A Day in Chicago With HOK and NOMA's Kimberly Dowdell

By Kimberly Dowdell

Kimberly Dowdell is a Principal at HOK in Chicago and the 2019-2020 National President of NOMA. She walks us through a day of working from home during this unprecedented time and going digital with what would typically be meetings, speaking engagements, and travel. Also read Kimberly’s feature interview, where she talks about the importance of fostering diversity in the profession, here.

5:21am: I often set my clock for this specific time in honor of my grandmother who lived in apartment #521 in a Detroit senior-living community for 30 years. Throughout my childhood, she woke up very early in the morning to read her Bible and pray with her church prayer partners by phone. Now that she is no longer with us, I have been much more intentional about remaining connected to my faith, particularly in recent years.

So, as soon as I wake up, I reach for my phone and fire up the Bible app to read the daily scripture and continue on to whichever reading plan I'm working on. Since the way of life that we've all come to know has been changed by the coronavirus in the last couple of weeks, this foundation of faith given to me by my grandmother has provided me with the resolve to stay focused on my duty to serve. Every day is an opportunity to shape something beautiful.

6:00am: I proceed to the kitchen to make hot green tea and a fruit smoothie. Since Chicago is under strict shelter in place orders, both HOK and NOMA are now more heavily using Teams to foster communication, so I am generally set up at mission control (my new home office) with not one, but two laptops to help me keep my two lives somewhat separate. Before my HOK day starts at 8:30am, I use the earlier part of my morning to catch up on NOMA emails and other tasks either before or after I shower and put on my home office gear.

7:00am: With the light of day almost fully beaming into my living room, I usually take a few moments to appreciate the 40th floor view from my apartment. On a clear day, I can see the blue water of Lake Michigan and the beautiful architecture that defines downtown Chicago. I really enjoyed my walk along Lake Michigan the other day, but Mayor Lightfoot informed all of Chicago yesterday that the lakefront will be closed until further notice. I of course understand the importance of deploying all of the necessary measures that we can to ensure that people are not congregating and further spreading COVID-19.

VIew from Kimberly’s apartment in Chicago.

I love watching Good Morning America to not only catch up on what’s happening in the world, but also to get a bit of lightheartedness at the start of the day. One way that I am hoping to help pull others out of the negative news spiral is to post information on social media about more positive things. I spent part of this morning putting the final touches on my weekly message to NOMA members in the midst of this crisis. I'm reminding our members to Stay ALL In, which signals that everyone should remain at home to flatten the curve of the virus, while also making reference to my ALL in for NOMA platform and keeping up with what we are trying to accomplish as an organization. As NOMA president, I believe that I have a responsibility to communicate regularly with our members, particularly in times of crisis. I hope that my weekly messages help people feel more connected to each other and the organization.

7:30am: As I get ramped into an active morning for NOMA, I review the list of architecture firms that agreed to host National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS) members for our first ever NOMA Foundation Fellowship, which would have placed 25 NOMAS students in internships at firms in five cities this Summer. However, COVID-19 has meant that we’re uncertain if the internships will happen this Summer. We are looking at ways to place the selected students in positions when firms are ready to bring in new talent. For now, I'm working to communicate with firms and students so that together, we can evaluate alternative versions of the program that will work well for all parties.

8:15am: On a "normal" day, I would be getting ready to make my 15-minute walk to work. During those walks, I would typically make calls to NOMA's consultants, who are working to support different functions of the organization. These days, without this routine walk to the office, I make a point to call at least one NOMA team member before I transition to my HOK laptop around 8:30am at mission control.

A large part of my role at HOK is business development, so I'm often speaking with industry peers, potential clients and studio team members to determine strategies to win new work for our office. The pandemic has added a certain level of uncertainly around when project activity will resume for some projects, but it has not dampened the level of interaction that people are interested in having. In fact, I feel like my days have been more action packed during this time than the good old days in the office.

9:00am: I receive a lot of emails, so I make an effort to carve out pockets of time to review emails and flag the ones that will require a response. Many of my emails are precursors to phone or video calls, so much of my time is actually spent coordinating how I will spend my time in the future. It's kind of an odd concept when you really think about it. I get the sense that a greater emphasis will be placed on using platforms like Teams and Slack, making email less relevant. The shift feels like it is happening right now, but slowly. I imagine there will be a day when email is not used at all among people in the same organization, but will be reserved solely for external communications. For now, everyone is checking all of the various modes at all times. It feels a little like playing a game of communications whack-a-mole.

