Perspectives: A Strategic Framework for Providing Equity and Inclusion in your Firm and the Design Profession – AIA Learning Units (LU) 1.5

Ever wonder:

• How to develop key strategies for equity and inclusion in your firm?
• What actions might make your Diversity Focus Statement more robust?
• How your firm might more effectively mentor or partner with small, emerging, or diverse firms?
• Or vice versa, how as a small firm might you approach larger firms?

Then join us for this exceptional presentation!

CannonDesign is a design practice where strategy, experience, and social impact converge. Their work focuses on Living Centered Design, an ethos that seeks to help people, businesses, communities, society and the planet flourish. As an employee-owned company with over 1500 team-mates, 18 offices, and design services across building typologies and sectors, they recognize that their firm culture must align with their design aspirations.

To support their goals for firm culture and design impact, they have developed a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Strategic Framework that outlines five areas of focus and action around which they have developed an infrastructure of internal and external initiatives, groups and policies that put their DEI Strategic Framework into action: cultivating inclusive leadership; strengthening inclusive systems within their firm; fostering diverse and inclusive external relationships; building and developing a diverse talent pipeline; and promoting a respectful climate within their firm.

In this presentation, Kate Thuesen, Director Business and People Partnerships, and Alison Lesniewski-Laas, Associate Practice Director for Integration in the East Region, will share an overview of the CannonDesign DEI Strategic Framework and why CannonDesign has and continues to invest in DEI practices. They will discuss how CannonDesign implements initiatives and policies that put the DEI Strategic Framework into action and the beneficial outcomes that can be measured for the firm. They will highlight specific DEI programs that engage both internal employees and external partners. They will share advice on how other firms may initiate and implement successful programs that support diversity, equity, and inclusion within their own firms and the design profession.

AIA Learning Objectives:

1. Identify and explain how CannonDesign’s DEI Strategic Framework strengthens firm outcomes by fostering organizational cultures that support psychological safety, equitable access, and well‑being design professionals.
2. Evaluate and apply specific DEI initiatives and policies that create more inclusive systems and project workflows, reducing bias, and inequitable impacts in both workplace practices and design processes.
3. Assess and measure the tangible outcomes of DEI programs—including improved collaboration, reduced barriers to participation, and more inclusive stakeholder engagement—and connect these outcomes to enhanced HSW performance in the built environment.
4. Develop an actionable plan for initiating or advancing DEI programs within a design practice that promotes equitable professional environments, strengthen community relationships, and contribute to healthier and more socially responsive design solutions.