During the past few months, we have worked together as a firm to determine actionable ways we can support racial justice in built environment professions and in our city. Bi-weekly conversations and workshops helped us identify areas of focus that are being advanced by dedicated working groups in our office.

Pipeline to a more diverse profession: Our firm aims to support greater diversity in design professions through teaching and mentoring. This winter, a team from LEVER is leading a studio with Your Street, Your Voice (YSYV), an organization that pays underrepresented students to learn about design. We are also pursuing opportunities to mentor BIPOC students interested in architecture as a career.

Design justice in our practice: Our team is exploring ways to strengthen the equity in our designs and engagement.

BIPOC partnerships and sourcing: To increase the diversity among our overall project teams, we are building new relationships with BIPOC owned/led engineering firms, specialty consultants, and manufacturers. Our firm will continue to track MWESB participation in our projects.

We look forward to sharing more about these efforts in the months ahead. Why are we sharing this? We would love to hear what our friends and colleagues are doing to support racial justice, and we hope that open and ongoing conversation about equity work becomes the norm.