News
An Awesome Launch for the inaugural CityBuildHERS event in Ottawa!
- Published on: Jul 06, 2023
On June 10th, at the #RedBlacks CFL home opener football game TD Place in Ottawa, a new movement was kicked off at the new East End Zone Lounge… CityBuildHERS was born, a new vehicle to celebrate and connect women in the design, engineering, architecture, construction, and real estate industries.
ARIDO’s own, Lynn Ferron was part of the organizing committee for this initiative, she reports:
There was a strong presence of ARIDO EOC Members, as we made meaningful connections with women in our industry, promoting, collaborating, elevating each other, and forming partnerships to promote female driven leadership for major city, provincial, and federal development projects.
A panel discussion was moderated by Jennifer Cross, Business Development Manager for MARANT Construction, featuring Taya Cook from Urban Capital Developments.
Taya shared her project, "Reina Condos", the first all-women development in Canada. She explained how she formed a team from several sectors, how they collaborated much differently to come to non-typical, innovative and more human centric design as a result.
She also encouraged us to talk business, make connections and start making plans, to move forward with female leadership in our industry. There were metaphoric moments all evening with the exciting atmosphere of a home opener, with fighter jets flying up top, fireworks exploding for a first touch-down.
This was only the beginning, as it was a home opener for City BuildHERS, with 150 women leaders inspired to make change, be heard, and promote women-run projects in our capital city and beyond. The inspiration was electrifying. The social media coverage following the kick off was explosive. It is the dawn of a new era: CityBuildHERS.
A special thank you goes out to Jennifer Cross who led the initiative alongside committee members Lauren Epp of CFL Redblacks OSEG, Sarah Vandenbelt of Koble Koble Commercial Real Estate, Kristen Buter of Mastercraft Starwood and Lynn Ferron, @aridontario and HOK, who organized this inaugural event.
- Lynn Ferron, ARIDO