Women in AEC: Wine After Work
Wine After Work is designed for women who are ready to embrace their autonomy and take full ownership of their careers. Join us as we learn from one another and dive into meaningful conversations. In a landscape where women remain underrepresented across various industries! While I focus on the Architectural, Engineering, and Construction sectors, our discussions feature an incredible lineup of women from diverse fields—female founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, creatives, and inspiring trailblazers. Hosted by Bryce Batts, this podcast inspires and empowers you to attract and retain top talent!
Episodes
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...
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 archit...
You've optimized your schedule, pushed through the late nights, and kept delivering — but you still feel like you're running on empty. What if the missing link isn't mindset or time management... it's nutrition?
Valerie Hawkins is a nutritionist and self-concept coach who left engineering to help women tackle anxiety, burnout, and brain fog through the power of what they eat. In this episode, she shares the science behind the...
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...
If you've ever felt stuck, scared to take the next step, or unsure of where you're headed — this episode is for you. Career and vision coach Carey Conley has spent 21+ years helping entrepreneurs and AEC professionals ditch fear-driven thinking and build a life with intention and purpose.
In this conversation, Carey breaks down why so many high-achieving women in technical fields stay trapped in survival mode — and exa...
Great healthcare design is invisible. You feel calmer, you find your way, your family has a place to rest, and you never notice the hundred decisions that made it happen. Kristin Green, a healthcare architect at Earl Swensson Associates (ESa) in Nashville, builds her whole practice around that idea. In this episode, she walks through what it actually takes to design hospitals that balance operational efficiency with ge...
Growth is supposed to feel like winning. For a lot of contractors, it feels like drowning. Derek Isaac, founder of Rapid Result Creators, spent more than 20 years in construction and real estate before turning that experience into a systems coaching practice for general contractors and home builders. In this episode, he breaks down why a growing business quietly becomes harder to run, and what to do about it.
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Lauren Weinbaum didn't leave a job she hated. She left one she loved, because a client offered to hire her company before she'd even started one. In this episode, the founder and president of Weinbaum Management Group walks through how a one-way flight to LAX and a single conversation turned into a 13-year run in aviation and large commercial construction.
We get into the decisions most founders don't talk...
Growth sounds good — until it's actually crushing you. More projects, more staff, more stress, and somehow less profit. Award-winning contractor and business scaling expert Shena Marie White has seen it happen to too many firms, and she's made it her mission to change the pattern.
In this episode, Shena breaks down the strategic mindset, operational systems, and wealth-building habits that separate businesses that scale sust...
Rima Nasser founded TEW Design Studio in 2015 because she wanted to design at the level of care she actually believed in, not the level a typical firm structure allowed. That drive for autonomy eventually led her to launch her own furniture collection, TEWlines, in 2024. In this episode, she talks with Bryce about what real ownership over your work looks like, and why "being your own boss" was never really the point.
...Every firm competing for talent is saying the same things. Great culture. Exciting projects. Competitive benefits. And candidates can't tell any of you apart. That's the problem James Ellis has built a career solving.
In this episode, James breaks down what employer brand actually is (hint: not a campaign, not a vibe, not a careers page redesign) and how midsized companies can build a brand that wins talen...
Cintia Arnhoffer is a Hungarian entrepreneur, real estate investor, and business consultant based in Dubai. At 21, she moved to Denmark, where she spent 13 years building her career across diverse international environments. She later relocated to Dubai alone, without contacts or an existing network, and built a new life and business from scratch. Today she is Co-Owner and General Manager of FullComm Real Estate Broker...
The women who thrive in the next decade of AEC won't just be technically excellent they'll know how to leverage AI as a tool for growth, income, and creative problem-solving. Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek is the CEO of Clarity AI, ranked the #4 Voice AI Influencer globally by Voicebot.ai, and author of the Amazon bestseller Your AI Roadmap: Expand Your Career, Money, and Joy (Wiley, 2025).
In this episode, Jo...
The right fit doesn't always show up first. Sometimes it shows up after you've tried the wrong things, learned what you're actually made of, and gotten honest about what you're uniquely positioned to build. Lindsay Friedman is a four-time founder who failed twice before finding the work that was hers to do and she built it directly from her experience as a caregiver.
Lindsay joins Bryce to talk about entre...
Leaving a career you're good at is harder than leaving one that isn't working. Ryan Sullivan was a successful mechanical engineer who built a department from scratch — and then chose to walk away and start over. This episode is about that decision, what it took, and what he's built on the other side.
Ryan joins Bryce to talk about career transitions, financial autonomy, and what it looks like to buil...
High performance and burnout are not opposites. For a lot of people, they're the same thing wearing different clothes. This episode is for the professional who is achieving by every external measure and still feeling like something is off — because that feeling is data, not weakness.
Nancy Gentle Boudrie joins Bryce to talk about the inside-out approach to career alignment: what it means to make regu...
There's a gap between people who grow in their careers and people who wait to be grown. This episode is for anyone sitting in that gap, wondering why the effort isn't translating. Elizabeth Barber has a clear answer and it has nothing to do with working harder.
Elizabeth and Bryce dig into workplace autonomy, practical innovation, and what it actually looks like to take ownership of your visibility, your d...
Most AEC firms treat PR like a nice-to-have, something you think about after you've won the work. Julia Bonner, founder and president of Pierce Public Relations, has spent her career proving that's exactly backwards. In this conversation with Bryce, Julia gets into what strategic communications actually looks like for firms in the built environment and why the firms investing in their story now are the ones winning the...
FMI's founder once said: "You don't build a business, you build people, and then people build the business." Julie Witecki has spent her career helping leaders in the built environment actually live that out — and in this conversation with Bryce, she gets specific about where most firms fall short.
Julie advises executives and ownership teams across construction and AEC on leadership development, tal...
Most architecture, engineering, and construction firms are so focused on building things that they forget to build their brand. Carey Balogh and Lauren Sleeman, the powerhouse duo behind Brand Groupies, have spent their careers fixing exactly that. In this episode, Bryce sits down with both women to talk about what strategic communications actually looks like for leaders in the built environment — and why getting...
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