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Dear AIA Pennsylvania Members,
AIA Pennsylvania is proud to announce our new 2020-2025 Strategic Plan to lead our profession and our industry forward. Approved by our Board of Directors, this wide-ranging Plan will continue to position us as the voice of our industry looking forward with health, climate change, technology, communications, and legislative strategy initiatives, while taking the current pandemic and social justice movement into our planning. As we all navigate economic uncertainty, banding together to support our membership is now more critical than ever to ensure the health of our industry to take on the most pressing challenges of our time. Engaging a broader base of member and community perspectives remains a top priority, whether a sole proprietor, small firm, between employment or part of a large firm; we want to hear from you. From Erie to Philadelphia, this Plan strives to position our profession, as an integral part of our society, to not only bounce back but to bounce forward.
Our revised Mission Statement, our organization’s reason for being, is to advance, inspire and advocate for the profession of architecture while providing for the health, safety, and welfare of the built environment and the public. Our future-seeking Vision Statement is to lead our industry with vision for all issues important to the profession, particularly with regards to energy, the environment, and equity of architecture as a life-sustaining force. Our Value Statement, our intention, is for our profession to deliver quality services and tangible benefits to Pennsylvania members and the architecture profession so that we may improve the value of the built environment. These will be our three main goals over the next five years.
This long-life loose-fit model is based upon the sustainability tenet that the Plan can grow and adapt while providing a core focus to our efforts for at least the next five years. In the short term, we are all dealing with the stressors of a pandemic, a recession, recognition of structural inequity, and ongoing climate change impacts. In the long term, we are planning to more fully apply the talents of our profession – our ability to engage, integrate, design, think systemically, innovate, plan, think strategically and look humanistically at the impacts of our built environment and to provide proactive and steady guidance to a world that needs it.
This five-year Strategic Plan addresses relevant issues of the profession of architecture, embracing technology, lessening carbon, increasing equity and diversity, designing for resiliency, promoting systems design, advocating effectively, communicating our value, providing relevant education, thinking in the Triple Bottom Line and providing useful advice, among others. We are working to in step with national AIA’s powerful Climate Action Plan; Equity Diversity and Inclusion commission; and Framework for Design Excellence.
On behalf of the AIA Pennsylvania Board of Directors and our Strategic Plan Task Force, we are excited to share this Plan and move towards implementation, as our strategies, measures, initiatives, and performance metrics are benchmarked, planned and tracked in support of our goals. Our nearly 3,000 members in Pennsylvania and our many alliances are routinely touted as a national model of an effective chapter, so expect to hear more and consider joining our efforts as we move forward.
Marc Mondor, AIA, LEED Fellow
2020 President, AIA Pennsylvania
AIA Pennsylvania wants to hear from you! Touch base with Stephen Swarney, AIA Pennsylvania Executive Director, to share your feedback and ideas at sswarney@aiapa.org or 717.514.0106
PICTURED ABOVE | AIA Pennsylvania members and staff gathered for a strategic planning workshop facilitated by Bob Harris, CAE // SEATED ROW | (L to R): Chip Desmone, AIA; Marc Mondor, AIA; Bill Bates, FAIA; Scott Compton, AIA // STANDING ROW (L to R): Michelle McKenna; Adam Trott, AIA; Dr. Erica Cochran Hameen; Amal Mahrouki; Bob Harris, CAE; Jamie Ober, AIA; Michael Metzger, AIA; Michael Skolnick, AIA; Olivia Perry, Stephen Swarney, JD.
Additional thanks to the following members of the Strategic Plan Taskforce (not pictured above) | Betty Hackney, Assoc. AIA; Jeff Pastva, AIA; Ken Doyno, AIA
Shortly after this strategic planning workshop, AIA Pennsylvania Executive Director, Stephen Swarney, was quoted in strategic plan facilitator Bob Harris’ feature on helping boards reach new heights during strategic planning.
“With the help of the board and volunteers, AIA Pennsylvania has become a high-functioning, high-achieving organization. The work we’re doing now will give us a road map to make us better, so we owe it to ourselves and the members to maintain a clear focus on the outcome and keep things simple. As Steve Jobs said, ‘you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple but it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.'”