>> I grew up in a small suburb in Texas
where a lot of women get married very young
and have children very young
and a more conservative upbringing.
I felt as though I was stifled a little bit
as far as cultural diversity, and so it has always been
kind of pushing the boundaries for me.
And I feel as though my experience
as a female in architecture and the gaming industry
is kind of the same thing.
I remember in fifth grade,
we had some time capsule worksheets
from elementary school
in which I have a person who builds houses
written as my what do you want to be when you grow up?
And my teacher crossed it out, wrote "Architect."
When I started to get older,
I started really diving into math
and was very involved in the art school at my high school.
And so when it came to kind of choose a profession,
it it really came down to looking at those two things,
understanding the things I enjoy in life
and deciding to kind of pursue that route.
I started at Shop Architects about five years ago.
I was hired to do in-house renderings.
I was always very interested in the individual
and using that as a design tool.
So about two years in, I discovered Unreal
and I was fascinated by the game engine
and really wanted to learn more.
I was really inspired by some of the work I was seeing
and talking to different industries
and seeing how they were using the game engine.
The world was opened for discovery.
I do not have a lot of gaming background,
and so that first transition was very difficult.
In architecture there are more females in the industry,
but definitely not to where it should be.
Definitely not equal pay.
When you hear about starchitects,
it's not female starchitects.
Going into the gaming industry,
I didn't have many female role models that I could look up to.
It was difficult to kind of get over that hump in a way
to decide that this is something I want to fight for,
that this is something that I want to continue
to explore and work towards.
And so it did mean not having that role model.
And I hope that as I continue in my career,
I can do anything possible to help change that.
At Shop Architects,
I've been lucky to have female partners
there that aren't exactly in a lot of other architecture firms.
And since day one,
they have always really embraced research and development
to push the boundaries of visual communications
in which we are using headsets,
VR, AR, mixed reality in order to convey
the ideas behind the architectural design.
Using game engines within architecture
really makes the design accessible to the community,
to people who are not familiar with architecture,
but it's been really wonderful to learn more
and to push the boundaries of architectural visualization.
So Shop Architects has partnered
with Young New Yorkers,
which is a program that gives young people
who have committed a crime the ability
to go through an art program instead of jail.
We are able to use the game engine
to showcase the young people's artwork in a museum space
that we can't do right now because of COVID or quarantine.
They develop their own self-portrait
that they can then take to the prosecutors
and say, this is actually who I am.
I am not this jail sentence or this this criminal.
I am a human being. It gives them a voice.
And I am so happy to help in any way I can.
So it's been an incredible experience thus far.
It's been a fascinating transition
to go into an industry where I really don't know much
and I'm always needing to learn and kind of prove myself
and to a point where someone would come up to me
at a conference and say,
oh, wow, this was very inspiring.
You've inspired me to do X, Y, Z.
I want to be a role model for anyone who wants to understand
whether or not they can pursue a career in this.
Diversity is so important for our lives.
I would argue that diversity can really make our product better.
I think it's very important for me to be vocal about this
and about the troubles that I went through to get here.
I would encourage women to learn and study
and know that they can accomplish wonderful things
and that they are talented and and very valuable.