For each young professional starting their career, there are paths that can be anticipated and those that cannot. Self-determination can lead to great opportunities, and moments of serendipity can add another layer of possibility that wasn’t previously in focus. For Joyce Lenhardt, whose career spans more than four decades in the field, there have been both moments of intention and moments of unexpected opportunity that helped shape the trajectory of her path. As a Principal in a thriving Philadelphia regional practice, a parent, a wife, a grandmother, a builder, a maker, a steward of the land, and a creative thinker, Joyce reflects back on the points of intersection that helped shape her life in and around the architectural profession.
About Joyce Lenhardt
Joyce Lenhardt, AIA, LEED AP, is a Principal at Lenhardt Rodgers Architecture + Interiors, a certified Women-Owned Business. Along with Phil Rodgers (also a Temple Alum) she shaped the third generation of a firm focused on creating purposeful spaces for living, worshipping, working, and learning, that originated in the 1950s. They are currently transitioning to the fourth generation with four incoming Principals. Through Joyce and Phil’s leadership, the firm’s work remains dedicated to designing and planning buildings with a fundamental empathy for the people who live and work in them. Joyce’s keen ability to gain consensus among the constituents who will enjoy the resulting work has led to the firm being highly sought after for their community Master Planning.
Educated at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art & Architecture, Joyce has a passion for working with mission-based organizations and contributes her expertise to a wide variety of non-profit organizations in the Philadelphia region, as a board member of the Bryn Mawr Birth Center, Philadelphia Protestant Home, Stapeley in Germantown, and in her own Chestnut Hill community as a long time board member and member of the Land Use Planning and Zoning Committee and dedicated volunteer at JS Jenks Academy, the local public school. She is also an inducted member of the Carpenters’ Company of Philadelphia, the oldest craft guild in the United States. In addition to her architectural practice, Joyce has raised a family and built a cabin on a lake in the Endless Mountains with her architect husband.