The Women’s Collective at Samara
We feature the women who build.
Architects, designers, engineers, brokers and creative types who enable sales and marketing, developers, and planners whose work shapes the places people live, work, and gather.
Why a collective
In 1976, newly divorced at 40, Myrna Seidman was refused a credit card in her own name by a major Washington bank. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act had made that refusal illegal two years earlier. The law had changed. The banks had not.
Credit, capital, and title are the gates to real estate. For most of the last century, women were kept outside all three. The women we feature here hold the keys today: they raise the capital, sign the deeds, and design what gets built. This Collective exists to make their work visible, to connect them with one another, and to bring the next generation through the door behind them.
Placeholder photography
What Myrna did by instinct
Notice talent. Open doors. Stay.
1972
She was mentored, and she mentored.
A colleague on a train noticed her restlessness and pointed her toward a mid-career master’s degree. She earned it while raising two boys, cooking and labeling four nights of dinners before every trip to Ann Arbor.
13 years
She opened her home.
When a friend and colleague came out of treatment with nowhere to go, Myrna gave her the attic apartment. The temporary arrangement lasted thirteen years, long enough to rebuild a life.
70 years
She stayed.
Two girlfriends from her Brooklyn high school, held for seventy years through divorce, illness, and widowhood.
Read Myrna’s storyWhy she wrote her storiesStories from my MotherHer essays
The honorees
Women of exceptional caliber
Honoree profiles are being finalized and will appear here.
Connect
Every woman featured here has agreed to be found.
Use the introduction request on her page and Samara will make the connections. Members also gather in a private LinkedIn group. When the Women’s Collective is running “at full speed,” Samara will host Women’s Collective dinners twice per year, once in major markets and once nationally at or near a Samara project. These efforts are to enable, facilitate and increase collaboration.
Nominate
Know a woman whose work belongs here? We welcome nominations from anyone, including self-nominations.
Or write to [email protected].