HMC Architects is pleased to announce that Adrienne Luce has been promoted to vice president, diversity, inclusion, and social impact, and executive director of the Designing Futures Foundation (DFF). In addition to her current post as executive director of the DFF, Adrienne will be stepping into a newly created role that will lead our diversity and inclusion efforts full-time while continuing to serve as the leader of HMC’s charitable giving, community outreach, and ESOP communications initiatives.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have been an essential focus for the firm, and not just recently. HMC has a long-standing commitment to DEI that is central to our culture. Over the past few years, we have been finding ways to invest more in this area. Some examples of this include the formation of a DEI committee, a mentorship program, firmwide DEI goals and metrics, HBCU partnerships, SoCal NOMA partnership, NOMA-Student training classes, firmwide inclusivity awareness webinars, and the annual gender and pay equity report. We are taking an even more significant step in investing in our DEI initiatives by appointing a full-time senior leader. We believe this investment is good for HMC and our industry at large. Only a few firms have invested in dedicated resources for their DEI initiatives. While these firms are typically larger, we felt that our actions should match our words. This promotion will not only allow us to strengthen our DEI efforts but make a statement that we are serious about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the architecture space.  We believe there is much work to be done in the AEC industry to bring about more rapid change toward equality and diversity representation.

Since forming HMC’s DEI group, Adrienne has played a central role in developing our DEI strategy. She is a thought leader for HMC in this area and has made a significant impact by taking action and getting things done. Over the past decade, Adrienne has strengthened our communities through the DFF’s philanthropic investments in transformative nonprofits serving our communities, as well as corporate giving, volunteerism, and corporate social responsibility initiatives. Her relentless pursuit of information, high degree of emotional intelligence, and passion for humanity make her the ideal person for this leadership post.