Ian Hunter, AIA Atlanta Past-President, on leading as your genuine self
April 22, 2023 | Blog.012 | Sarah Woynicz
Ian Hunter (he/him) is the Regional Director of Dwell Design Studio, located in the Atlanta, Georgia office. He is a licensed architect and registered interior designer with strong backgrounds in education, residential, corporate office, and hospitality design. Ian was recently recognized by AIA Georgia with the 2023 Emerging Professional award for his leadership in the AIA and the profession, and his commitment to EDI advancement. As 2022 AIA Atlanta President, he moved AIA Atlanta forward integrating equity, diversity, and inclusion in its practice, operations, and policy that will impact the organization for years to come. In our conversation, Ian shared how he got to where he is today, realizations on his passions that have been incremental but informative of his path in the profession, and his thoughts on leading from a genuine place.
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Sarah Woynicz: I would love to start by hearing how you began in architecture and got to where you are today. Especially in knowing your current role as Regional Director of Dwell Design Studio, who you are influences how you lead. I am curious how not only your path in the profession, but in bringing your whole self to your work has impacted your leadership?
Ian Hunter: I do want to talk about my identity, how I weave that into my leadership, and stay true to myself. Just the other day, someone asked me “how did you learn to do this? Where did you learn to lead this way?” I got great input from my last firm’s managing principal, Becky Ward. She retired but I stayed in touch with her. When I was taking on this role as Director of Dwell’s Atlanta office, I asked Becky, “How do I do this job?” In my mind, I needed to learn from Becky how to run an architectural office. I hated her answer. She said to me, “I cannot tell you how to run an architectural office.” I was blown away. She had been running a major architectural office for 20 years. I asked, “How can you not tell me how to run an office?” Her response was that she could not tell me how to run an office, because she ran an office the way she needed to run the office, for herself. I would need to do it, and lead, in whatever way is true to myself. I was like, “that is all fine and cozy and warm, but - no actually - how do I do it?” I received similar feedback from that firm’s head of Business Development - I just needed to be me, and not try to be anyone else. Looking back, I really took that to heart and think it is effective in any role or position.
I have been in this role at Dwell for about 8 months. When I came in, I knew I was just going to be myself. That does not always align with everyone on a team, or even a firm at face value. A good firm is run in a way that everyone brings themselves wholeheartedly to work. It is hard to lead if you do not do that. It is hard to separate my more lighthearted approach to situations, my identity as a gay man, my experiences and identity informing my leadership, but it works. You cannot lead if you are not being genuine. The unfortunate part of that is that you must find a place, a firm, an office where you can be your true self. If you don’t find a firm that accepts of that, for any part of your identity, it is such an uphill battle. However, I think that is also the exception and not the rule.
That has been my guiding light both with how I operate the office and with being president at AIA Atlanta. Coming in as president, my identity did impact the way that I was going to lead. There are major diversity challenges in the industry, as well as equity and inclusion challenges, that not only come along with that, but challenge our ability to diversify. That was the platform that I ran on. I felt I was just going to be me and do what I felt was right for the profession, good for business, to make our industry stronger. On the AIA Atlanta Board of Directors, tying everything back to that mission of diversity, equity, and inclusion was important to me. It was imperative for me to be myself to garner support and be accountable to the purpose I started with. If that was not really what I cared about or was important, people would see right through that. I would not have been able to lead that way. There is so much cheesy truth to being yourself.
So how did you get to where you are today as a regional director of a large firm?
I get these questions a lot. My number one message is that you need to find what you love to do and what you are good at. Even more importantly, what you are not good at - which I think is the plague of the architect. Figure out what you are truly the best at and what you are not good at or don’t love, and build a team of people who are good at those things you’re missing. There is a reason we work in groups at school and in our firms. Everyone brings something different to the table - a different perspective, skill, and value.
I found early on in my career that I am not the best designer. I can do functional design, but am not the best designer. This was a hard thing to discover, especially having attended Rice University. I did well in studio, but high design is just not where my heart is. My heart is in empowering the architects around me. There is not a lot of skill around people supporting the business and institutions, empowering those people to do what they love to do. Instead we sometimes shoehorn great designers into leadership positions they do not really want to do and are not really that good at. Empowering my colleagues to do what they love without (or with fewer) road blocks is what gets me out of bed every morning.
AIA Atlanta Board of Directors
When did you realize that design was not for you? Was there a distinct moment or a progressive realization where your strength and passion are?
I came out of school wanting to be a high design architect. I went and worked for Michael Graves right out of school. There was a lot I was learning about how to get projects done and about design. This has been a rolling realization, but coming out of school I did not ever think this is where I would be. The drawing, and the art, of what we do was focal. As to this being a rolling realization - I have worked for firms and individuals who have been incredibly good leaders, great mentors. I have also worked for people who are incredibly bad leaders and mentors. I saw what that did to my experience of the industry, to projects, to the business (both the good and the bad). I admired those who did those jobs well, and learned a lot from those who did not. It is kind of like good architecture - you do not think about it a lot. If good architecture works, you move seamlessly through the space. Bad architecture hits you in the face like a brick. I think leadership is the same way. Good leadership can often go unnoticed, bad leadership you notice quickly. I had a lot of admiration for the people doing this unsexy work to make my life as a designer, at the time, better. They were training me, supporting me, challenging me all while doing a bunch of things behind the scenes.
