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Hire Smarter, Let Go, and Lead: Building a Sustainable Business as a Woman in AEC

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Release Date: 10/28/2026

Hire Smarter, Let Go, and Lead: Building a Sustainable Business as a Woman in AEC show art Hire Smarter, Let Go, and Lead: Building a Sustainable Business as a Woman in AEC

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

What happens when you realize being a great leader doesn't mean being the smartest person in the room? This week on Women in AEC: Wine After Work, Bryce Batts sits down with Annie Bevan, founder and CEO of the Sustainability Management & Strategy Collaborative (SMSC), for a candid conversation about entrepreneurship, building successful teams, navigating leadership as a woman, and knowing when it's time to let go. Founders often feel like they need to do everything themselves. Annie has built her business around a different philosophy: hire people who are better than you at something, give...

info_outline Prioritization Beats Productivity: Autonomy, Appreciation, and Culture show art Prioritization Beats Productivity: Autonomy, Appreciation, and Culture

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Firms promote their strongest technical people into leadership and then give them almost no training. When a team struggles, leaders often blame the team. Amanda Van Der Heiden has seen this play out across dozens of organizations, and she argues the problem usually starts with how people are being led. Amanda and Bryce talk about how to get to the real reason someone wants out, and how to make core values stick after the launch. They cover how to adapt your leadership style without losing yourself, and what has to be in place before a leader can hand over real autonomy. Amanda explains...

info_outline Nobody at Work Is Your Friend: Relationships, Boundaries, and the Right Fit show art Nobody at Work Is Your Friend: Relationships, Boundaries, and the Right Fit

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Every career advice list says to protect your relationships. Almost nobody explains what that looks like day to day. Julia Hurley has built a real estate business, a political career, and an athlete management company on relationships, so she knows the how. Julia and Bryce compare matchmaking in real estate and recruiting, and why buyers and candidates are both getting choosier. Julia explains how she teaches college athletes to be the CEO of their own lives by separating the people who support them from the people who manage their money and careers. She shares her rule of thumb for rental...

info_outline Leadership Is a Craft: High-Agency Leadership in AEC show art Leadership Is a Craft: High-Agency Leadership in AEC

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Most AEC professionals move into leadership without any training for it. Engineering school didn't teach it and architecture school didn't either. So we copy whoever led us and hope it works. Zack Tomlin argues there's a better way, and that architects and engineers are wired to learn leadership as a craft. Zack built Maple Engineering from a two-person operation at a Raleigh public library into a 20-person firm and sold it after 12 years. He explains why leading highly technical experts calls for high-agency leadership instead of command-and-control. He walks through the five levels of his...

info_outline The Leaky Bucket: Why Women Leave HVACR and What Leadership Can Actually Fix show art The Leaky Bucket: Why Women Leave HVACR and What Leadership Can Actually Fix

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Bryce just got back from Women in HVACR in Indianapolis, where she spoke to a room full of owners and managers about a number that should keep them up at night: women are leaving the trades at roughly three times the rate they are getting hired into them. Every job fair booth, every high school program, every recruiting push is water poured into a bucket with a hole in the bottom. This is not a DEI session. There is no slide arguing that diversity is good for business. This is a retention conversation built for the owner who has one woman on a crew of nine and cannot figure out why she is...

info_outline The Four Rungs on the Ladder: Why AEC Firms Hire Women and Lose Them Anyway show art The Four Rungs on the Ladder: Why AEC Firms Hire Women and Lose Them Anyway

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Barb Allen spent 20 years on commercial job sites, starting as a carpenter apprentice in 1997 and working her way up to superintendent. She was the first woman her company had ever hired out of college for that track. She left the built environment in 2022 after a meeting where leadership told her she was "difficult to work with," then admitted nobody could say how. That meeting became a book. In OneLadder to Leadership, Barb names four gender specific challenges as rungs on an unsafe ladder: missing, broken, sticky, and slippery. In this conversation she breaks down all four, tells the story...

info_outline Architecture as a Society-Making Tool, Told From a War Zone show art Architecture as a Society-Making Tool, Told From a War Zone

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Architecture is usually discussed as a service. A client has a need, a firm delivers a building, everyone moves on to the next project. Dr. Marwa Al-Sabouni makes a harder argument. She says the built environment is one of the strongest forces shaping whether people in a place trust each other, and that the consequences of getting it wrong can take generations to show up. She would know. Marwa is an architect based in Homs, Syria, who stayed through the war and wrote about what she was watching in real time. In this episode she and Bryce talk about how decades of zoning and redevelopment...

info_outline Burned Out and Anxious? What Your Food Has to Do with It and all the Food Recalls show art Burned Out and Anxious? What Your Food Has to Do with It and all the Food Recalls

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Episode Summary:In this enlightening episode, we welcome Valerie Hawkins, a dedicated nutritionist and self-concept coach specializing in helping women tackle anxiety, burnout, and overwhelm. Drawing from her extensive background as a working mom and former engineer, Valerie shares her personal journey through the challenges of anxiety and burnout, offering valuable insights into how nutrition can significantly impact mental health and overall well-being.

Valerie’s transformative

info_outline Super-Architect: Craft, AI, and the Future of the Profession show art Super-Architect: Craft, AI, and the Future of the Profession

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Architects have been losing ground for years, and the industry keeps explaining it away with fee pressure, schedule pressure, and software. Beau [Last Name] has a less comfortable answer. He says the profession's own craft has declined, and that decline is exactly why architects keep getting moved further from the decisions that matter. His case runs like this. When drawings are incomplete and coordination is loose, somebody has to fill that gap, and lately that somebody is the builder. The builder absorbs the risk, then reasonably takes the authority that comes with it. Beau and Bryce get...

info_outline Stop Playing Small: How a Clear Vision Unlocks Your Career and Life show art Stop Playing Small: How a Clear Vision Unlocks Your Career and Life

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

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What happens when you realize being a great leader doesn't mean being the smartest person in the room?

