Today we’d like to introduce you to Constance Spencer.
Constance, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Originally from Canada, I moved down to the states when I was accepted in the architecture school at Miami where I earned a Bachelor in Environmental Design, with a semester at Cornell and was fortunate to be offered a position at Yale in their Masters of Architecture program. During the required First Year Building Project, I stayed on to work the summer as a carpenter. Then I moved to Vancouver and began to do design-build residential construction as well as opening my own architectural practice. After a few years I came back east to Toronto where I joined a mid-size architectural firm as a partner and eventually moved to the Carolinas with my family on a recommendation by my professor. However, my husband had been abusive both physically toward my children and emotionally towards me, and left us little financially when he abandoned the family shortly after arriving in the US. So I was grateful for my profession. and eventually worked hard enough to build my own house and start my own practice in the Carolinas, Spencer Architect LLC, which has gratefully given my children and I a very good living!
Once my family was stable, I volunteered with the South End Development Committee, Women in Construction, the schools, the city commissioners and sports teams since I was now a single mother to four children in those systems. I headed up food distribution in shelters, clothing and furniture donations for refugees, theater outings for children, tutoring, coral events and career days at the schools. Then I realized that there had to be areas of even worse need across the world and I joined KOP & YASC to work in marginal communities in Kenya, Mexico, the DR, Nicaragua, and China where I often led up to 150 volunteers in programs that provided medical clinics, public health, teaching, sports, business consulting, construction and music. I took my children with me through much of this and we all contributed to projects that empowered women, educated children, supported villages, and improved lives.
This effort felt good! I witnessed women become bold after seeing our female volunteers example. Some told me they had started their own domestic violence group and others wanted to use our power tools. I saw a woman bending rebar on a job site, girls playing baseball in a field they previously didn’t frequent and women banding together to build a latrine for a poverty stricken family. This was inspiring and once my children left for college I picked up my pace and either led my own programs or joined IVHQ for environmental and social justice oriented projects in Costa Rica, Peru, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Croatia, and Belize. It was important work that changed the lives of so many more people but my life was changed the most. I began to travel even more until I had experienced 124 countries and island states, and helped in other ways, distributing laptops, school uniforms, eye glasses, clothing, and books. I even sponsored refugees from Nicaragua to come live in my house, funded college tuition for students including a doctor, and endowed a scholarship for women at the Yale School of Architecture.
I have won awards and many wonderful thanks for this work, which is appreciated, but I became more interested in helping an even greater number of women. So I designed my own class for the Yale Global Scholar Program for students called “The Art of Giving Back”. I lectured on it and wrote social justice articles in the Huffington Post, published the book “A Site Visit” and researched and edited “Women verses Women: The Case for Co-operation”. I went back to college and earned an ALM in Sustainability from Harvard and taught the required entry course, and during all of this I started to recognize a phenomenon – women were moving into construction jobs right before my eyes. In the skilled trades they could make about 94.7% of what men make compared to 77.9% in the professions or business. So I have established the Spencer Women’s Foundation, bringing together so many talented, clever and dedicated people I have worked with along the way, to help single mothers, abused women, women in marginal areas, young women and old, get into a sustainable field that could transform their lives and their communities, as it did for me!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My career has been a hard uphill climb, starting when I decided to become an architect in Grade 9. I come from a long line of ancestors in the construction trade so it must. be in my blood since the day I signed up for the architectural and mechanical drafting classes in high school, I was hooked. However, when I tried to take more classes like automotive repair in the tech wing, as was my right being the student with the highest grades, I was thwarted by the Dean who said that “as a girl I would be a hazard to myself and fellow students”. Instead, I accepted a place in electricity class where I learned to wire houses. That class along with the summer work at marine construction firms, architectural offices and the Yale First Year Building Project where I worked as a carpenter for a summer,, wound up being invaluable experience needed to segway into my future profession as an architect and my work in the design/build development field which I have done in both Canada and the US.
