Cherise-Resilience, Respite, and the Power of Speaking Up

In the fast-paced world of AEC, it’s easy to feel like you need a technical degree just to have an opinion. But what if your most valuable asset isn’t your credentials, it’s your instinct and your willingness to stay in the room? 

In this episode, Lauren Homme sits down with Cherise Poulin, Vice President of Strategy at Moore Group, for a candid conversation about the reality of being a woman on the business and strategy side of architecture and construction. Cherise shares her 30-year trajectory, from pivoting out of a traditional architecture path to becoming a strategic leader in healthcare design. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to AEC Women on Talk, the podcast celebrating women, shaping the future of the built environment. I'm your host, Lauren Honey, a marketing and business development strategist with over 15 years of national experience. Along the way, I've met some powerhouse women. In each episode, I'll sit down with them to explore their career journeys, the support they wish they had, and some of the tough lessons they learned. Whether you're just starting out or already leaving the card, these stories are meant to inspire. All right, Cherisse, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so excited to feature you as one of our women on top. I'd love for you to introduce yourself. Can you start with what you do?

SPEAKER_00 0:46

I am currently part of the executive team at a Moore Group focused on healthcare architecture primarily. It's a national role. It's a passion of mine for many years. Essentially, I'm all about understanding our industry, understanding the challenges as well as the solutions that can be brought forth, and all about connectivity. I think connections is where it's at in our industry. And that's what I love to do. So those are like two of the very big things that I've been doing with my role.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Can you talk to me a little bit about how did you get to where you are in your career? Where did you start? And talk a little bit about your trajectory.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Absolutely. Um, it's been a 30-year career as of last month, which is crazy. I thought I wanted to be an architect and I studied architectural history and I went postgrad for my MARC. And about two and a half years in, I thought, I do not love what's happening around me with the other architects in my office. I think I'm going to take a different route. And I decided to focus on marketing and the business side of the industry instead. And it's progressed since then. I was putting together proposals and I didn't know it was a proposal until I asked the question, is this how we win work? They don't teach you that in school. And yes, that is how you essentially start to bring in your work. But I also then later in my career learned about relationships. I learned about communications. So after 25 plus years, I ended up here where I am, doing a little bit of everything, but with a focus specifically on healthcare.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

And when did you make that commitment to healthcare?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

January 2008. I joined Perkins Eastman. It was a gift to have the opportunity. It was the worst time to be a senior marketer, meaning senior overhead, in January of 2008. And I remember very, very long hours to prove myself that they should keep me because they had just hired me. And there was obviously a lot happening in the industry then, a lot of flux. But healthcare was really important at that time. Everybody wanted to get into healthcare design. So since 2008, that's been my commitment. And it's a really, really personal story that's kept me here. I lost my grandmother at a young age to cancer. And in the late 70s, early 80s, that is not a time that you wanted to be a child in a cancer quote unquote ward. And I was scared of hospitals at the time that they hired me in 2008. So it's taken me a long time to get the aha moment, walking into a very prominent cancer center and experiencing it. And I got the chills and thought, I wish this had been my family's experience when my grandmother was going through cancer. I would not fear hospitals like I did for most of my life. And now I'd love to walk into a hospital and see what's going on and what we can do to change it.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

That's a wonderful story. You know, you touched on several components there. And I wanted to ask you, you know, what problem do you solve? And so think about it from like what problem do you individually within your organization? But then I'd love for you to also expand on um healthcare architecture and what problem that solves within the community.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

