One of my big accomplishments this year was earning my architecture license. In the last year, 46 other African-Americans made the same achievement. Congratulations!

As part of a group of women discussing the the numbers of African-American women in the profession, I have spoken a few times about my journey in the architecture. The sessions have been a great way to tell our stories and hear about the stories of other practicing architecture.

This is a great year to celebrate the strides made by African-American women architects. We can look at the data from the Directory of African American Architects, particularly African-American women over the last 20 years. Reviewing the numbers in five year periods, we can see that the number of women licensed in each period doubled from the 2001-05 period (41) to 2006-10 period (82). The average number of women licensed per year during those period was about [update: math correction]4 8 and 8 16 per year, respectively. In 1990 the DAA only had 48 women listed, today the total number of listed African-American licensed women is now 262.