and community engagement. I couldn’t have planned any of that; it just happened. It was a game changer for the practice and for my career.

That’s how we came to be in the resilience planning and design market before it became commonplace. In Cedar Rapids, we ended up suggesting 1500 homes be moved out of the floodplain, and ultimately they were. They started building this flood system that will probably take decades to build. Our newness to the market led to some real innovation. We probably wouldn’t have tested some of the ideas we tested with the community if it were “business as usual” – but we were new to it, curious, hard working and passionate. We still struggle on projects to try and convince authorities to move those at risk. There is little political will to be that disruptive.  In Cedar Rapids, the scale of the disaster made it easier to act. Now, it is used as a precedent for managed retreat.

I can trace almost every other project and opportunity to then, and in some ways connect it back to what we learned during that process. All of the riverfront work that followed in Council Bluffs, Chicago, and today in Nashville and Minneapolis – all of the parks planning and community engagement work we have done in Denver, Detroit, etc. – owes something to Cedar Rapids. It was during that project that I met Brie, my business partner and feminist soulmate. She had just joined Sasaki as a planner and was helping with the neighborhood recovery work.  

What changes in the profession have you observed?

There was a great article recently about why it is important to have older women in leadership. At one point in Sasaki, I was the most senior female principal, and I was 35. Women could make it to the top there, but it always proved too precarious over time. For female mentorship, I had to look for women mentors outside in academia. A lot of women that I have relied on for most of my professional development are professors. Since then, there has been an amazing sense of progress. When I left Sasaki, I was proud that we went from 1 or 2 women principals to 9 when I left. My last principal retreat was in an office in downtown Boston and I remember going into the washroom on a break to find it full of women – Isabel, Katia, Christine, Caroline, Brie and Lan Ying – talking and laughing. It gave me goosebumps recalling how different that felt than just ten years earlier, when I was by myself.

The amount of conversation and advocacy has really changed. When I first became a principal, I talked a lot about these issues and I felt very scared still. It just felt on the edge pushing too hard, you know. But, Sasaki welcomed my opinion so I offered it. I look now how much more broadly the diversity and inclusion movement is cast and that is really exciting to me.

What keeps you up at night these days?

The thing that keeps me up at night is wondering what the most effective way is to make change. What will I do with this one life? How much change can I make? The differences between a smaller more focused practice versus a big firm are stark. I often question myself if I’m doing enough. I think it’s important right now to have different models. At Agency, we are doing a lot for the first time, but in some ways, much of what I most feared would be hard is relatively easy. Running a business is challenging – but not like rocket science or brain surgery.

Having a practice where your values lead means that you always know the answers to questions like, “Should we do that?” There is no debate, no long periods of building consensus. But, as we are building a business for the first time, how much can we revolutionize a model that we have never implemented before? Any which way, we are grateful everyday for the team, for the work, and for the clients and communities we have the pleasure to work with. We are really happy we are doing it.

Brie and I have received our fair share of belittling comments, which we always tell each other about and chuckle. When you leave a big practice to start a small one, you get a lot of comments such as, “Oh, so you want to spend more time with family?” or “So, you’re going to do more local work?” We always have to say, “No, we are going to do the same projects – just going to do them our way.”

One of the women in our WxLA group told me her biggest regret was not fighting back against such infuriating narratives. After 2016, I stopped being shy (if I ever was!) to call out toxic behaviors and hostile work environments. There’s this cloak of confidentiality that puts us in this place where our stories never see the light of day, so we can’t collectively learn from them and address it. There's this calculus of how to not burn any bridges and be a good professional while also knowing there are very real things that I don’t want other women to go through and I want to be able to share that.

Have you found any advantages to being a woman?

I don’t want to stereotype that women are better than men at some things, but I do think we are better at some things. In my line of public work, I think women have a real advantage because we are cultured to being more collaborative and better communicators, organizers, and table setters. In public work, that’s a profound set of skills for working with and engaging communities. It always felt like a super power to us, but often is made to seem lesser than “Big D Design”. Don’t even get me started on that patriarchal nonsense.

There is also more of an ability to share ideas and work collaboratively. This is part of why Brie and I did what we did. We always felt like we were working in public work in a big firm as a women-led team, but we could never claim the only strategic advantage of being a woman run business in the public sector which is getting credit for being a WBE. So, this was a huge leap forward for us because now we could actually be a woman led business; I think that’s a super advantage.

There is another advantage to being a woman that we can think about this environment in a different way that works for a different kind of lifestyle that is more flexible. Having experienced the challenges of balancing career and family means that I have a higher level of tolerance for experimentation. At Agency, we are 12 including 1 artist in residence, and 3 remote teammates (one in Kennebunk, another in Kansas and myself in Austin for the semester). We have one person that lives in Newburyport that works remotely one to two days a week. We are super willing to try things! We don’t keep timesheets. We don’t measure people’s time that way. It has been really freeing.

Do you have any finAL tips for emerging professionals?

I always tell students to go to a place out of school where they will receive sponsorship. That’s the most important thing. I think too often students just go for the name of the firm and the job. Without having a real sponsor, it is kind of impossible, especially for women. I tell them, “Be demanding and know that you are worth it”.