Author: cguske

The AIA Virginia Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee (J.E.D.I.) is dedicated to promoting human-centered practices and encouraging others to follow suit. Across the Commonwealth, firms are making strides in diversity, fostering inclusion, and adopting policies that open doors to the architectural profession—through both incremental improvements and significant changes. We hope this article will inspire practical steps that help firms adapt to an evolving profession and build more equitable, accessible, and modern workplaces. 

Work Program Architects (WPA), founded in Norfolk, Virginia, is one such firm. Their approach feels particularly relevant at a time when the profession is undergoing a significant transition and when many designers, especially those just entering the field, are reconsidering what a healthy, sustainable career means in 2026 and beyond. 

The 2025 AIA Virginia Art of Practice: The Future of Work conversations emphasized how much the landscape is shifting. With the average architect now 51 years old and more practitioners over 60 than under 40, the profession is navigating an era defined by leadership turnover, evolving expectations, and a growing need to prepare new voices for roles of influence. Younger architects are increasingly seeking workplaces that reflect their values: firms that operate transparently, embrace inclusivity, support balance, and place people at the center of decision-making. 

WPA offers a clear example of how these priorities can be translated into the structure of practice. The firm has cultivated an environment where access to information, opportunities for growth, and a sense of belonging are not dependent on tenure. Differences in background, communication style, and lived experience are treated as strengths. Responsibility is shared, and emerging professionals have meaningful opportunities to contribute to the firm’s culture. 

To learn more, the J.E.D.I. Committee spoke with three WPA leaders—Co-founder Mel Price, FAIA, and Associate Principals Erin Agdinaoay, AIA of the Norfolk studio, and Sam Bowling, AIA of the firm’s newly opened Raleigh office. Their perspectives on culture, access, and the future of work frame the conversation that follows. 

Values Inform Process: Practice of Participation 

WPA, since its founding in 2010, has described community building—within the studio and throughout its projects—as the thread that ties the practice together. A collaborative design process to build social, economic, and environmental resilience informs their commitment to community, transparency, respect for people and place, which all guide decisions in the office and in the field. 

When design teams reflect the communities they serve, the firm has found that clients engage more fully and trust grows naturally. That belief shapes hiring and team formation: the studio seeks a mix of perspectives, lived experiences, and communication styles to widen its cultural bandwidth rather than narrowing it to one mold. 

Mel Price, FAIA, Co-Founder, oriented our conversation by stating: 

“We feel diversity and our mission are inextricably linked. It’s important we serve an incredibly diverse population, and that means we have to work to include a diverse group of designers.” 

Those values show up in the mechanics of daily work. Their practice is designed for belonging and shared ownership of the work; staff at all levels pitch and vote on projects so assignments align with strengths and experience, not just job titles. 

As people are invited to participate in steering the work, ownership follows—and so does better design. WPA is candid about being a learning organization, but the direction is clear: inclusion takes root when systems give more people room to contribute and to lead. Soft skills typically sought at senior levels, such as communication, firm management, and leadership, are developed alongside early- to mid-career technical expertise. 

Sam Bowling, AIA, Associate Principal, offered this advice: 

“Never assume someone’s skill ceiling—give young designers the latitude to try things and succeed early.” 

The firm’s outlook on culture is practical and specific. Likewise, teams are built to help clients and community partners feel at home in the process—never like outsiders trying to find their lane. That same mindset carries across the studio. All staff are encouraged to build real relationships with clients, because those connections make the work stronger and the process smoother. 

Mel went on to explain the methodology behind fostering relationships: 

“It’s not always pairing someone who makes sense on paper or looks like the group we’re speaking with. It’s pairing someone with people who make them feel at home or at ease; it looks different for everyone…we do better work when our clients and consultants are collaborating with people who they trust.” 

WPA often refers to itself as a “curio cabinet of designers.” The phrase signals what the firm looks for: people who bring a new lens, skill, or way of seeing the world. The aim is to hire for a culture add—not a culture fit. Each person stretches the studio’s thinking and deepens its connection to the communities it serves. Valuing difference only matters if people have a voice in the work itself, and the studio’s structures are set up to make that voice matter.

