We recently connected with Christen Lubbers and have shared our conversation below.
Christen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?
Our teachers and school administrators work so hard to give students the best educational experience possible, but it feels like the emphasis on testing has overshadowed many soft skills that will be more valuable to students as they enter the workforce.
If we were able to replace the excessive amount of time students spend focused on testing and work on developing skills like teamwork, confidence, written and verbal communication, presentation and speaking skills, curriculum comprehension, the ability to take constructive criticism, and similar soft skills, we would be preparing students for a viable future where they could excel in any workplace. My organization, Design LAB: Learn + Build, is trying to bring those skills to students in the Greater Cincinnati Area.
Christen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
To say that I fell into this career would be a bit unfair given the incredible amount of work I put in to get here. To ignore that luck, and maybe a bit of serendipity, were involved would also be unfair. It would take an entire book to write the story of how I got here and everything my organization does, but here is a concise version. I grew up believing that I would be a creative and focused my efforts on Graphic Design. I went for it full force and after a very short career at one of top ad agencies in the U.S. at that time, decided it was not a fulfilling career for me and left it behind to dive into the non-profit sector. After working for the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens for a couple of years, I realized how competitive the non-profit fields are and decided that in order to compete I would need a graduate degree in something that was not art related – a degree that was causing my resume to be taken less seriously. (If they went through undergrad for any art degree, I don’t think anyone would dismiss it as easily – that is hard work!)
It took moving to the other side of the world for a year of teaching and life experience to get accepted into the program that I wanted: Miami University’s Global Field Program to study conservation biology! While in graduate school, I worked 5 jobs to have the ability to graduate without mountains of debt. Sleep was not a priority during those three years, but I’ve been making up for lost time ever since. Additionally, between my coworkers, classmates, and the people I was meeting as a result of being involved in so many different endeavors, I was able to build a great network. That network was key to my success: I was lucky enough to not have to apply for any job after I was hired at the zoo. Every other employer heard about me through word of mouth.
Whether it was fate, or the fact that I am a glutton for punishment, Design LAB: Learn + Build ended up being that 5th part-time job. I started out as their administrative assistant, then became their Education Director, and was eventually promoted to Executive Director. I’ve seen the organization go through a lot of ups and downs and I have grown alongside of it.When I first started, there were things that confused me: we had incredible and dedicated staff, committed and passionate volunteers, but we were seeing a slimming board and not having a quorum at board meetings was becoming increasingly common. I could see the potential of the organization and felt that we were not living up to that. I fell in love with our education program, which reaches about 2,000 students a year. It offers them a 5-month, life altering experience where they learn about the potential of their future while giving them a voice in the problems that matter to them right now. While they work in groups to build scaled models of a structure they believe solves a problem based on an annual theme, they learn teamwork, speaking skills, communication skills, and more. They have mentors from the built environment professions that work with them through the entire process and those mentors come to their classrooms, removing transportation and logistical issues. If you’ve ever worked in the field trip arena, you know firsthand how important that is to reaching our most vulnerable students.
Our mission at that time was to help people experience and discover the transformative power of design. We accomplished that through our K-8 education program, an annual gala and award, tours of significant residences in the area, construction tours, and panel discussions.
When initially approached about becoming the Executive Director, I was terrified to take on that responsibility. The financial aspect was very intimidating and I was concerned about not being taken seriously enough or steering the organization in the wrong direction. However, my drive to see us live up to our potential to serve our community was stronger than my insecurities and I decided to take on the role. My one requirement in accepting the position: that we focus our organization on the education program that we were offering free to classes across the Cincinnati area. The journey our organization took with my lead to creating that focus is what I am most proud of.
My first task was to build the board back up, redefine their commitments, and to have them better represent the community we are serving. When I started as Executive Director, we were down to 12 board members, 11 of which were white males. We also didn’t have any board members who had experienced our K-8 education program first-hand, and I wanted that to change. In addition, I needed this group of people to be a support system for me, but also to push me and hold me accountable. Four years later, we have a total of 18 board members including 4 females and 2 minorities with plans in place to grow our diversity more. Now, almost all of our board members have classroom experience with our education program. In those 4 years, we have only fell short of a quorum once, and that was on St. Patrick’s Day. A small price to pay for getting a fun group of people on your board.
At the beginning of my employment at Design LAB, we were also constantly in conflict over what we should be prioritizing and we were often taking time and budget from the education program to cover other programming. We now use all of the programming we offer to raise funds for the education program and our employees prioritize their time on the logistics of running the education program or financing it so we can continue to offer it free of charge.
To enforce the new prioritization, I changed our mission statement to the original one our organization was founded with in 1982: to create awareness, appreciation, and improvement of the built environment through education. This also helped clarify what we do.
Lastly, and most importantly, I wanted to rebrand the organization to reflect the changes we had made. I was hired to the Architectural Foundation of Cincinnati (AFC), not Design LAB: Learn + Build. The name AFC no longer felt like it represented what we did, but our education program had gone by the name Design LAB. It was a complete embrace of all of the changes we had made over the previous three years to focus on the education program and a refreshed face to our community that we hope invites everyone in the Cincinnati area to join us. I have always been proud of this organization and what we do, but that pride has grown exponentially with the changes that we have made.
