We strive to promote justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI) in the design of the built environment with a goal of contributing to a more just world.

Our acknowledgments
As a historically majority white-led firm, Mithun acknowledges the power and choice afforded our organization in an environment influenced by centuries of structural racism and other forms of discrimination. Mithun acknowledges our current responsibility to recognize and ameliorate the impacts of injustice as they affect our office, projects, design processes and external relationships.

We acknowledge that land and its development have been used as powerful tools to perpetuate second-class citizenship, and there is deep inequity and unrecognized trauma created by the built environment as it is currently designed.

We acknowledge the messiness of this work as we, together, unlearn and relearn how to practice.

Our CommitmentS
We commit to continually improve the firm’s collective capacity to reduce harm caused by how we work with each other and our collaborators, and by our participation in larger social, cultural and ecological systems. Mithun’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Working Group serves as both a leadership group and a resource for others across the firm to advance the list of priorities below. These priorities span a range of implementation timelines and scales of impact, from small, actionable changes in workplace practices to significant, long-range shifts in our firm’s mission and culture.

We commit to ongoing and effective actions to improve the retention and recruitment of diverse team members, address any harmful impact of our integrated design work, enable staff to benefit from justice-oriented education and training, and provide strategic support of our community partners. We are a signatory to the NOMA NW Call to Action and the SoCal NOMA DEI Challenge. We track and publicly share our progress on key social equity metrics via the ILFI JUST label.

Our Work in Progress
Our acknowledgments and commitments are grounded in an understanding that justice and equity work is never finished. We will continue to be open to learning, critical of our impacts, engage in difficult conversation, practice deep listening, and learn from both current and historical practices in order to move forward meaningfully.

Our ongoing efforts are divided into three main categories; detailed information about the goals in each category can be found below. There is so much important work still ahead!

This page will be updated as we continue our journey.

Our Work Encompasses—

Projects + Process

Ensuring the projects that we pursue and the way that we approach them support JEDI

People + Practice

Cultivating an inclusive work environment that fosters a diverse team

Partners + Public

Supporting JEDI in the profession and the communities we serve

Our Goals—

01

Create resources and accountability to integrate JEDI + JUST into project workflow

02

Ensure that photography, renderings, social media, publications and marketing collateral reflect the diversity of populations we serve or aspire to serve

03

Ensure that professional resources such as materials and practice libraries are aligned with JEDI

04

Make JEDI an explicit criteria for success at Mithun via internal culture, systems and operations structure that supports and continually advances JEDI

05

Create an inclusive workplace culture for people of all ages, abilities and identities including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, culture and national origin

06

Increase the diversity of our team by reviewing and expanding recruiting, hiring, mentorship, retention, training and professional development programs and processes

07

Increase the diversity of the profession by building relationships with BIPOC-led and JEDI-aligned professional collaborators

08

Proactively pursue projects that positively impact BIPOC communities and explicitly align with JEDI values

09

Track and increase JEDI-aligned philanthropy and pro-bono work

10

Track and increase JEDI-aligned advocacy and policy engagement

JEDI in Action—

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Liberty Bank Building
Liberty Bank Building

Building on the legacy of Liberty Bank, the first Black-owned bank in the Pacific Northwest, the new Liberty Bank Building mixed-use affordable housing development honors a rich history while maximizing community empowerment to address gentrification and displacement.

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Centering Health Equity
Centering Health Equity

This Mithun R+D team is examining how power and privilege influence design and development decisions throughout a project life cycle, in pursuit of an equity-centered practice framework to alter everyday decisions and promote health for all.

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Affordable Housing as Social and Cultural Infrastructure
Affordable Housing as Social and Cultural Infrastructure

Anne Torney explores how affordable housing is indispensable infrastructure for just cities the way coral is critical infrastructure for the biodiversity in healthy reefs.

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Social Justice Reporting
Social Justice Reporting

Mithun first earned a JUST label in 2017, and our transparent reporting on the program’s 22 indicators—including diversity, equity, safety, local benefit and stewardship—enables us to track our progress and inform other organizations' efforts.

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Expanding Community Engagement
Expanding Community Engagement

The pandemic heightened attention to how we maintain democratic practices around public gathering and communication related to project development. Can we imagine new ways to widen audiences and level the playing field?

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Mentoring Tomorrow's Designers
Mentoring Tomorrow's Designers

Mithun regularly hosts middle and high school students for hands-on learning about STEM and the built environment in concert with programs including ACE Mentor, TechBridge and NOMA Project Pipeline.