Emma Freeman on community, connection, and advocacy
June 16, 2023 | Blog.013 | Sarah Woynicz
Photography by Roman Suarez
Emma worked as a cabinet maker and luthier en route to becoming a licensed architect. In keeping with this background, she values and emphasizes the element of craft in architecture. Shortly after graduating from Texas A&M College Station, Emma worked in Corpus Christi for a year before following an opportunity to study at the University of Hawaii and earning a Doctorate degree in Architecture in 2005. In 2012 Emma and family moved back to South Texas where she opened a sole proprietorship which operated as Freeman Architecture Collaborative for two years until partnering with Sheldon Shroeder, AIA in late 2014. This partnership set fresch Architects in motion. Emma joined the AIA Dallas LGBTQIA+ Alliance Pride x Design panel this past February, asking impactful questions to the panelists on how the Alliances can begin to support and connect beyond the urban centers they are located in. Pride by Design had the opportunity to hear Emma’s story, her journey in the profession and in her identity, and in how community can be a place to connect, to be visible, and to advocate.
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To start, can you share how you got into architecture, your practice, and where you are today?
As far as how I got into architecture, it's funny it seems like a lot of people are exposed to it early now. That's what they want to do. I was exposed to some drafting in high school, but went into college as a mechanical engineering major. I knew in the first two days that mechanical engineering was not for me. I had a suitemate who was in architecture and throughout that first semester, I saw things such as the models they were working on. I was like well that's interesting, you can do that? So that's really how I got into architecture - a little bit through the backdoor of exposure to someone else that was in it while I was in college. I did my undergrad here in Texas, Texas A&M, and worked for a firm for one year after that. Then, I had an opportunity to go to the University of Hawaii on an assistantship. They were just starting up a new program and you know, really trying to get people to enroll. So we moved to Hawaii. I completed my doctorate degree at the University of Hawaii and then worked for a firm there for about eight years.
By that time, we were a four person family with two children trying to make ends meet in a very expensive place. So in 2012, we moved back to Texas. My wife is from this area, so we kind of came here knowing we have some connections and could probably make things work. It was also then that I went out on my own. I had some consulting work with the firm that I had worked for for the last eight years, which was the starting point. I did that for about three years. Throughout the course of that time, I also met my current business partner who was also a sole practitioner. At first, we just started sharing office space, then sharing some resources. During this, we found out that we worked pretty well together. After about a year and a half doing that, we formalized a partnership. I guess that was about eight years ago now.
There’s six of us in total with fresch Architects. For this market, for what we do, that seems to be about the right size. I don't think we can grow too much more without changing our business model or further expanding our sphere of influence, if you will. We have several repeat clients at this point and several successful projects completed through the full process at this point. Things there feel pretty good. That’s kind of the short version, I guess, of how I got to where I am professionally.
I think it's so interesting to hear how you went from working for a firm to being a sole proprietor to then now having a partnership. It is such an evolution.
It's interesting to me because it seems like a lot of people that start their own firm do it by the time they're 40. It’s one of those things where, looking back, I don't know that I would take all of those risks now. It seems much scarier looking back on it. At the time it was just kind of like well, we'll try it and see what happens. Initially going out on my own, I could not have done that without having the consulting work with the firm that I had been involved with. Not only did it allow me to start my own practice, but it was also very affirming that even though I was leaving the firm, they understood and still wanted to work with me if there was a way.
That really speaks to the power of relationships that this industry has and not just relationships for winning new work or clients, but actually from firm to firm and person to person
Absolutely. Weaving in the personal side of my story - I came out during the pandemic. My MO my whole life was just distract and stay busy. That's basically how I was able to somewhat cobble together a life lived in the closet. The longer time went on, that just fell apart more and more. I was raised in a household that was a very conservative religious household. I think I first started showing some gender diversity at about five years old. There were a few instances where my parents came home and I was wearing one of my sister's dresses. It was made known to me that that was not acceptable. By the time I was in first grade or so, I just realized that part of me I just couldn't let anyone see. That was the message I internalized. I went to high school in West Texas in a location which is still very patriarchal oilfield culture. There were no visible, LGBTQIA+ students at that school. We were all just in hiding. I had a really rough couple of years in early college, and straightened all of that out before I was done with my undergrad. From that point, I stayed as busy as possible.
Fast forward to the pandemic and I noticed quite a few people that came out, both older and younger. For me, it became so much harder to mask or hide anything. I came out to my wife and family to start with. It was not suspected or anything so it was a bit of a shock, but everyone was incredibly supportive. Then the floodgates opened. I very quickly kind of got a care team who specialized in gender diversity and gender transition because I really didn't have a clue like how transition was going to work, at work especially. I was scared about that because my job was the primary source of income for my family and here we are in a conservative location. It was very scary, not just for me and my family, but also thinking about my business partner and my partner's wife and children, our employees and their families. Getting a professional team was profoundly beneficial to me in that regard. We started putting together a transition plan. Once the plan was in place, I just didn't want to spend the six months that I had anticipated rolling out this plan - things really happened very quickly.
