Celebrating 1 Year of ArchitectHer

What a Day. What a Room. What a Community! 🎉

We’re still riding the wave of inspiration and connection from our 1 year anniversary event -Foundations of the Future—and honestly, we can’t stop smiling.

It was a room full of bold ideas, brave conversations, and a community deeply committed to shaping the future of technology with elevating and empowering women in Architecture at its core.

From the moment the doors opened, there was an electric buzz and even celebatory flowers (thank you to Stefania Chaplin). A full house. Passionate attendees. Authored-signed books, refreshments, laughter, and, above all, the kind of conversations that remind us why ArchitectHer exists.

ArchitectHer journey to date

Rachel Lunn, co-founder of ArchitectHer, opened the evening by sharing highlights from our incredible year—a year marked by meaningful progress, vibrant community engagement, and the powerful momentum of others believing in our vision.

Our Impact

Shana Lawrence, founder of ArchitectHer, spoke about the significant impact we've made and the milestone moments that defined our year—from gaining the support of industry-leading organisations to launching initiatives that shifted ambitions and growing our community to over 1,000 followers.

Thinking Like An Architect

Luca Mezzalira, Principal Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) didn’t just share insights he turned the room into a live-thinking space. Architects at all levels leaned in, reflected, and left with clarity.

🧠 Takeaways from Luca’s session: Thinking Like an Architect

• Architecture starts with context, not technology

• Focus on the problem space before designing solutions

• Use tools like event storming and domain storytelling to bridge business and tech

• Apply DDD to map boundaries and drive clarity

• Systems are sociotechnical; it’s not just about code, it’s about people

• And above all, communication is key

Clear, grounded, collaborative thinking —that’s the architecture mindset.

A huge thank you to Luca Mezzalira for sharing his expertise, and helping us all think more intentionally as architects. His presence made a lasting impact.

Cultivating Resilience and Master Negotiation as an Architect

We don’t often pause to think about ourselves, but Ally Gilbert (Co-founder at Enterprise Insight EA Software), and made sure we did. Her session on cultivating resilience and mastering negotiation skills brought both energy and depth. Backed by her neuroscience background, she delivered practical, relatable insights that had attendees nodding (and seriously taking notes!)

🧠 Key takeaways on building resilience:

• Your physiological state matters, prioritise protein early in the day, limit refined carbs

• Sleep isn’t optional, women need 8–11 hours a night to reduce risk of disease and feel truly energized

• Time your exercise wisely, ideally an hour after a protein-rich meal

• Build your support system: community, self-care, and recovery are essential

• Start a gratitude journal and track what uplifts you, tools like Oura can help.

• Most importantly: don’t take things too personally, a resilient mindset can’t be overstated.

✨ Ally also unpacked stakeholder mapping and the art of negotiation and let’s just say: gems were dropped.

A big thank you to Ally Gilbert for bringing energy and expertise on resilience and negotiation. Her insights added tremendous value to our event. If you want to revisit the session, you can check out Ally’s slides here.

Inspired by this talk, we created a 5-Minute Gratitude Prompt Card to welcome the second half of the year. It’s a simple and reflective tool and we hope it’s the little reminder you need today.

Rock the Foundations: PartyRock for Architects

In this hands-on workshop, we dove into AWS PartyRock, an intuitive generative AI playground that empowers users to design, test, and evolve solutions like never before. Attendees rolled up their sleeves to design solutions with PartyRock and discovered practical ways to integrate generative AI into their architectural thinking and problem-solving. It was a practical, collaborative, and energising experience—building real-time solutions and equipping everyone with tools and ideas they can carry into their day-to-day work.

Thank you to Charlie Coleman, who not only developed the idea for this incredible workshop but also led its execution alongside Omodolapo Babatunde. Charlie and Omodolapo bring their brilliance as core members of the ArchitectHer team. Thank you both for helping bring everything together so smoothly!

And huge thanks as well to our amazing facilitators from Amazon Web Services (AWS) — Naya Petala, Tammie Kong, Tzing Yii G.

"Amazing event with amazing people..sooooo much learned and soooo much more to be learned. Lovely networking with even more challenging workshop where our team invited an app using partyrock.aws"

Thank You for an incredible year!

🤝 Thank you to CIO WaterCooler for sponsoring this milestone event. We’re especially grateful to Andrew Pryor for your powerful speech and continued support of the ArchitectHer mission.

🏢 Thank you to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for hosting us in your stunning London office. Your space helped set the tone for connection, reflection, and celebration.

And of course, a big thank you to our incredible speakers and audience members, we couldn't do this without you!

Our signature Z-elfie (Czarina selfie), taken by co-founder Czarina Barnsby

Speakers, Sponsor and ArchitectHer Team

Book Winner

Captivated audience

The A Team!

As ArchitectHer we want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our members.

This past year has been incredibly rewarding—watching this community grow not just in size, but in strength, connection, and empowerment. The journey to this point hasn’t been without challenges, but it has been fueled by your unwavering support and generous sponsorship. In just 12 months, ArchitectHer has been mentioned in spaces and at conferences we once only dreamed of. We’ve hosted events with renowned speakers and thought leaders, and launched initiatives to empower both aspiring and seasoned architects. Each of these moments has only reaffirmed our mission and vision.

What inspires us most is the passion that flows through this community and the undeniable proof that ArchitectHer is not only wanted—but truly needed.

Thank you for being part of this journey. Here’s to everything we’ve built together—and all the milestones still to come.

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