10:00am: The day continues with an HOK Sustainability Champions call to discuss HOK’s sustainable design footprint. The WebEx call with over 30 participants from around the firms 24 offices was led by HOK’s Sustainable Design Director Anica Landreneau. Based in Washington, D.C., Anica advises on sustainable design across HOK and leads the firm’s AIA 2030 commitment toward a carbon-neutral portfolio.

11:30am: "Normally", I would likely be making my way to a business lunch meeting somewhere in Chicago around this time, but since that's not a possibility right now, I'm commuting over to my kitchen to prepare a meal for myself. I caught a chicken lemon soup recipe on Good Morning America that I tried making yesterday.

12:00pm: I allocated some additional time to catching up on emails, as well as organizing my writing assignments and speaking engagements. Prior to COVID-19, I was scheduled at both Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art and Planning and Rhode Island School of Design this Spring. In the absence of physical lectures due to campus closures, I evaluate how my lecture, “Diverse City: How Equitable Design Will Shape Urban Futures,” could be virtually delivered.

I also continue working on this piece for Madame Architect, chronicling a very different day than what I thought I would be having when I agreed to be featured in A Day With. I have to admit that the status of the world right now is really weird, but it is a privilege to be able to document these moments in Madame Architect, so thanks Julia!

2:00pm: I dialed into a WebEx session for the HOK Chicago Mentoring Group featuring my boss, HOK Managing Principal Riccardo Mascia. Riccardo shared with the group some of his major lessons learned through his journey and then opened the floor for additional comments and questions. I think that this dialogue did a good job of building community in a virtual environment and opening up further office communications among a broader group. While on this call, I make a point of following up with my HOK mentees to ensure that we've scheduled one on one time for next week. HOK has a robust firm-wide mentorship program, which is one of the key elements of our approach to talent development and office culture building.

3:00pm: NOMA and NCARB have teamed up to produce an attrition survey that will be a tool that we can use to help troubleshoot why the profession is losing people in the licensure process, particularly women and people of color. We had a strategy call today in an effort to determine next steps in the process towards evaluating the data and sharing the findings with our broader professional community.

4:00pm: While I don't technically have anything on my schedule, I immediately fill this time with replying to text messages, returning phone calls, updating my social media and glancing at my inbox.

The highlight of this particular window to time today was receiving a thank you letter from a Chicago high school senior named Alana Berry. Ms. Berry reached out to me last summer after watching a lecture that I gave at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on-line and asked if I would be a guest lecturer at the architecture Summer camp that she established for other students her age at the Hyde Park Arts Center. I said yes and she officially became my mentee from that point on. Eventually, she asked me to write her a letter of recommendation to Cornell and I of course said yes. To my great delight today, Alana received her acceptance to Cornell and I am so very proud of her. Go Big Red!

5:30pm: I get offline to take a break and look out the window. Like most of us, I’m working on my new normal - I'm very pleased with how efficiently HOK's Advance Technology Group (ATG) stepped in and transitioned 1,800 people across 24 offices to remote work. Because the firm has been around for 65 years, our leadership has lived through many different types of challenges, learning that the ability to adapt is what helps companies continue to grow. The same is true of us as individuals and as a collective global community. We will be resilient and overcome COVID-19. Pandemics are not new, although this one did seem to catch us off guard. We will get a handle on it before too long. I have faith that things will turn around and I reflect on this regularly.

6:00pm: It's now time for Digital Drinks with Ryan Gann!

6:30pm: Digital drinks usually take much less time than an in-person happy hour. It’s nice to meet digitally, but even after a few laughs and solid engagement, staring at someone on a screen from your living room isn’t as personal or as engaging as sharing the same physical spaces. As architects, we design for these moments of togetherness and delight in making these connections happen. Technology is great and all, but after a full day plugged in, I needed to unplug. I go heat up my soup...not bad!

7:00pm: I check a few emails and make a few catch up calls before reading my newest book, Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World, by David Epstein.

8:30pm: It's Friday night in a pandemic...I'm tired. I will look forward to starting fresh on Saturday morning with little to no computer interaction this "weekend", if I can help it. Goodnight.