We asked our leaders to describe the importance that inclusivity plays in conjunction with diversity and how they’re helping to drive gender parity.

Helen Carnevale – Communications and Content Specialist, Environment
Inclusivity not only involves inviting a diverse community to the table, but also creating comfortable pathways for all to be heard. As editor of the Environment global newsletter, I’m thrilled to share accounts and images of our women employees across the world in all stages of their careers. Consistently featuring their accomplishments, awards and stories in a global publication advances parity and provides vision to young women employees.

Are you listening thoughtfully to women? Observe who you are and aren’t including in your professional conversations. Work to embrace diverse colleagues; your next great idea may come from someone who originally didn’t have a voice at the table.

Marissa Farrar – Vice President, People Strategy and Operations, DCSA + CM

Innovative companies are inclusive, and inclusive companies are more likely to meet or exceed financial targets because they bring together people with different backgrounds who have varied ways of seeing things. This diversity of thought yields a wellspring of creativity and prevents groupthink, thereby reducing risk.

I’m a spouse, mother of three, Woman of Color, on the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y and prefer pronouns of she/her/hers. I have both the privilege and passion for helping to shape inclusive people processes and cultivating a culture where those people feel valued, respected and safe to speak their minds. I accomplish this by mentoring others, bringing awareness to unconscious bias through learning programs and sharing my own story about the intersection of gender, gender roles, race, generational nuances and parenthood in the workplace. It’s important to take the time to engage with others who view diversity (including gender diversity) and job qualification as being at odds with each other. I love to facilitate these conversations and I aim to create more opportunity for them. When we seek to understand the life experiences that shape our attitudes and keep an open mind to hear and absorb those of others, we elevate the level of wokeness and move the topic of inclusion from words to action.

Wendy Lopez – Texas Executive

As both a female and an out lesbian leader in the historically male-dominated engineering industry, I have the unique opportunity to prove to our employees that it is OK to be yourself and that you are not going to be discriminated against at 91Ó°ÊÓ. I also make sure to show up and represent 91Ó°ÊÓ in the LGBTQ community.

In fact, one of my favorite recruiting events is 91Ó°ÊÓ’s sponsorship of the nonprofit professional association oSTEM (Out in Science, Technology? Engineering and Mathematics), which offers one of the more diverse talent pipelines. This event is important for someone who is just starting their first job and concerned about whether they will see people like them in leadership roles. By having representation of the LQBTQ community at industry events, we’re providing young professionals reassurance that it is not only safe, but also encouraged to be who you are at 91Ó°ÊÓ.

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The world’s cities are already home to the majority of the global population, with this forecast to grow by a further 3 billion people by 2050. The infrastructure needed to support this growth is often underfunded or falls short of what it could deliver to urban communities.

Cities have long planned and developed strategies to provide infrastructure investment, but as successive governments have discovered, there is never enough room in public budgets for all necessary projects.

Del Mar Station, Pasadena.

Many treasury departments have introduced processes to better manage public spending and project budgets as they are being conceived, developed and readied for construction. While more effective use of taxpayers’ money is commendable, the focus on budgets has often made it harder for governments to justify infrastructure investment which will enhance local livability, particularly where a project has little or no immediate or obvious economic return.

In Melbourne, with a population of over 4 million, a heritage of building resilient infrastructure over the decades has delivered world-class livability. Important thoroughfares, drainage works and railway projects of the past have delivered iconic boulevards, significant parks and city landmarks which have not only fulfilled their functional brief but also contributed to Melbourne’s amenity and reputation. However, times have changed and the scrutiny to which projects are subjected has tended to hobble the investigation, let alone the execution, of new roads, rails or drains that could also improve amenity over time.

When the focus of a project is narrow and does not consider broader long-term amenity considerations, the outcomes can be suboptimal and, in the long run, expensive.

Octavia Boulevard, San Francisco.

There are many global examples of infrastructure being built only to be completely torn down at great expense when broader negative health, economic and social impacts have done their damage.  This could be avoided with more inclusive and integrated thinking.

The solution is for project proponents to reconfigure the way in which they conceive and design projects. Specifically, designers need to consider community amenity and aesthetics as core parts of a project’s design and functionality. This is likely to require a precinct approach to project planning, rather than considering infrastructure in isolation. In Melbourne the recent spate of railway level crossing removals carried out by the Victorian Government have considered amenity as a central part of their design, resulting in rail lines being sunk with development opportunity created above, rather than previous approaches such as road overpasses, which have undermined community connectedness.

There is great promise in these times of austerity for those of us who dream of greener and more enjoyable cities in which to live and work. Rather than looking at livability as an expensive ‘add-on’ it should be seen as potentially adding value to infrastructure project and avoiding costs in the future.

 is a principal urban designer in 91Ó°ÊÓ’s Melbourne office.

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