2022 Women in Commercial Real Estate: Deborah Lukan, Pickard Chilton Architects, Inc.

What advice would you offer to women getting into the industry? Discover and develop your strengths! The building industry is diverse and offers a wealth of opportunities to be involved in any aspect of the built environment – from development and leasing, to design and construction. I encourage those at the beginning of their careers to consider and explore the gamut of options to find one that truly motivated and excited them. If one is challenged, learns and is excited by their work, the result will be that much stronger. Identifying your areas of personal interest is the most productive path to mastery of the chosen discipline and a more fulfilling career.

What trends will dominate your industry in the coming months? The foreseeable trend is disruption, be it in the form of a pandemic, work-from-home, climate change, inflation, or supply chain issues. It will likely become a decades-long megatrend and change all facets of our built world. We need to adapt and change in ways that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. We need to create sustainable and flexible built environments that can withstand increasingly severe weather events over the life of the structure. Buildings take a long time to complete, we need to become adept at designing for uncertainty.