This week on Women in AEC: Wine After Work, Bryce Batts sits down with Annie Bevan, founder and CEO of the Sustainability Management & Strategy Collaborative (SMSC), for a candid conversation about entrepreneurship, building successful teams, navigating leadership as a woman, and knowing when it's time to let go.

Founders often feel like they need to do everything themselves. Annie has built her business around a different philosophy: hire people who are better than you at something, give them ownership, and trust them to do their jobs. But trust also requires accountability, clear expectations, and a willingness to have the difficult conversations that many leaders avoid.

Annie shares how her unexpected unexpected path from being afraid of thunderstorms to studying climatology eventually led her into sustainability leadership and entrepreneurship. She discusses her work helping advance the Common Materials Framework, why collaboration is critical to making meaningful changes in the built environment, and how she's built a business that operates across multiple industries.

Bryce and Annie also get into the realities of growing a company: balancing autonomy with accountability, recognizing when a talented employee may no longer be the right fit for the business, and understanding that the people who help you launch a company aren't always the people who will help you scale it.

They also explore what changes for women when they reach executive leadership, why trusting your own expertise matters, and how priorities shift after decades of working hard to build a successful career.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, a woman working toward a leadership position, or a firm leader trying to build a stronger team, Annie's perspective offers practical lessons about leadership, growth, and knowing when to get out of your own way.

Because sometimes the most important thing you can do as a leader is recognize that you don't have to do it all.

About Annie Bevan

Annie Bevan is the founder and CEO of the Sustainability Management & Strategy Collaborative (SMSC), a company working across the built environment, life sciences, and EPR and packaging industries.

Through its divisions, Parallel and Verico, SMSC provides fractional sustainability staffing, strategic consulting, and independent third-party verification services.

With more than 20 years of experience in manufacturing, ecolabel and standard development, certification, and nonprofit and for-profit leadership, Annie has helped shape the conversation around sustainable products and materials.

Previously serving as President and CEO of mindful MATERIALS, Annie helped lead the development of the Common Materials Framework (CMF), an industry-wide approach to organizing sustainability information that informs leading building standards and initiatives, including LEED v5, WELL v2, the Living Building Challenge, and the AIA Materials Pledge.

A former competitive soccer player, Annie brings a team-oriented perspective to leadership. She believes in hiring people who excel where she doesn't, creating clear accountability, and building organizations where everyone has the opportunity to contribute their strengths.

And in a particularly relatable leadership moment, Annie admits that her managing director has officially banned her from Excel!

Connect with Annie:

What We Cover

  • Annie's unexpected journey from a childhood fear of thunderstorms to climatology, sustainability, and entrepreneurship.

  • Why sustainability must work within the economic and business realities companies face today.

  • Maintaining an abundance mindset even when the news and industry challenges feel overwhelming.

  • Why Annie founded SMSC and how she's built a business that works across industries.

  • The letter from 95 building product manufacturers that challenged architects to rethink sustainability conversations.

  • Why the building industry needed a common definition and language for sustainable materials.

  • How the Common Materials Framework is helping create healthier, more sustainable buildings, including schools and hospitals.

  • Why clear job descriptions, accountability, and RACI charts are essential when growing a team.

  • The employee who said "not yet" to a promotion and what that taught Annie about changing career priorities.

  • Why Annie believes everyone she hires should be better than her at something.

  • Recognizing when a talented employee isn't necessarily the right person for the company's next stage of growth.

  • Having difficult conversations early instead of allowing challenges to grow.

  • The unique experiences and challenges women face in sustainability, construction, and executive leadership.

  • Why confidence and trusting your expertise become even more important as you advance.

  • What Annie wants her next chapter to look like after years of demanding work schedules and building successful organizations.

Key Takeaways

1. Great leaders don't have to be great at everything.

If you're the most knowledgeable person in every area of your business, you've created a ceiling for growth. Hiring people who bring expertise you don't have is how you build something bigger than yourself.

2. Trust and accountability go hand in hand.

Giving people autonomy doesn't mean removing structure. Clear job descriptions, defined responsibilities, and a RACI chart help employees understand expectations while giving them the freedom to succeed.

3. The right employee for one stage of business may not be the right employee for the next.

Growing a business requires different skills at different stages. Someone can be incredibly talented and still not be the right fit for where the company needs to go.

4. Career growth looks different for everyone.

Not everyone wants the next promotion, the bigger title, or additional responsibility. Great leaders recognize that employees have different goals and that respecting those goals creates stronger teams.

5. Difficult conversations are part of good leadership.

Avoiding uncomfortable conversations doesn't help your employees or your business. Addressing challenges early, clearly, and respectfully creates opportunities for growth and better outcomes.

6. Women in leadership need to trust their expertise.

Reaching the executive level brings new opportunities, but also different expectations and challenges. Knowing your value, speaking with confidence, and surrounding yourself with the right people are critical to continued success.

7. Collaboration can create greater impact than competition.

Annie's work in sustainable materials demonstrates what happens when organizations come together around shared goals. Progress doesn't always come from owning the solution; sometimes it comes from creating a structure that helps everyone move forward.

Resources + Links

About Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Women in AEC: Wine After Work, hosted by Bryce Batts, brings together women from across the architecture, engineering, and construction industries for candid conversations about careers, leadership, entrepreneurship, personal growth, and the experiences that shape their journeys.

From navigating challenges and breaking barriers to celebrating successes and sharing lessons learned, each episode highlights the stories and perspectives of women making an impact in the AEC industry.

Pour yourself a glass and join the conversation!