So internally, I think the biggest problem I solve is staying on top of what's happening in healthcare, whether it's current executive orders, the Big Beautiful Act, if it's what's going on with rural hospitals, all of those things and keeping that front of mind because what is our value proposition? What are we doing for our clients to make things better for them? Not just bringing them, oh, you could design this brand new bed tower, but what can we actually do to help you with what keeps you up at night, your funding? Where is it coming from? What are the new challenges in the industry that you're trying to solve when the trends are constantly changing? Externally, I really think that bringing healthcare to the community is a really, really big deal. Keeping people out of the ER, which is not necessarily where you're that should not be the front door to the hospital. It should not be the ER. Understanding there are other places that you can go to get health care beyond I broke my leg or I've had a cold for two weeks. But talking about preventative health care and what can be provided there. So you don't get to the point of feeling, I have to go to the doctor. It's I'm going to the doctor because I have a well visit and being comfortable with that. So I think the community health care is huge lately. And that is something that we've been really designing a lot of and programming a lot of and talking about what is it? It's beyond exam rooms, it's career counseling, it's teaching people about nutrition, it's having yoga on a on a rooftop, it's bringing the farmers market outside of the building. So all of those things I think are really important and they're making a huge, huge impact on some of our communities right now.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

For technical people who have no clue what business development is, what marketing is, what strategy is all about. Can you talk a little bit about how you make their lives just a little bit easier?

SPEAKER_00 6:15

From the BD perspective, it's about opening doors. A lot of architects aren't comfortable going out and getting work. You've got some rainmakers that have great personalities, but a lot of them want to do the work, not get the work. So creating a network, talking to people in the industry, talking to other architects, but talking to engineers and contractors and specialty consultants and gathering insights and learning more about what's happening in the industry. And what clients are they working with? And what have they been doing with that client? And what have they been seeing? Do they have a capital plan? Did they complete a master plan? How can you get in front of the client to open the door, do a soft introduction, and bring your technical team, your design team, planning team to the table to meet with them so that that is not what they are concerned with. They're concerned about keeping their client happy in the midst of a project and getting another project from them, but you can bring in a brand new client and say, let me introduce you to my design team. Oh, I think that you have programming and planning issues that you've been talking about. Let me introduce you to like one of our like, you know, planning directors. So on the BD side, that's pretty much what I think is like the greatest opportunity for that role. The marketing side, like it gets you out there. It can be via communications, it can be via social media, it can be through um generating articles. I mean, we have ghostwriters, obviously, a lot of people do. The architects aren't always writing the article. Somebody else is giving them the information to create a compelling message that is then, you know, pitched to an industry journal or a publication where they might pick up that article and publish. And your name gets out there. I mean, there's nothing better than somebody else writing about your work, as well as the proposals and a lot of the marketing collateral and creating presentations so you can show off your work, preparing you for a conference so that they can put together, you know, these great posters that show off what you've been doing. That's a lot of things that the marketing team is really doing for everyone. And it's something they don't have to worry about because they know that they have a professional, experienced team behind them that's doing all of that behind the curtain, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Can you talk a little bit about how you personally demonstrate your value in an organization that might not completely understand what you do?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

I think sometimes you need to not be scared to just open your mouth. I remember sitting in somebody's office when I was at Perkins and we were talking about an upcoming project, and we were talking about what the programming would look like, and they pulled out a set of plans and said, we should do it like this. And I remember being the one that looked at the plans and I said, I don't think you're going to accomplish what you need to accomplish with a plan that looks like this because you're lacking a 797 pharmacy. And all eyes were on me. And they we looked at the plans and said, She's right, the program can't work without that 797 pharmacy. Oh, we should look at something else. Nobody thought that I knew what a 797 pharmacy was, nor did they think they had any idea how to put a plan together for an oncology unit. But I did because I had been listening to everything that they shared and doing my own research in the background and listening to great podcasts like this one, as well as webinars and panels and et cetera. And you need to sometimes show that I do have as much insight into the industry as as you do. I just go about it in a very different way. It's not in designing the plan, designing the building, but I get what needs to happen inside the building once it's built. I get the program. So I think that's something that over the years I've been um unabashed to bring to the table. I do get it. I understand how you're programming and planning. I just learned it in a very different way than you did.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