Erin Agdinaoay AIA, Associate Principal, further tied this philosophy to the firm’s goal of resiliency: 

“Our approach to diversity centers on building teams that reflect the variety of people we work with and serve. By ensuring diversity exists at every level—from our staff to our clients and the communities who use our spaces—we create more resilient projects. When many perspectives contribute to the design, the result is stronger and more inclusive because it draws from a broader range of experiences.” 

The result is a practice where participation is expected, not exceptional. WPA doesn’t claim to have solved everything, but it holds to a simple test: if the studio’s structure expands opportunity—who speaks, who decides, who learns—then inclusion is moving from intention to reality. 

Image: The WPA lounge, where all-studio meetings are held. The space is intentionally decentralized, “in the round”; designed to dissolve hierarchy and reinforce leadership as a shared, collective experience. The physical setup becomes a visual metaphor: no one is at the front, no one is at the head, and everyone’s voice carries equal weight.

Transparency: Equity by Design 

Representation and voice mean little if opportunity remains gated by hierarchy. The architectural profession has long held that authority arrives with time served. Knowledge and decision-making rights accumulate at the top, leaving early- and mid-career designers on the periphery, often with the expectation that they will ‘learn on the job’ as senior leadership inevitably retires. In a field confronting burnout and a shrinking pipeline, that model constrains talent and slows innovation.

WPA approaches the problem through access. The firm treats transparency as a working system, not a talking point, shaping everything from weekly meetings to project pursuit and contract authority. After more than fifteen years in practice, and a period of steady growth, the team’s conclusion is straightforward: context helps people do better work and make better choices. Early exposure to how a firm actually runs, in a psychologically safe environment, prepares emerging professionals to contribute at a higher level. 

“WPA has maintained 100% financial transparency since its inception,” says Price. “That means sharing all financial data—including salaries—with the entire team.” 

Openness extends beyond the ledger. WPA designs systems to explain the “why” behind decisions and to revisit policies when the rationale no longer holds. Over time, the firm has redefined full time employment eligible for benefits to 30 hours per week, rethought performance-based compensation, and annually rotated leadership and committee roles to broaden experience and perspective. These processes help foster leadership at all levels of the firm. 

“Our performance evaluation and compensation are fully separate; raises and bonuses are determined by committees that rotate annually through all experience levels and disciplines. Because how are you going to develop the skills to assess compensation if you don’t practice?” 

Access also reframes mentorship. Mentorship with intent means setting public, individualized development goals and placing newer staff in roles that would typically be reserved for senior practitioners. Younger architects manage projects under the guidance of experienced leaders, participate in fee development, choose consultants, and contribute to firm wide strategic planning. The learning is shared, and so is the accountability. 

“Those younger and more senior have the opportunity to switch roles,” explains Price.
“A younger staff member might manage a project, while senior staff take the passenger seat—learning, mentoring, and supporting along the way.” 

A long runway for leadership where ‘Everyone is expected to be a role model to their peers, both more senior and less senior than them’ follows naturally from this stance. From day one, designers are invited to critique the firm, pitch ideas, and help shape culture. 

Bowling puts it plainly: 

“We want people to experience the full breadth of the profession so they can make decisions about their future—even if that future happens away from WPA.” 

WPA’s leadership earnestly believes that this approach develops future leaders by giving people the information, coaching, and trust they need to grow into responsibility earlier and with purpose. 

The broader profession is moving in this direction. Emerging professionals want workplaces that align with their values, where equity, transparency, and flexibility aren’t privileges reserved for those with tenure, but part of how work happens. Firms that recognize this shift are better positioned to attract and keep talent. 

The challenge ahead is simple to state and demanding to execute: share authority, dismantle silos, and embed agency into the DNA of practice. If architecture aims to create spaces that foster inclusion and agency, the workplace should carry the same standard. 

“It is everyone’s job to make the company better. Often, that begins with a sense of ownership and belonging.” 

Images: The WPA studio breakout zones are intentionally unstructured, human‑centered environments designed to make collaboration feel natural rather than forced. The physical layout, the atmosphere, and the proximity of different teams all work together to create a place where people can drift in, connect, and create without the pressure of formality or hierarchy.

Human Centric Practice: What we do well for ourselves, we will do well for others 

WPA’s model of equity is inseparable from its approach to well being. The firm’s premise is direct: work should work for more people. That starts by acknowledging that architects are whole humans—more than job titles or billable hours—they are creatives whose energy, momentum, capacity, and responsibilities change across a week and across a career. 

