As we wrote last year for her promotion to OKW’s Director of People, Cole is inseparable from OKW’s work and brand. She is a compelling person of action, whose mission is to make OKW into the best environment for its people.
It wasn’t too long ago that she was removed from the office experience while working full-time in a construction trailer at the NEWCITY mixed-use development. She speaks fondly about the trailer and how “once you crossed the threshold, it was easy to be on the same team, to feel like you were all rowing in the same direction.” The opportunity to be embedded in the project, “to get dirty at every level,” showed her what it meant to be on the same page as everyone else, with everyone working together in service of the project.
“In an office, there are so many team layers,” she says, “that it can be challenging for everyone to focus on Team OKW. I want to establish and nurture the same camaraderie in the office as I felt on site.”
Cole started her path towards architecture in an unexpected place: the grocery store. When she was in early grade school, she would join her mother for the weekly trip and find herself rifling through the lower rungs of the magazine aisle. “It was all the stuff no one cared about,” she remembers, “but that’s all I could reach.” That’s how she wound up evaluating her first-ever floor plan. Over the years the interest grew, albeit subconsciously, with sketches on wax paper and silent critiques of the Parade of Homes. Her father was also the type of person to turn a bookcase into a door and vice versa, which provided her with a constant environment of engineering and problem-solving.
It wouldn’t be until she walked into the School of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America that it all clicked: “It’s over,” she said. “I’m home; hook, line, and sinker.”
She made her own way through the practice, focusing on practical solutions over avant-garde expressions. Through it all, she was fascinated by how it all comes together, which makes her great at her job in both respects, technical and interpersonal. While people are far more complex than even the finest technical challenges of a project, they are similar in that your interactions will affect outcome and performance.
With her recent promotion to partner, Cole wants to create a strong, intentional foundation for how the office sees itself. As the caretaker of that consciousness, she will constantly remind us of who we are, and what we can be.