Cherise Poulin

Lauren

Cherise, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so excited to feature you as one of our women on top. I'd love for you to introduce yourself — can you start with what you do?

Cherise

I'm currently part of the executive team at MOREGroup, focused primarily on healthcare architecture in a national role. It's a passion of mine that's been building for many years. At its core, I'm all about understanding our industry — the challenges and the solutions — and I'm all about connectivity. Connections are where it's at in this industry, and that's what I love to do.

Lauren

Can you talk about how you got to where you are? Where did you start, and what did your trajectory look like?

Cherise

It's been a 30-year career as of last month, which still feels a little crazy to say. I started out thinking I wanted to be an architect — I studied architectural history and went postgraduate for my MArch. About two and a half years in, I realized I didn't love what was happening around me in the office. So I made a decision to take a different route and focus on marketing and the business side of the industry instead.

It progressed from there. I was putting proposals together before I even knew what a proposal was — I had to ask whether this was how firms won work. They don't teach you that in school. But that's essentially where it begins. Over time I learned about relationships, communications, and strategy. After 25-plus years, I ended up where I am now — doing a little bit of everything, with a deep focus on healthcare.

Lauren

When did you make the commitment to healthcare specifically?

Cherise

January 2008, when I joined Perkins Eastman. It was both a gift and terrible timing — senior marketing overhead in January 2008, right as everything was unraveling. I remember very long hours just to prove I was worth keeping. But healthcare was critically important at that moment; everyone wanted to get into healthcare design. So that became my focus, and it's stayed that way ever since.

There's a deeply personal story behind why I've stayed. I lost my grandmother at a young age to cancer. Being a child in a cancer ward in the late 70s and early 80s was frightening — those environments were not designed with human experience in mind. I was genuinely scared of hospitals for most of my life, including when I was first hired in 2008. The turning point came when I walked into a prominent cancer center and felt it — truly felt it — and thought: I wish this had been my family's experience. I would not have spent so many years afraid of hospitals. Now I walk into healthcare spaces eager to see what's happening and what we can do to make them better.

Lauren

What problem do you solve — both within your organization and in the broader community through healthcare architecture?

Cherise

Internally, the biggest problem I solve is staying on top of what's happening in healthcare — executive orders, funding shifts, rural hospital challenges, changing trends — and keeping that front of mind for our team. The question I'm always asking is: what is our value proposition? It's not just "we can design you a new bed tower." It's what can we actually do to help you with what keeps you up at night? Where is your funding coming from? What problems are you trying to solve right now?

Externally, I believe deeply in bringing healthcare to the community. The ER should not be the front door to the hospital. There are so many other access points and preventative options that people don't know about or don't feel comfortable using. Shifting from "I have to go to the doctor" to "I'm going because I have a well visit and I'm comfortable with that" — that's a huge change. Community healthcare is something we've been designing and programming a great deal of lately, and it goes so far beyond exam rooms. It's career counseling, nutrition education, rooftop yoga, and f markets outside the building. These things are making a real impact in communities right now.

Lauren

For technical people who have no idea what business development, marketing, or strategy actually involves — how do you make their lives a little easier?

Cherise

From the business development side, it's about opening doors. A lot of architects aren't comfortable going out and getting work. There are rainmakers with great personalities, but most people want to do the work, not get the work. So BD creates the network — talking to people across the industry, gathering insights, learning about clients, figuring out what their capital plans look like, and how we might get in front of them. The job is to do the soft introduction, bring your technical and design team to the table, and hand it off. Let the architects focus on keeping current clients happy while BD brings new ones in.

On the marketing side, it's about visibility. Social media, articles, publications — a lot of architects aren't writing those pieces themselves, but a skilled team can take their expertise and shape it into a compelling message that gets picked up by an industry journal. Nothing is better than someone else writing about your work. And then there's all the behind-the-scenes work: proposals, presentations, conference materials, marketing collateral. The technical team doesn't have to worry about any of that because they know there's a professional, experienced team doing it behind the curtain.

Lauren

Can you talk about how you personally demonstrate your value in an organization that might not fully understand what you do?

Cherise

Sometimes you just have to open your mouth and not be scared of it. I remember sitting in a meeting at Perkins where we were reviewing plans for an upcoming project, and someone said, "We should do it like this." I looked at the plans and said, "I don't think you're going to accomplish what you need to with this layout — you're missing a 797 pharmacy." All eyes turned to me. And they looked again and said, she's right, the program can't work without it. Nobody expected me to know what a 797 pharmacy was, or to understand how to read an oncology unit plan. But I had been listening to everything they shared, doing my own research, attending webinars and panels, absorbing the industry from every angle available to me.

I think you have to be unabashed about showing that you understand the industry — just in a different way than the architects do. I didn't learn it by designing buildings. But I know what needs to happen inside them once they're built. I know the program. And that's a perspective worth sharing.

Lauren

Through your time in this industry, what notes would you give back to it on how it could better support women?

Cherise

A few things. First: listen as much as they'll let you. I've always asked to be in meetings I technically didn't need to be in. It's okay to ask to stay when they're about to discuss concept design or programming — even if it means a longer day. Sit through it. The more you ask, the more people will eventually say yes, and that's how I learned most of what I know.

Second: learn the language. My first year in healthcare at Perkins, I kept a notebook full of words and acronyms I didn't understand and looked them up every day. Eventually I got bold enough to just ask — "Can you tell me what that term means so I don't have to go look it up?" They know you're interested, and that matters. Day one, terms are flying over your head. A few months later, you can ask a specific question in the room and people notice.

And third: know when to interject. You have experiences and opinions that are worth sharing. Maybe you were once in an inpatient room with a family member and something about the layout genuinely didn't work. Say that. It's okay. They have just as much to learn from you as you do from them. Know when to listen and know when it's your turn to contribute.

Lauren

What would you tell your younger self?

Cherise

Be more resilient. Resilience is actually my word of the year this year. Changes are going to happen no matter what you do, and you have no control over them. What you have control over is your reaction — and what you choose to do in the next moment. Rather than being completely reactive to change, absorb it first. Then figure out what you're going to do next.

Lauren

Do you have tips for how to actually practice resilience — personally or professionally?

Cherise

Practice your poker face. If people can see the reaction on your face, you might as well have said it out loud. I've learned to take a breath before opening my mouth — just to think about what I'm about to say and how it will land. Sometimes that pause is the difference between a reaction you'll regret and one that actually moves things forward.

And over the last few years, meditation has helped me a lot. It brings you inward in a way that makes you more thoughtful about how you show up outward. It's helped me pause and ask: how is this going to be received if I say it this way, or if they can just see it on my face?

Lauren

I'd love to give you the floor to share whatever closing message you'd like.

Cherise

The biggest thing I've learned is the need to pivot. 2008 was a massive pivot moment. 2020 was another. And right now, we may be in a moment where we're pivoting every single day just to figure out what's going on. And I think that's okay.

It's okay to look at eight years of work and say: we need to do something different. It's okay to say: we've tried this three times before and it hasn't worked — why are we doing it again? Those are hard questions to ask, and it's genuinely difficult to stand up and say we're going to try something completely new when we don't know what the outcome will be. No amount of market research or surveys can tell you that. But sometimes different is exactly what's needed.

My closing thought is this: it's okay to completely pivot every so often. It might be the most exciting thing that ever happened to your organization. Nobody may stand up and applaud right away — but at some point, someone is going to come up to you and say: that was an incredible idea. I'm so glad we tried that.