Flexibility is built into the culture. There are no fixed remote days or rigid schedules; teams decide when and where they work best. For working parents, neurodiverse colleagues, and anyone navigating shifting personal demands, that flexibility keeps careers viable and momentum steady. 

The physical studio reflects those priorities. WPA designs its own environment as carefully as it designs for clients: quiet rooms, nap rooms, sit to stand desks, bike storage and showers, and a range of collaborative and private settings that let people match space to task. Wellness support is part of the fabric, with visiting health professionals, including a dietician, helping staff build sustainable habits. 

“Expectations matter as much as amenities,” says Price. WPA questions the assumption that long hours equal dedication. Teams normalize conversations about capacity, stress, and balance. Price sets the tone by keeping her calendar open to the studio—client meetings alongside exercise, family time, and personal commitments—so that healthy boundaries are visible and legitimate. 

“The message is introduced early, even in interviews: leave the culture of exhaustion at the door and invest in sleep, nutrition, movement, and stress management,” Agdinaoay elaborates “Start with trust, get people’s human needs taken care of, and really prioritize everyone being a healthy person first so that they can show up and be a great professional achieving what they’ve what they’ve set out to do.” 

Care is made concrete; the staff receives a monthly health bonus and incentives to walk or bike to work, take breaks, or even schedule additional time off after deadlines. Partners have access to executive coaching. When someone is carrying a heavy load, the response is active: the chief of staff checks in and creates space for recovery. 

Inclusion here is not another expectation layered onto already full plates; rather, WPA sees it as the removal of obstacles that prevent people from bringing their full selves to work. 

As they have continued to grow, the firm recognized the role their size played in their reputation as a nimble-by-nature practice. As they scale, they are finding that timing is just as critical as intent to maintain trust: 

“Being able to quickly pivot and change something when you hear feedback, is one of the most essential ingredients to success. If it takes you a year to make a new policy after many rounds of surveys and peer groups, you lose people.” 

By aligning policies, places, and practices, WPA is showing how a humane studio can also be a high performing one. 

Two examples evident in their studio are the presence of pets in the workplace and the dynamic dress policy. Whether it’s the furry friends in the office or the variety of individuals at work, WPA has an interesting approach to what it means to “show up professionally.” 

Price explained the ‘why’ behind this decision: 

“Our handbook isn’t about policing appearance—it’s about how you show up for others. In a creative industry, self-expression is welcome—rainbow hair included—as long as you’re polished, know your audience, and show up in a way that builds trust and strong relationships.”

WPA and its members believe the value of their firm comes from a desire to hold sacred what is at the core of their practice, specifically their mission and core principles, and to challenge the periphery. 

In our conversation with the team, they stated that:

“We feel like if we’re doing it right, you should feel it change every three to four months. The company is like a living, breathing organism – as people grow and change, so does the firm.” 

Taken together, these efforts describe a practice designed for people and projects. From who is hired to how work is chosen to how well-being is supported, WPA ties values to systems so that belonging shows up in the day to day. 

The firm doesn’t claim a perfect model, but it offers a clear direction: measure success by the quality of the work and by the number of people who can thrive while doing it. 

Image: The 2026 WPA team is pictured in the ground-floor studio of the Assembly Building, a shared-workspace conceived and refined by its own inhabitants. Purposeful, shaped by lived experience, and collectively inspired, the environment reflects a culture where design and community are inseparable

Change at the firm level is cumulative. Each policy, pilot, and conversation takes time to design, test, and refine—and it asks for steady commitment from leadership and staff alike. 

Yet the payoff is real. As the demand for our profession grows, a disproportionately small number of architects rise in the ranks, and the fundamental nature of our work evolves, every effort to engage people and places on a human level creates clearer pathways for growth, a stronger sense of belonging, and teams that are more resilient when conditions shift. 

These are stretch goals by design; they ask us to reach beyond habit.  

This kind of radical practice is uncommon, but as the J.E.D.I. Committee continues to surface practical examples from peers across the Commonwealth, we encourage you to look for opportunities to contribute within your firms. Our hope is that firms see both the effort and the reward: a practice organized around people, adaptable, and better prepared to serve the communities we design for.