Projects, Partnerships, and Parenthood in Practice – Designing Your Own Path

This FREE 1-hour webinar explores how women architects can define success on their own terms, while balancing practice, partnership, and parenthood. Through personal experience running a residential firm, Courtney Lowry, AIA, shares how she built her practice through word-of-mouth, local trust, and meaningful collaboration, including partnerships with other women architects across state lines. Blending storytelling with practical insights, this program highlights the importance of community, mentorship, and authenticity in sustaining a career that integrates professional and personal fulfillment. Attendees will leave inspired to cultivate supportive networks and create sustainable, values-driven practices.

HSW Justification
This session supports the health and welfare of the design profession and, by extension, the communities architects serve. By fostering collaboration, mentorship, and mental well-being (especially among women practitioners) it reinforces the personal and professional stability of architectural practice. When architects are supported, balanced, and connected, they can better address the diverse needs of clients and occupants through empathetic, contextually grounded design. This dialogue on sustainability in small practice and cross-state collaboration helps strengthen the professional ecosystem that protects and enhances the built environment.

Learning Objectives

After attending this program, participants will be able to:

1. Identify the key steps, challenges, and lessons in establishing and sustaining a solo or small architectural practice.
2. Discuss strategies for integrating professional, personal, and family responsibilities to maintain well-being in practice.
3. Recognize the value of mentorship and collaboration across regions in fostering professional growth.
4. Apply relationship-based approaches to networking, marketing, and partnership that build resilient, community-focused practices.

Target Audience: This webinar is open to all, including Architects, associates, emerging professionals, allied professions, and students interested in leadership, mentorship, and career balance in architectural practice.

Level: Introductory to Intermediate

Instructional Method / Format:  Live 1-hour virtual webinar, followed by an interactive Q&A.

Presenter Bio
Courtney Lowry, AIA, is a licensed architect based in New Jersey and owner of a residential architecture practice founded in 2017. Her work focuses on crafting homes that tell the story of their inhabitants while strengthening local community fabric. Courtney serves as Vice Chair of the Woodbridge Township Historic Preservation Commission and Secretary of AIA Central New Jersey. She is passionate about mentorship, authenticity in practice, and creating space for women to thrive in architecture while balancing multiple roles: as professionals, partners, and parents.

Host
Moderated by Erin Sharp-Newton, Chair of the American Institute of Architects New Jersey Women in Architecture Committee.