Construction Institute Roundtable, Women Who Build
Identifying your “Reason, Season, & Lifetime” Mentors
May 26, 2021
This May, CannonDesign’s Andrea Baker and Carolina Cudemus from the University of Massachusetts Amherst partnered with our own Catherine Tinkler, PMP, EBCP, LEED AP O+M to plan a roundtable discussion during a virtual speed networking event hosted by the Construction Institute. As a leading network for cross-industry collaboration, ideation, and relationship building – the Construction Institute’s “Pathway to Women Who Build Summit” was a perfect fit for Catherine’s idea for a conversation surrounding mentoring connections.
Catherine shaped her idea for this forum from a poem titled “Reason, Season, or Lifetime.” Used to describe friendships, this well-known poem can be applied to connections made through mentoring. As a mentee you seek out guidance not yet knowing in what category the mentor will fall. As a mentor, you can look back and see the relational impacts. The roundtable discussion identified mentors as Reason, Season, or Lifetime with real world examples shared by participants, facilitated by Catherine and Andrea.
Traditionally, mentoring in a business setting is between a young professional and a senior professional who can share a breadth of knowledge, coaching, and general career/decision-making advice. Connections like these are crucial for information gathering, advocacy, and insight when deciding how to advance a career. The Construction Institute’s event was unique in that participants could “walk” in and out of discussion “rooms”, since the event was held virtually utilizing a platform called GatherTown - “a web-conferencing software like Zoom, but with the added component of seeing the virtual ‘room’ you and others are occupying, and with the ability to move around and interact with other participants based on your locations in the room, like real life.”
In the spirit of celebrating making it through the last year of challenges, this roundtable was approached with a new outlook. Reflecting on the conference, Andrea said “I value Women Who Build and feel it’s important to celebrate our ability to not only survive, but also to thrive.” Attendees celebrated themselves and this mentality through various breakout sessions that were meant to engage the mind and have some fun.
The Construction Institute is a leading network and “a neutral forum for exchanging new ideas, knowledge, and opportunities while creating stronger collaborative relationships among architects, engineers, constructors, owners, and other industry stakeholders.” Their mission is to promote cross-industry collaboration.