Voices of Design Leadership. Ken Sanders
and the Conference Center for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah.
In 2020, Sharron became Managing Partner of ZGF’s Portland office. She is the first woman to assume that role, following Bob Packard and Jan Willemse. (Jan remains an active Partner at ZGF; Bob retired in early 2022.) As Portland Managing Partner, Sharron guides marketing and interior design for a diverse portfolio of corporate workplace, law office, institutional, higher education, healthcare, commercial mixed use, and aviation projects.
ZGF Architects was originally founded in Portland in 1942 as Wolff and Phillips, then in 1954 became Wolff and Zimmer. In 1966, the firm became Wolff Zimmer Gunsul Frasca under the leadership of Norm Zimmer, Brooks Gunsul, and Bob Frasca. In 1991, ZGF was awarded the Architecture Firm Award by the American Institute of Architects, which recognized the firm for “creatively transforming client needs and aspirations into elegant, inventive architectural form, and establishing a standard of excellence and expectation of quality to which other firms aspire.”
ZGF has since expanded to six offices, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington DC, New York, and Vancouver, BC, Canada. The firm has also extended its reach of award-winning healthcare, research, corporate, and civic projects to clients including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Expensify, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford University, US Department of State, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
One noteworthy ZGF project is Stanley Hall at the University of California, Berkeley. Inside the building are the research laboratories where Dr. Jennifer Doudna and her team co-developed CRISPR, the gene-editing technology first used commercially for testing and diagnosis of COVID-19. Stanley Hall is a gold-standard example of how architecture can help sponsor impactful cross-disciplinary research.
High-performance sustainable design has also been a central tenet of ZGF’s practice. The firm’s first Living Building project, a new headquarters building for PAE Engineers in Portland, opened in 2021. Other net-zero projects include the Rocky Mountain Institute Innovation Center in Basalt, Colorado, and the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California, among others.
Prior to her interview for this book, I last saw Sharron at Bob Frasca’s memorial service in 2018, where she delivered a beautiful eulogy to the man with whom she worked for over three decades. In her interview, she generously shares some of the leadership lessons she learned from Bob, as well as her own thoughts about ZGF’s future.
While working at ZGF, Sharron met her husband Peter, who continues to work at the firm as a Principal. They have a daughter Ella, who recently graduated from Chapman University in Orange, California. Readers will soon learn more about Ella’s talent as a soccer player!
Interview
Ken Sanders: Sharron, when and how did you join ZGF?
Sharron van der Meulen: 1986. My trek to ZGF was interesting. While I was in school at the University of Oregon, I was an intern at SOM for four years. I was one of those crazy kids that didn’t understand that I should be going off to Florida during spring break. I came back to Portland every holiday break and every summer, and I worked at SOM because I loved the environment and the energy. During school I was lucky enough to be hired as an intern, and I started out by taking on a lot of different tasks: organizing the materials library, running prints, but mostly working in the model shop on buildings and competition models.
When SOM closed their doors in Portland, I purposely took a job at a small firm. SOM was fairly large in Portland, and I wanted a different kind of experience. But, I realized after three or four months that I really liked the challenge of larger projects. There is a certain energy about being around a lot of people with diverse backgrounds and an expansive outlook.
After I decided that I wanted to be part of a larger firm, there were no other firms in Portland that were hiring. We were coming out of a severe recession. I was literally a couple of weeks away from moving to New York because I had a good friend who had taken a position at SOM, and she encouraged me to take the leap.
And then I got a call from Jim van Duyn from ZGF, who asked me to come in for an interview, which was followed by a second meeting with Norm Zimmer. I was hired initially on contract, but it’s interesting how fate can change a lot of things. If that hadn’t happened, who knows what city I would be living in and where I would be working.
KS: I’ve had the same experience in my life and career. Decisions other people make sometimes send you on trajectories you don’t anticipate. When you joined ZGF 35 years ago, the firm was around fifty people in one office, correct?
SVDM: I was number 65 and we had one office in Portland.
KS: And now it’s over 750 in six offices.
SVDM: I know, it’s hard to wrap my head around.
KS: In 2020, you assumed the Managing Partner role in Portland. Was that a role you pursued or a role that you were invited to step into?
SVDM: I definitely did not pursue it. I wasn’t completely sure what the position entailed. Although I have worked closely with the other Managing Partners, I didn’t know exactly what to expect, what happens behind the scenes, and how my daily routine would change. I wasn’t apprehensive. I just wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into and what the expectations were.
But, you know, I’ve never pursued any position. I never said, for example, “I want to be made an Associate.” My internal purpose was always to work on projects and to do a really good job and get the firm to the next level in terms of design quality. The work was always first to me and I have always led with that notion. And my progression through the firm has always been driven by the work and my impact on projects.
I had the confidence of a lot of the Partners, and that made a huge difference in my decision to take on this new role. I was surrounded by people that believed in my ability to lead, who said: “You’ve been doing this already.” So I felt, yes, I can take this on!
You know this, Ken. In architecture, every day is a different day; no two days are the same. And that’s what I thrive on and love about the profession. This is just an extension of that. There is a greater responsibility because now I’m the face and the voice of a greater number of people. I represent the firm in everything that I do. But I also feel like I’ve done that throughout my career.
KS: You had the confidence of your Partners and that meant a lot. Were there other things you tried to understand about the role beforehand? Or did you say to yourself, I’ll take a leap of faith and figure it out along the way?
SVDM: I was going to figure it out as I went. I’ve known Bob Packard for my entire career. I’ve known Jan Willemse for practically my entire career. I have a lot of respect for both and I knew how they handled the Managing Partner position. There was never a question that I could perform in the role. I just wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into. I don’t necessarily have a controlling personality, but I like to know what the challenges are ahead of me.
And I must tell you that the way ZGF is organized now is quite different. For twenty years, there were just three Partners steering the ship and making all the decisions. It’s very different now. We have twenty Partners, nine of which are in the Portland office. We are all taking on more office and firm wide responsibility, which is great. It’s not all on my shoulders.
KS: In your new leadership role, what has shifted in terms of how you spend your time? Have you given up on certain things to take on new responsibilities? Or has it been a more modest shift?
SVDM: I think it’s been more of a modest shift, honestly. Bob and Jan have been good predecessors because they held this role, but they never gave up working on projects. And I think that’s the difference between ZGF and maybe some other firms. I can only speak for ZGF, but our philosophy is that the people that pursue projects are the same people