Women's History Month Profile: Ginny Hightower & Erin Dorey

 To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re featuring some of the inspiring women who are crucial to our success and embody the creative growth to which we always aspire. Rottet Studio occupies a unique vantage point in the conversation about women in the workplace – over 60% of our full-time staff are female, and we are a proud Women Business Enterprise (WBE) Certified firm under our Founding Principal, Lauren Rottet.Meet two of our Houston-based designers, Erin and Ginny, who work tirelessly to manage and support our projects in the hospitality, corporate and residential sectors. Erin joined our Houston office a year ago, bringing her expert proficiency with 3D modeling, presentational graphics and renderings. She studied architecture at the University of Houston, where she received her Bachelor's Degree with Honors. Ginny has been with Rottet Studio since 2013 and recently used her bilingual fluency in English and Spanish to help launch the Four Seasons Casa Medina in Bogota, Colombia.Tell me about your path to a career in design and architecture.Erin: I always knew I would be in a creative industry. I was heavily influenced by art at a young age and had amazing opportunities to work with great artists. I loved my experiences, but could never wrap my mind around designing things that didn’t solve problems that were tangible. This ultimately led me into architecture and I found the purpose in design I was looking for.Ginny: Before I graduated from high school, I re-did my room in my parent’s house three times. The interest was always there - even just spending Saturday mornings watching certain House Beautiful shows or looking at magazines and reading floor plans. But after the crash of 2008, I lost my job working in a hotel. I kind of just floated, not knowing what to do, and I took the Birkman Questionnaire – which takes your personality and your work style to show you how you interact with people, and what your strong suits are. Mine were aesthetics and mathematics, so I went back to school for interior design in L.A. Honestly, I think it was better for me to go back to school at that age because I was much older than my peers, and I excelled.What is your favorite part of your job?Erin: Problem-solving.Ginny: There’s a few. The first is building the client relationship – I really enjoy that interaction, and I feel like it’s important to cultivate business relationships. The second is the final stages before opening when you’re selecting the art and putting the final touches that really bring the space together. The third is collaborating with artists and consultants that expose you to other creatives.What are the ways in which men’s and women’s careers in architecture/experiences in architecture school differ?Erin: Before starting architecture school, I was asked by a woman, “Why do you want to go into a man’s industry?" I can’t ignore that this is/was reality, but I’ve always felt that the women before me paved the way. I haven’t been met with nearly the resistance I’ve heard stories of. When I was in school the student body was also edging close to 50/50.Ginny: I think as a woman you almost have to prove yourself more. Outside of the design part, it’s such a male-dominated industry that, as a woman, you have to be confident in your decisions and have the backup knowledge to support them.What's the best career advice you've received?Erin: The best advice I’ve received is that it’s perfectly fine not to care what anyone else thinks about you! Whether in life or your career, it’s important to keep yourself in mind and work towards what matters to you first.Ginny: A designer who worked with Benjamin Noriega said that a major part of our job in the design industry is to anticipate problems - and by anticipating problems, you can try to find solutions before they occur. It helped me because it builds foresight and keeps you looking forward.What does diversity in leadership mean to you? Erin: Diversity in leadership means putting many different parts together that work – not equal parts, but that, together, create a super team that would never exist with all parts equal. Companies need to foster individualism and diverse environments that thrive from their many talents, genders and backgrounds. Diversity makes things interesting and I think design firms get it.Ginny: Diversity in experience can help a company’s profitability – because if you only know one way of doing things, how are you going to gain perspective on another approach? I think the most important definition is a diversity of experience that you can bring to your job.Mentorship is crucial to professional success and longevity, but many studies have shown that women in the workplace are more reluctant to pay it forward and have a harder time finding mentors than men do. Do you think this dynamic holds true in the design industry, as well?Erin: I think it does – mentoring largely comes from leadership roles, which there are often fewer of among female designers.Ginny: From my experience, no. I don’t think it has to do with gender, I think it has to do with age and being threatened by the unknown of a newcomer. Male or female, nobody wants to be replaced. I’ve just been really fortunate to have worked under some really talented women, like Lauren [Rottet] and Rozalynn Woods - they've all taken an active role in mentorship. I think it has to do with the fact that how we learn under them helps them succeed. Design is such a creative field that if we're not in sync, the project suffers.