I think it was on a Tuesday that I came out to my business partner. That coming Friday, we had a local AIA Corpus Christi chapter annual code seminar. I was like - well, you know, this is the first time I'm going to show up in public authentically. I talked to our chapter leadership here, and especially since we are a small chapter, asked if I could send a blanket email to the chapter, just letting them know what was going on essentially - Many of you have known me for a long time. I just want to let you know what's going on in my life. I'm a transgender woman. This is something that I've known for a long time, but my transition, it's recent and ongoing. I also talked about the gravity of the situation and statistics around mental health that transgender people face. I sent out an email to like 80 architects in town that I had gotten to know over the last 12 years. Then the next day I showed up at this event, dressed authentically. Starting from that point, the next six weeks were just surreal. I wanted all my clients to hear this from me, not hear this through the grapevine. There were a lot of firsts that first six weeks. I was on a City Commission at the time, which meets in council chambers at the city hall. One day I showed up authentically - name has now been changed, this is me, cameras rolling and the Commission broadcast on Youtube.
It was really intense those first six weeks, but in general, the response was phenomenal. I anticipated losing some clients. I anticipated having some consultants say yeah, I'm just not comfortable working with you. I didn't really get that.
That is incredible, and so wonderful.
Yeah - it was an insane thing to have to do as an adult who's established in a town and in a profession. Everything was completely out in the open. I just felt all of this gratitude, and not only that, but a level of responsibility to be as much of an advocate as I could. I'm a part of transgender support group. I've seen how much I am privileged. My presentation does not require people to break outside of the binary. I feel this responsibility to be visible and vocal, and to not just be visible and vocal about myself, but also to educate people I know on the full spectrum of transgender individuals and on some of the issues that are way more difficult than mine. I also have a lot of other privilege that was already established in a career. Looking back, if I transitioned right out of college, I don't know that I would have had the same opportunities that I had because, as we all know, in the workplace there's a lot of implicit bias.
I have recently been talking to students who are like - “I'm defining my identity and coming out in college, and then worried that now I'm going to have to go back in the closet when I go back into the profession.” It has me questioning, how do we not only keep the people who are here now, but continue to make this profession inclusive and accepting and open and accessible for everybody who's coming in?
I also work as an adjunct professor of architecture history here at the local community college. Just between seeing my children who are junior high age and their peers, and seeing the college age students that I interact with, I have so much hope because they're just so much more open and accepting.
The one thing that I've been really trying to focus on is visibility. I feel like a lot of the transgender people that I know here that are in the process of transitioning have just put everything on hold right now because of the current political climate. They had a plan to come out and now they have just put that on hold because they fear for what might come out of this current legislative session - that they may lose their jobs.
I feel privileged and responsible to stand up and be counted. To say, hey, look, I'm a transgender woman. I'm a parent. I am a community member. I bring a lot to this community. I'm just another person.
…it doesn't stop there. As architects, we're supposed to be instruments of social change. This is an area that we should be, and my hope is that we are leading in.
What do you hope to see from these organizations that are location based (such as the AIA LGBTQIA+ Alliance), but also hope to see from something more collective and removed from geographical boundaries?
It's huge for me to be able to connect with community, regardless of personal or professional. The personal one's much easier here even though there's not a huge community in Corpus Christi, Texas. The professional one.. To my knowledge, I am the only open LGBTQIA+ person in our chapter. While everybody knows my story, there's not that shared experience of being community in the profession of architecture. To me, just being able to connect in a community in the profession is huge to me - to feel that you're not alone in this. On the advocacy level, having these networks as a way that we can connect, organize, and work on visibility and advocacy is just massive. It is interesting.. A good friend of ours is a realtor with Keller Williams. They’ve got an internal pride organization. All of their business cards are Keller Williams Pride and with the pride flag. That’s fantastic. The AIA has almost no visibility for LGBTQIA+ professionals. The focus on gender and racial diversity in the workplace is so important and needed, but it doesn't stop there. As architects, we're supposed to be instruments of social change. This is an area that we should be, and my hope is that we are leading in. For me personally, having a network of people that I can look forward to seeing, stay connected with, and be able to celebrate and talk about shared experiences is huge. I think also there is so much opportunity in the possibility of visibility and advocacy. These are things that I do not have in my small market, that I would not have without some of these networks that are beginning.