Dear Corner Office’s Podcast

Culture gets built from the top, or it doesn't get built at all. In this episode, Richard Hinton joins Michele to unpack what that actually takes inside architecture, engineering, and construction firms, and why rolling out ERGs and training was never the same thing as building culture.

Richard traces the evolution from networking groups to business resource groups to diversity leadership councils, and names the quiet failure point: programs launched with good intentions but no executive sponsor, no budget, and no real structure behind them. He's candid about the cost of the work on the people doing it, including burning himself out, and why underrepresented employees so often carry the whole load.

The conversation goes somewhere most don't: sponsorship gets a rising leader into the room, but no one coaches them on how to hold their ground once they're there, or coaches their sponsors on how to support them. Richard and Michele close on the payoff leaders overlook. A happy, well-sponsored employee becomes your loudest recruiting channel, bringing you talent you didn't think existed.

A conversation about trust, psychological safety, and what it really means to walk the walk.

On this episode of Dear Corner Office, host Michele Heyward sits down with Ciprianna Patterson, a civil engineer turned executive at Toole Design, to talk about what it really takes to build a career on your own terms. Ciprianna traces her path from a college coin flip that landed her in civil engineering, through five formative years at a small Baltimore firm, over a decade in public sector traffic engineering with Prince George's County, and into an executive role she landed not through a job posting, but through a phone call from someone who already knew her work.

The conversation digs into the real mechanics of career growth that rarely make it into a bio: how moving between public and private sector work builds credibility on both sides, why an executive MBA became necessary once technical skill wasn't enough for the business side of leadership, and how networking looked completely different before social media, built on in person relationships and reputation rather than online connections. Ciprianna and Michele also get candid about negotiation, pay equity, and why understanding your total compensation, not just your salary, matters over the course of a 40 year career, especially for women and women of color who are so often underpaid from the start.

Ciprianna closes with a simple but powerful idea: your journey doesn't have to be a straight line or fit into a tidy narrative. It can be patchwork, made up of everything you've tried, kept, and let go. The goal isn't to explain it to everyone else. It's to own it.

Marsha Anderson Bomar, Ph.D. has never followed a straight line. In this episode, she sits down with Michele to talk about starting her first company six weeks after having her third child, building a tech data collection firm before the internet existed, selling to a Fortune-listed company on her own terms, and eventually becoming the 8th woman president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. If you've ever thought your engineering degree locked you into one path, this conversation is for you.

Someone inside Marcia Geldert-Murphy, P.E.'s own political party told her to stop mentioning she was a civil engineer and that it had nothing to do with legislating. She stopped cold in her tracks. 

In this episode, the former ASCE president and Illinois Senate candidate joins Michele to talk about why that moment perfectly illustrates the problem: the people who understand how infrastructure actually gets built aren't in the room when the money gets decided. 

They cover the gap between input and output that lawmakers don't see, why we stopped thinking like an engineering-minded country, and what it's going to take to fix it before the next generation inherits a system that was already past its service life when we inherited it.

Jean Malafrante went to Mexico in college to build schools, and couldn't drink the water. That moment launched a 20+ year career in environmental engineering, a managing director role she never planned for, and eventually a consulting firm she built from a single contract in her first 60 days.

She joins Michele to talk about asking for the work nobody else wanted, learning the business before she needed it, and why the engineers who will lead the next generation aren't the ones solving the technical problem; they're the ones who understand the people in the room.

Most people flip on a light switch or plug in their EV and never think twice about how that power got there. Dr. Richard Ezike has spent his career at the intersection of policy, technology, and workforce  across the Department of Energy, EPA, Department of Transportation, and Argonne National Laboratory and he's here to tell you everything that had to go right (and often goes very wrong) before that charger works.

In this episode, Michele and Richard break down EV charging infrastructure from the ground up the three levels of charging, why half the stations you find on a map might be down, and what the federal government actually did to try to fix it. They get into cost overruns on major projects, how public utility commissions set your electric rates, who shows up to those meetings (and who doesn't), and what it costs communities when companies build at them instead of with them.

Plus: what young engineers should be learning right now to stay employable in a shifting energy landscape and why hands-on training will never be replaced by a Zoom course.

This episode features Heather Calvert, Chief Operating Officer at CORE, sharing how her firm intentionally centers people, equity, and psychological safety while still delivering complex projects on time and on budget. Heather walks through CORE’s journey from scrappy startup to “thirteen‑year‑old teenager” firm, including the painful inflection points of rapid COVID‑era growth and what they had to redesign to truly scale. She dives into their equity‑driven promotion and feedback systems, explaining how crowd‑sourced input and collaborative performance conversations help reduce bias and burnout. 

Heather also unpacks the delivery pressures facing AEC firms today and why real‑time communication, trust‑building with clients, and developing engineers’ soft skills are just as critical as technical excellence. Throughout the conversation, she offers practical examples leaders can use to build cultures where people feel safe speaking up, learning from misalignment, and actually “living their core” at work.

What happens when workforce strategy quietly becomes your biggest delivery risk?

In this episode of Dear Corner Office, Michele Heyward sits down with Chris Ross, HR leader, industry insider, and PositiveHire advisor, who recruited her into the AEC industry nearly 20 years ago.

Together, they unpack how engineering and architecture firms used to manage talent, what was lost along the way, and why leadership behavior has become one of the most underestimated risks in today’s firms.

From the shift to skills-based hiring, to what exit interviews are really saying, to why hybrid work has exposed long-standing leadership gaps, this conversation makes one thing clear: people don’t leave organizations, they leave experiences.

If you’re a firm leader, HR executive, or project delivery leader navigating retention challenges, talent shortages, or rising delivery pressure, this episode will sound uncomfortably familiar and deeply relevant.

Join us for a thought-provoking session led by industry thought leader, where we will delve into the essential components of a powerful career strategy designed specifically for underrepresented women in the AEC industry.

Michele will identify and explore 3-5 strategic steps that are crucial for navigating the complex landscape of racial and gender barriers often faced by underrepresented women professionals in AEC. She will draw upon their extensive experience and expertise to shed light on practical approaches that can empower women to overcome obstacles and achieve their career goals.

Listeners will gain valuable knowledge and actionable takeaways to implement in their own career strategies, helping them overcome systemic barriers and create paths to success.

Are you an experienced executive in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, looking to make a positive impact on diversity, equity, and inclusion within your organization? It's never too late to take action! 

Join Michele Heyward for a transformative webinar designed specifically for professionals like you.

In this episode, "Empowering Change: 5 Ways to Promote Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Your AEC Company," she will explore the crucial steps you can take to foster a culture of inclusivity and create a lasting positive impact for your black employees and coworkers.