But I almost didn’t make it into architecture school when I was rejected from every Canadian University that I applied to. In high school I had completed my five years in four, but my teachers went on strike for three of those years, so I missed the core English lessons. This led to my failing the entrance exam for the Canadian colleges, even though I was accepted into the architecture program at the school of my choice. Determined to succeed, I accepted the only offer which was at a backup school in the US, Miami of Ohio, and went on to complete my degree there in three years instead of four, something never achieved by anyone else since. I believe this set me up well for my work at Yale, which has given me such extraordinary benefits in my professional and personal life. In return I have endowed the Constance A. Spencer Scholarship for the Yale Architecture School in gratitude.
So I have learned that when you hit a roadblock, you can find a way to get around it to continue your dreams if you are willing to be innovative and do the hard work required. The main challenge that I have regularly experienced as a female architect in a primarily male world, is sexual harassment in both the workplace and outside of it. In one firm after I had been put in charge of a division, one of the draftsmen assigned to it screamed in my face that he “would never work for a woman”. In-house engineers have tried to charge my projects for work they never did and some clients in the South did not want a female leader on their projects. But I have also found that there are so many supportive mentors, co-workers and clients who respect my work and talents for which I am grateful.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
The three career accomplishments that I am most proud of include the following:
1. Starting my own firm in Vancouver, Toronto then Charlotte, while fighting inequality and creating some amazing award-winning projects. Being self-employed also allowed me to raise my four children as a single mother, and share my business, design and construction knowledge as a passionate volunteer to improve lives. I have worked with the Yale Alumni Service Corps for 17 years as a producer, Board President and project leader, building schools, hospitals, setting up clinics, teaching computers, English and sports in marginal communities in the DR, Nicaragua, Mexico, China, US and other countries. I have also worked with KOP at a Kenya orphanage and IVHQ doing wildlife and marine conservation as well a independent service work globally.
2. Becoming an expert in sustainable design has been incredibly rewarding. and allowed me to do unique container re-purposing, textile warehouse renovation and hospitality design, one of the most complex areas in the architectural profession. As a national specialist in container design I have designed Serv, a 20-container pickleball and sports complex, The Grove, an 85-container shopping and entertainment center, and Sparkman Wharf, a thriving 20-container urban renewal project on the waterfront in Tampa. I have also turned former textile warehouses into highly successful ventures such as Old Mecklenburg Brewery, Heist Brewery, Old Town and Great Wagon Road Distillery as well as renovating the historic Van Landingham Estate, Myers Park Country Club, Bonterra Restaurant from a church and Goldies from a former auto repair garage.
3. After completing my second Masters Degree at Harvard in Sustainability in 2021, I taught the required Masters class in sustainability at Harvard, created a new course for the Yale Global Scholars program called “The Art of Giving Back: Both Local and Global” and lectured on container projects, tiny house design, recycling and energy conservation as well as mentoring students at Harvard, Yale and other schools. This has led to my acceptance in the SIT PhD program in Sustainability which I am completing now and the formation of the Spencer Women’s Foundation to support women entering the skilled trades field for financial security, self-determination, to improve our communities and encourage green innovation and construction.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
When I was a pre-teen, my parents gave me access to a 12′ aluminum boat with a 9hp motor and since we had lived on Lake St. Clair in Canada I was able to use it daily. It became my escape and I would motor across to Detroit or Peche island between countries and explore.. The island had been occupied by indigenous people, then the French at one time but it was bought by the President of Hiram Walkers to develop as an estate for his daughter to be gifted on her wedding. He had built stables, a pump house, dock, manor house and other outbuildings but after a fire destroyed the manor house, the island remained deserted. This presented a great opportunity for me to researched the history, then explore the island to find the ruins of each building and map them. It was splendid fun and great for the imagination, so I have always been grateful for that small boat!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.spencerwomensfoundation.com/
- Instagram: https://sites.google.com/site/spencerarchitect/home