If you’ve never heard of the organization, I highly recommend checking out our website: designlearnandbuild.org! You can also follow us on social media to get an idea of who we are and what we do/get the latest updates on what we have coming up.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
I’ve built my reputation and that of my organization, Design LAB: Learn + Build, by working hard, being dependable, and genuinely enjoying the work that I/we do. In 2015, I started working at Design LAB (at that time, the Architectural Foundation of Cincinnati) as a 10 hour a week Administrative Assistant, after being referred to the organization by a co-worker at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens. The work the organization was doing quickly resonated with my passions and visions for creating a more equitable community.. Even though I was only working 10 hours a week, I started seeing opportunities for the organization and sharing them. Soon I was needed more and more and within a year I had been promoted to Education Director. It was an honor to be in that role and I felt so comfortable in it, like the work I had done prior to that was training for that specific position. It was a very exciting time for me!
This was a learning experience of what to do and what not to do: I saw people destroy their reputations and those of their organizations. You have to stay transparent, do the things you say you are going to do, and believe in your cause. If you do those things and can show up with a good attitude despite what may be happening in the background, you will be reputable. People will recommend you, networking will happen organically, and building a reputation will happen naturally.
In 2019, I was promoted again to Executive Director of Design LAB. At that time, the organization was a bit split between the K-8 education program and the rest of the programming we offered. Part of my requirements for accepting the position was to heal that divide and focus our efforts on what I thought we did best: our education program.
When we were founded in 1982, our name was the Architectural Foundation of Cincinnati. While that was a great name for that time, our organization had evolved to serve the community of 2023 and we decided the name needed to change to represent that. We worked with a third party to rebrand the organization to Design LAB: Learn and Build. Changing to a name that would resonate with the audience it is intended for was such a big step toward building our reputation and letting our community know that we are here to serve them. We wanted our name to feel inclusive to anyone who may be interested in participating in our programming. Design LAB always has been for everyone, but our new vibe is more telling of that.
One thing that I think is important for the reputation of my organization is that the people who represent it (employees, board members, and volunteers) are representing us in the best light with how they live their lives. We have great diversity in professions, ages, backgrounds, political beliefs, etc., but everyone who is a part of Design LAB is personally invested in seeing improvement in the Greater Cincinnati Area and believe that the built environment can be the catalyst for change. This wasn’t always the case and I can see and feel the difference in our reputation within the community as a result of the changes we have made internally.
I feel this way about my personal life too. I choose to surround myself with people who want to lift me up and make the world a little better for everyone in it.
As the old saying goes, “You are only as good as the company you keep.”
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I took over as Executive Director at the beginning of 2019 and it was a huge learning curve to understand and excel in all of the responsibilities of that role. I was facing new uncertainties on a weekly basis and giving the new opportunity all of my focus. That August, I received a call that changed my life forever – my dad had been in a very serious bicycle accident that resulted in a severe traumatic brain injury. The next six months demanded that I not only navigate my new professional role, but that I also become an advocate for my dad’s health, a cheerleader for my mom, and the communication link between what was going on in the hospital and what to share with his loved ones. All of these hats had to be worn carefully and those six months were some of the most exhausting times of my life. The next four months; however, were how I know I can get through anything.
February 2020 my dad was still hospitalized – he was not able to talk for himself, he couldn’t feed or bathe himself. And he could not pluck his eyebrows or cut his hair, which I know bothered him. But that month, the doors to the facility he was living in were locked to the outside world and the next four months left me (and my family) feeling helpless. Per usual, I poured myself into my work to bring myself up and it kept me busy enough to not constantly think about the hell that my dad was living through. In March 2020, however, I was forced to stop all of our programming. Everything I had worked on in hospital chairs in my dad’s room, or in waiting rooms to get to see doctors, it was all for nothing. I could not help my family and I could not help my organization – the walls seemed to be closing in and the only thing I could do was sit at my house, just me and my dog, and watch everything I had built fall apart. That only lasted for a few days though. I couldn’t do anything about the rules that the hospital had created to keep their patients safe, but I was in the driver’s seat of Design LAB and I was determined to offer our community something, anything. With the help of the board and our incredible staff, we were able to revive the K-8 education program, create virtual and outdoor, socially distanced programming, and create a funding campaign to replace our annual fundraiser. My summer was spent learning about PPP loans and fighting for funding.
We ended up losing my dad in June of 2020. Since then, I have been working to honor him in everything I do. As Covid restrictions eased, I worked hard to build Design LAB to be even more influential than it was before my dad’s accident or Covid shutdowns. Four years later, I am still faced with something completely new to me on an almost monthly basis. I also actively seek out new ventures. After being faced with personal, professional, and global crises at one time and being able to navigate myself an organization and myself through that successfully, the little emergencies that arise here and there seem easy to work through. Sometimes I question how I even got through that time – it’s like watching someone else somehow. This experience taught me so much. I understand the healthcare world and legal systems so much better. It also gave me the ability to help my friends when they are going through hard times and a deeper empathy than I had before. Most of all, it showed me that I can trust myself to get through hard situations and that I’ll be able to come out stronger on the other side.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.designlearnandbuild.org
- Instagram: designlearnandbuild
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DesignLABLearnAndBuild
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christen-lubbers-0a303423/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Learn_And_Build
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4jXXBgFxGTUrFiZ51h_EvQ