Leading by example

It’s hard to get employee buy-in for a community service project if members of the management team don’t have their hearts in it. At Cleveland’s Herschman Architects Inc., the executives lead by example.

Mike Crislip, president of Herschman Architects; Judson Kline, partner and senior vice president; and Carole Sanderson, partner and CFO, have all served as officers or on boards of local organizations, supporting causes from professional to religious to athletic.

“There are a lot of other individuals (serving on the boards) that are in management positions in various places in Cleveland,” Crislip says. “Working together as a board, I’ve brought things back to my business, different perspectives on things, based on problem-solving and doing work as a board for a nonprofit.”

Herschman employees have joined forces to work on a children’s treehouse built at Ronald McDonald House in honor of an employee’s son and a playhouse they designed to be auctioned to support March of Dimes. The firm purchased the design, modified it for special-needs children and donated it to Broadmoor School in Mentor.

Employees also designed and constructed the Shaker Colonnade, a Canstruction piece (a sculpture created from canned and packaged food items that are then donated) to support the Cleveland Food Bank, the offices of Adoption Network Cleveland and created the Architecture Design Assistance Program Team, a resource for community development directors in Cleveland’s innerring suburbs to redevelop local retail within their communities.

Perhaps the most rewarding project was launched when the firm donated its computers to the Cleveland School of the Arts and found the school didn’t have an architecture program. Employees designed the curriculum, and several staff members volunteered to teach it.

“We encourage our staff to get involved in community service where they think their background as an architect can help,” Crislip says. “Create a communi- Carole Sanderson ty service committee like we have, where you can poll the staff and find out what people are passionate about working on, and then embrace several of those causes as a firm.”

HOW TO REACH: Herschman Architects Inc., (216) 223-3200 or www.herschmanarchitects.com