I started this podcast to give other women an idea of what they could do with their career and what they could potentially achieve and a variety of trajectories that other women have taken. So I'd love to hear through your time in this industry, if you have some notes that you would like to give back to the industry on how they could better support women.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Absolutely. I think there's very little in the industry I have not touched from administration, business, finance, even, marketing, business development, et cetera. I would say that one thing is I have always listened as much as they will let me listen. I ask to be in meetings that I don't need to be in. And I think it's okay to do that when you get excused from the room sometimes when they're like, oh, we're going to talk about what the concept might be now. Ask to stay, listen to what they're doing, listen to how they're talking about conceptual design, programming, planning, and sit through it. It might mean that you have a longer day because you have other things to get done, but it's worth the extra hour of the day to listen to what they're talking about behind quote unquote closed doors. It's okay if they say no, but the more you ask, the more they're going to eventually say, sure, sit in the meeting with us. And that's that's how I that's how I learned a lot of what I know is through the listening by saying, can I stay? instead of being excused to go work on the proposal or to get a draft started. With communications, I think that understanding the industry language, it's not easy, especially on the healthcare side. My first year in at Perkins with learning about healthcare design, I had a notebook full of words and acronyms galore that I did not understand. Almost every day look something up to see what it was. But at some point, I became bold enough to say, can you just tell me what that is so I don't have to go look it up? Again, it is okay to ask the question because they know that you want to learn. So day one, they're talking about pick you's and nickus and et cetera. And I'm like all going right over my head and I'm writing them all down. And a few months later, somebody would throw something out and I'm like, can you tell me what a step-down unit is? I really don't know. And they know that you're interested. So I think be a little bit bold and ask to be in the room longer than you need to be. Ask the questions when you really don't know. And at some point, feel like it is okay to interject your opinion because we all have opinions and they're all different. And maybe you have an experience from a few years ago where you were in an inpatient unit and you were in the room with a family member and you experienced something that did not work in the room, and they're talking about planning it just like that. It's okay to say, I actually was in an experience where I was in a room with my family, and that exact feature was in there and it was in the way. And this is why and why it didn't work for us. It's all right to like give them your opinion. So know when to listen, but also know when it's okay to share something because they have the opportunity to learn from you as well as you learning from them.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

What would you tell your younger self?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

If I had the opportunity to tell my younger self something, it would be be more resilient. Resilient is my word of the year this year. Changes are going to happen no matter what you do, and you have no control over them. What you have control over is your reaction to it and what you choose to do in the next moment. And I think that would be what I would want my younger self to know that resiliency is important. And rather than being completely reactive to change, absorb it and then figure out what you're going to do next.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Do you have tips on how to practice resiliency, whether it's in your personal or your professional life?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

I have a lot of tips on resiliency. One is practice your poker face. You have to have a poker face day in, day out. If people can see the reaction on your face, it's you might as well have just said it. I learned many times to take a breath before opening my mouth just to think about what I am about to say and how how is that going to be received? Because sometimes you need to take a breath and rethink it. And I would also say that I don't know, over the last few years, uh, meditation has helped me a lot because it gets you into yourself a little bit more and it makes you think about the outside world more. So that's also helped me with my breath of how is this going to be received by other people if I say it like that, or if they can just see it on my face.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

I'd like to give you an opportunity to use this time and space and platform to um send out whatever message you would like to share.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

I think that one of the biggest things that I have learned out there is the need to pivot 2020 during the pandemic. That was a huge pivot moment. 2008 was a huge pivot moment. And we're very likely in a moment right now where we're pivoting every single day to figure out what's going on. And I think it's okay to take everything that you've done for the last eight years and ditch it and say we need to do something different. Um, I think it's okay to say we've tried that three times before, it didn't work. Why are we doing that again? So sometimes asking those hard questions because you know you need to do something different, and it's hard to do that. It's really difficult to say we're gonna pivot and do something completely new. We don't know what the outcome is going to be. And it doesn't matter if you do market research or do surveys or what have you, you don't know what the outcome is going to be. But something different is what you really need to do. So I think that's my big like closing thought is knowing that it's okay to completely pivot every so often and do something different. And it might be a new exciting thing that works that everybody has an amazing reaction to. And they're never going to stand up and applaud, but at some point somebody is going to come up to you and say, that was an incredible idea. I'm so glad that we tried that.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Thanks for listening. Until next time, go shine your light.