She built her own architecture firm. Now she's opening doors for others.

Katherine Serrano Sosa is growing Rooted Architecture Studio in Greenvale at a difficult time for the profession.

Nationally, architecture firms are reporting lower billings and client hesitation to commission new work at a time when tariffs and higher energy costs are driving up the cost of new construction, according to a June survey from the American Institute of Architects.

But Serrano Sosa, 33, has plenty of experience overcoming obstacles. 

The Glen Cove resident started her own architecture firm in 2021 in a profession where only about 3% of licensed architects are Latinas, according to the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards.

Now, as her firm takes on a major commercial project in Glen Cove, she is also helping aspiring architects navigate a path she once struggled to see for herself.

“I did not see anyone that looks like me,” Serrano Sosa said of her time in architecture. “I like sharing my story, because what if it helps that one person see they can become something more than what people typically think they should become?"

About 60% of licensed architects are white men, according to NCARB. But the pipeline is growing more diverse: Among licensure candidates, who are completing licensure exams and documenting work experience, about half are women and half are people of color.

But financial costs and social pressures have led to women dropping out of the profession after they earn their degrees and before obtaining licensure, said Graciela Carrillo, who was elected the first Latina president of the American Institute of Architects’ Long Island chapter in 2020.

Data from NCARB shows 37% of people who registered with the council in 2012 had stopped pursuing licensure as of last year, with the dropout rate 2 percentage points higher for women.

Over the past decade, architecture associations have sought to increase representation of women and people of color in the profession, said Carrillo, a senior manager at Nassau BOCES Facilities Services who now serves on the AIA's national board.

She said the cost of architecture education and a lack of representation are among the barriers to greater diversity in the profession.

There has been progress in recent years, with the percentage of Hispanic or Latina women among licensed architects doubling to 3% last year from 1.5% in 2022.

Carrillo, who has served as a mentor to Serrano Sosa, sees mentorship as a key way to improve diversity in the field.

“If you don’t have anybody in your immediate circle of family members or friends of family who are architects, you don’t see that representation," she said.

Early start

Serrano Sosa credited early exposure to the building industry with helping shape her path.

After emigrating from El Salvador to Glen Cove when she was 7, she sometimes accompanied her father, a contractor, to home construction jobs on Long Island.

She initially wanted to learn construction, but she said the machismo in her family meant that while her younger brother and cousin learned to build, her parents didn’t want her to work with her hands.

“My brain in that time was like, ‘If I can’t do it, I’m going to tell you what to do, so I’m going to be an architect,’ ” she said.

At Glen Cove High School, Serrano Sosa pushed the school to continue offering an architectural drafting class even though only four students were enrolled.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the City College of New York while attending on a full scholarship through CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College, but there were moments when she doubted she could finish the degree.

She remembered thinking during an early design studio, “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this,” because of the abstract ways professors asked students to think about design, such as defining the concept of a threshold using a block of wood.

Architecture is a highly time-intensive degree, said Jasmin Roussos, a 29-year-old architect from Bayside, Queens, who has looked to Serrano Sosa as a mentor as she prepares for her own licensure exams. Roussos immigrated to the United States from Bolivia at 16.

Roussos, who entered a master’s degree program in architecture after working as a social worker, said she believes some children of immigrants struggle to enter the field because they need to help support their families in the United States or in their families’ home countries.

“Many people, many Latinas especially, they go toward the workforce,” she said. “Architecture doesn’t allow you to work and study full time.”

After working for several architecture firms, Serrano Sosa started her own company in 2021 as a side business before leaving her full-time job in 2023.

She was motivated to found her own company by a desire to use design to improve wellness and to work more closely with Latino communities.

Her first side project was designing a kitchen addition for a Salvadoran homeowner and his family on the North Fork. The family wanted to enclose an open-concept kitchen to keep cooking smells from spreading through the rest of the house.

“I taught him how to read drawings, so then he and his friend, who was the licensed contractor, built that space,” she said.

Since then, Serrano Sosa has worked on residential, medical, office and industrial projects, including the design of a 42,000-square-foot renovation of the headquarters for lighting manufacturer Allied Maker in Glen Cove. The headquarters is under construction and slated to open in the fall.

Higher interest rates, the effect of tariffs on the cost of materials and immigration policies that reduce the labor force have all hurt new construction spending, which has filtered into lower billings for architecture firms, said Richard Branch, chief economist at the American Institute of Architects in Washington, D.C.

While firms report rising inquiries from developers, they described issues converting that interest into billings in AIA’s June national survey, he said. Those challenges are amplified for small businesses with less capacity to take on new projects.

“The greatest challenge for small architecture firms isn’t just simply the lack of demand for projects,” Branch said. “It’s the unpredictability of demand.”

Serrano Sosa said she enjoys helping Spanish-speaking Long Islanders navigate the region’s maze of building regulations, which can vary across more than 100 municipalities, and helping clients avoid potential code violations.

"I wanted to be the voice that helped the Latin community, and then expanded to [other] minority communities who feel like they aren't heard when it comes to design work," she said.

'Passing the baton'

Serrano Sosa said mentorship is an important part of increasing representation of Latinas in architecture. She is a member of Arquitina, an organization that creates mentorship opportunities for young Latina architects. When the group was founded in 2020, just 1% of architects nationwide were Latina, according to NCARB.

One objective has been addressing the broken pipeline that leads architects to drop out of the profession before obtaining licensure.

Carrillo, Serrano Sosa’s mentor, encouraged her to compile a guide to the architecture licensure process after Serrano Sosa completed the series of exams required for candidates in 10 months. Carrillo said she has since sent the guide to dozens of aspiring architects seeking advice. Candidates take an average of two years to complete the handful of exams, according to NCARB data.

“I get a lot of people [looking] for help, especially immigrants. They don’t know how to start the process,” Carrillo said. “I send them the guidelines that Katherine put together.”

The American Institute of Architects’ New York chapter has worked to increase the number of women in the field, including women of color, through its Women's Leadership Summit and by sending members to schools to talk about the profession, said Georgi Ann Bailey, executive vice president of the chapter.

“Mentorship is extremely important, not only from the aspect of learning about the profession from someone who's been on that journey but also to really bring home the idea of what an architect does,” she said.

Carrillo said she sees Serrano Sosa’s work with younger architects as an example of how mentorship can expand the profession’s pipeline.

“You have that ripple effect,” Carrillo said. “Now Katherine is mentoring other people, they're going to start mentoring others, so that’s how you continue just passing the baton.”