I worked at maybe 5 firms before MOA. The structure is typically the same, as you gain experiences you advance from being an intern to an architect, to a project architect, and then to a project manager. As a goal-oriented person, this was a major problem because I had absolutely no interest in ever becoming a project manager but did not want to accept that a project architect cannot continue to grow. It takes a lot of different people and personalities to make an architecture firm run smoothly and project managers are an important element to that but it involves very different skill sets and activities. I pleaded my case to MOA’s principal’s and have since created two new positions at MOA; the senior project architect and the technical director. These have offered me an avenue to contribute my strengths to their fullest capacity and I believe this flexibility by MOA truly sets the firm apart from others and makes it stronger. Anywhere else, I would be an extraordinarily mediocre project manager.