I worked for a firm previously and was horribly micromanaged. When I switched firms, I fell into a business development role - putting together projects, getting work, building relationships with clients. At my previous firm when I started the vertical multi-family market, I had a lot of pieces already in place that went along with that - the business development, the design, how to put a project together. I was also learning, at a small scale, how to manage people. It was more than just a project team, but also interacting with executives. I made a lot of mistakes, and learned some hard lessons, especially on effective communication and gaining buy-in. When I was transitioning into this new role, I had a lot of people react and ask why, because I was always the one hitting the streets on the business development side. I thought I would always love the business development side, it was everything I wanted to do. While I still do that now, I love the internal focus around how to keep a firm running and healthy, and people happy and valued.
It is the same thing with the AIA. It was not a sexy role, I mostly organized the Board. My goal was making sure that each team member is accountable for what they are doing, setting up the infrastructure for each member to be able to operate around the missions we set in place, and set up the board and goals in a way everyone is having fun doing it and bringing value to our community, the institution, the profession.
It is a question of how do we get things in the door and make sure our teams can thrive while doing it? It makes so much sense that all of this aligns for you.
The challenge when talking to other people in the industry (and I do not know how to fix this yet) is firms can only run, be happy, and healthy when you have a group of contributors that can all do what they do best together. My perception is that most firms are set up with the managing principal or director position and that is where people want to grow. People are not thinking about what they enjoy, where they bring value, what they are good at. How do firms create an environment where people feel like they can hit the top of their career in the way that they love to bring value to the world of architecture - and that should not always be in the position of a CEO?
Can you share your thoughts on how the industry has changed to become more inclusive and accepting of all identities?
This industry, as designers, problem solvers, critical thinkers, tends to be a diverse group of individuals. That is an overgeneralization, but tends to be more the case than not. The weird thing about that is that I do not know that many LGBTQ architects. That surprises so many people, both in and outside of our industry. These are not the right facts but, if 10% of the population is LGBT, in an architecture firm you might think there would be substantially more LGBTQ individuals than the general public, but I do not think you see that. I am not sure why that is. At the firms I have worked, and currently work, as well as the AIA, there has been a lot of work to think critically about underrepresented communities, both representation and the path to becoming architects. A lot of that has to do with education - in schools, in communities, in universities - and sharing what architecture is, why this industry wants and needs you here. LGBTQ communities can be invisible minorities in a lot of ways, especially when thinking about the pipeline development.
Why is making space for queer architects and designers important?
This is important for a couple of reasons. As a gay man, when I go to a firm and am touring then see someone’s office who has a rainbow flag or is wearing a rainbow pin, I immediately feel welcome here. For me, that is really important for people to feel welcome - and it is also good for business. It is not only the right thing to do but also the smart thing to do. Also, and this is more complicated, I help design buildings that make gay men feel welcome because of my identity, and my lived experiences, from places in the built environment where I personally do or do not feel comfortable. Why is that? How did the architecture promote, or not, that feeling of acceptance? People do not give architecture the credit that it is due - it really does make an impact on everyone and their own individual experiences. Having a firm with people in the LGBTQ community really does help create more inclusive spaces. I think that is a really important part of having diverse perspectives. Dwell has the largest number of openly LGBTQ colleagues of any firm that I have ever worked at. This is exciting. I think the visibility in my position is rewarding, though I do not often think about being gay in my professional practice. At the AIA Strategic Planning session last year, we did the identity wheel exercise. Everyone put me being gay as one of the top parts of my identity where I put it much closer to the bottom of the identity wheel exercise. This gave me more confidence because I have been able to do what I want and have a platform to be able to try to make change within my sphere of influence, all while authentically being myself.
Those are some of the reasons why I think representation and recruitment for our industry from the LGBTQ community is really important. It tends to be a queer-friendly industry. There are the hard parts that go with it. As an industry, we interface with a lot of different groups - construction, client, consultant groups. Those industries are not always as inclusive as architecture, which is where I do think we find the most friction. It is not always actually in our industry, but outside of that. To me, the most important thing as a leader in my firm is to have my team members' backs. It is one thing to have people’s backs internally, and another to have them externally. Those are more difficult conversations, with major business implications. I stand by the fact that it is good for business to support everyone in your office. As a leader, you must have your eyes open and be able to take a step back while keeping an eye on feedback, microaggressions, and bias. Bias outside of firms can impact bias inside of firms - promotions, compensation, the influence people can have within a business. This is difficult and is always evolving. There is a lot of work to be done here.
Photography by Georgia Tech School of Architecture