We're not building what people want. Most American households are one or two people—single women, couples without kids, empty nesters—yet we keep building for a household type that's increasingly atypical. Your best-selling plan might just be the best of what you offered, not what buyers actually wanted. People can only choose from the menu they're given. It's time to get curious, and ask better questions about how people actually live.

As housing providers across the country search for ways to create more attainable pathways to homeownership, controlling costs has become just as important as building homes. In this conversation, Bree Jones shares how Baltimore-based developer Parity Homes has assembled a distributed team spanning multiple countries and continents to support development, project management, communications, design, and operations, while Marietta Rodriguez shares how she and her team at NeighborWorks America in Washington, DC, leverage the power of public-private partnerships to create and execute strategic initiatives that address some of the toughest challenges facing low-income families, such as homeownership, foreclosure prevention, community building, and engagement. Attendees will leave with practical insights into how operational innovation can support both organizational growth and housing attainability.

This session digs into client decisions, why they're hard to make, why clients often second-guess themselves, and what that indecision can cost in timelines, subcontractors, and margins. Panelists will help pinpoint where clients tend to freeze and what they've found that actually gets decisions moving, including when the project team itself sends mixed signals about priorities.

The pressures California puts on a residential project ‒ where you can build, what you can build, what the site and climate demand, what it costs, and what clients now expect ‒ are moving into every other market. But they come earlier (and sometimes harder) on the West Coast. Four leaders from Marmol Radziner, a California architect-led design/build firm spanning architecture, interiors, landscape, and construction, walk through how they solve those challenges, with their Case Study: Adapt prefab project just one case in point about how they're innovating against the ever-widening array of constraints on residential building and design.

Women in residential construction have always built with more than technical knowledge. Trust, emotional support, collaborative problem-solving: these are the skills that earn referrals and build lasting careers. But the same administrative weight and complexity that burdens every builder lands harder on those with fewer resources and less institutional backing. This session explores how AI is shifting that equation. Through real stories and a practical framework, attendees will see how women in residential construction are using AI to reduce friction, reclaim time, and bring their full expertise to the work that actually moves the industry forward.

A conversation with our first WIRC Mentor Matchup pair: mentor Marnie Oursler and mentee Alexis Swinford, both of Marnie Oursler Homes. Five months in, they’ll share what's come out of the mentorship and offer advice on how you might structure your own pairing.  

As severe weather grows more frequent and costly, builders have both an opportunity and responsibility to create stronger, more resilient homes. This session introduces FORTIFIED™, a research-based standard that goes beyond code to protect against hurricanes, high winds, hail, and wind-driven rain. Attendees will learn how to apply FORTIFIED in design, new construction, and remodeling to reduce damage, lower recovery costs, and speed rebuilding. The session also highlights practical upgrades, client value, and how expanding incentives are making resilient construction more accessible and affordable.

Open forum discussing the opportunities for Leadership and growth throughout career challenges while delving into the PWB support network and the power of advocacy.