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November 6, 2020 Women Who Mean Business

Thompson breaks mold leading a growing New Haven architecture firm

Ming Thompson, Principal, Atelier Cho Thompson
By Karen Ali

Ming Thompson, principal of New Haven next-generation design firm Atelier Cho Thompson (ACT), is not your typical architecture firm leader.

According to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Firms Survey, only 10 percent of firm owners are women. Only 7 percent are people of color.

Nationally, only 2 percent of women-owned businesses surpass the $1 million revenue mark. In 2018, Thompson’s firm became one of them.

Atelier Cho Thompson employs 14 people in Connecticut and California. The five-year-old firm has been on a growth streak of late, in part, thanks to Thompson.

She’s helped the firm grow through work on large projects across the country for clients that include Stanford University, Google and other global leaders in real estate, retail, tech and education.

“For my business partner [Christina Cho Yoo] and I, entrepreneurship was a path toward shaping a new kind of unconventional design firm, one where we could cross boundaries between architecture, interiors and graphic design,” Thompson said.

She was a recipient of the AIA Young Architect Award in 2020, and her firm has won numerous national and regional design awards. ACT’s work has also been published in several leading industry publications.

Educated at Yale College and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, she has taught at the California College of the Arts and has served on design juries around the U.S. Thompson is a first-year advisor at Yale and serves on the board of Yale-China.

Thompson said she has been lucky that, while on the path to success, she has had supportive people in her life.

“We have tried to craft a business where we could balance great work with rich and fulfilling lives, and we're able to carry off this balancing act because we have supportive life partners and a great network of helpful friends and family,” Thompson said.

Thompson said she wants more women and people of color to advance in the architectural field. One reason there is a lack of diversity in the industry, she says, is because the “barriers to entry are high.”

“We face years of late nights in the studio, high tuition costs, and comparatively low salaries for our education level. The biggest reason, I think, is that architecture and design are undervalued by society at large,” Thompson said.

Thompson said that women and men graduate from architecture school in nearly equal numbers, but only 18 percent of licensed architects are women.

“Women leave for a myriad of reasons, among them because firm culture is often inhospitable to a healthy family life, because they aren't promoted to design leadership roles, and because pay is low and hours are long,” Thompson said.

As a leader in the new Women in Architecture Committee and National Organization of Minority Architects Chapter of AIA Connecticut, she wants to be part of the solution. Through these groups, she and others are organizing programming focused on drawing more women and minorities to architecture, helping them rise up the leadership ranks, and promoting their accomplishments.

She believes focusing on education, mentorship and career development, and awards are important ways to counteract the lack of diversity.

Early attraction

Thompson appeared to be suited for this field at a young age. She said she grew up enjoying making things. She also always enjoyed math and art, two subjects important in architecture.

“There aren’t a lot of career paths where you can make things every day,” she said.

One recent accomplishment Thompson is proud of is a program her firm put together this past summer called Design Brigade.

It involved 20 Yale students who were working on several design problems. One involved designing a COVID memorial in New Haven.

Dana Karwas, director of the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM) at Yale, who worked with Thompson on the project, said Thompson’s feedback in meetings is always “high impact and thoughtful, regardless of how complex or political the design problem.”

“I also like Ming’s approach to the community – the ACT studio is in a storefront on State Street, which reflects Ming’s dialogue with the New Haven community. She is always connecting people and projects, and the storefront architecture studio, which also has a shop, increases the chance of social serendipity — and fosters community engagement.”

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