In order to celebrate Jenn Zaffuto becoming a partner at KTH, we asked her a few questions about her career thus far!
Walk us through your background
I was in the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State and graduated with honors. During college, I interned at KTH Architects and at Hallstrom Construction. I also interned at the Hamer Center for Community Design in State College while I was at Penn State, which was one of the first introductions I had to planning as a complementary discipline to architecture.
I began working full time at KTH in 2004, immediately after graduating college. From there through 2009, I worked through my internship hours (then called IDP, for the Intern Development Program). While I was preparing for my registration exams, I began thinking about how I wanted to understand the context that leads to engaged communities, thriving businesses, and also successful design and construction projects, which led me to attending University of Pittsburgh for my graduate degree, which was in Urban and Regional Planning/ Urban Affairs, and I graduated Summa Cum Laude from there in 2012. It was a great way to broaden my understanding of how architecture and design fits into our geographic and economic systems.
You became a shareholder in 2019 and full principal to KTH Architects in 2025, the first female principal in the company’s history. What does this milestone mean to you, and what do you hope it reflects to people interested in this profession?
When I graduated architecture school in 2004, women made up a bit less than half of my graduating class, which aligned with the profession nationwide. However, there was a big disparity between female architecture graduates and female registered architects – only about 25% of newly registered architects at that time were women. Over the last 20 years, there’s been an uptick in women completing registration. Now about 40% of newly registered architects are women.
As I advanced in my career and started my own family, I experienced the challenges that other women face. Pregnancy and health issues, maternity leave, and child care are all big reasons for women to leave the workforce in general, and even more so for a career as demanding as architecture. The only way to counteract that is with culture change – enacting policies that help women (and men) navigate through difficult times while supporting them in their professional development. Since I’ve taken on a leadership role, the development of young employees, and women in particular, has been a core tenet of my focus.
KTH has always been a family-first company, and I’m proud of that. We’ve strived to make choices with our staff to allow them to deal with outside-of-work issues knowing their role in the company is safe. If we’re able to help our employees through those challenges, they are more apt to stay engaged and be more willing to take on leadership roles as they advance in their own careers.
As a principal, it’s important to me to provide scaffolding to younger employees so they can succeed in their careers and be present for their families. These policies not only help women succeed but also create an environment where men can tend to their families as well.
As a healthcare-focused architect, you design spaces that directly impact communities with patient care and clinical outcomes. What originally drew you to healthcare architecture, and what keeps you passionate about it today?
At the beginning, healthcare was interesting to me because of the complexity of the problems that we solve in each project. Managing patient care, moving staff and patients efficiently through a space, providing treatment areas that can minimize mistakes, and creating a healing environment were, and still are, major areas of focus.
I’ve also realized the interdependence of all systems. Through good design, we can strengthen the community through providing quality care. We can improve both individual health and social outcomes with good design. Good design creates a space where clinicians can collaborate and have a patient-centered approach which can reduce readmissions and improve the overall health of the community.
Leadership in architecture often requires balancing technical expertise with collaboration of many other professionals, such as engineers, contractors, clients, and end-users. What leadership qualities and strengths in architecture have been most critical in your journey to principal?
For everyone, this is different, I’d imagine. For me, recognizing the talents and skills of all team members has always been important. Approaching projects through the lens of learning from my fellow team members has been helpful. It’s helped to build trust among my project teams and establish a foundation of knowledge to carry forward into future projects. The other core element is a focus on communication. Learning how to communicate with project teams where each member has a different area of expertise helps to create a holistic and comprehensive design.
For women in the western region of Pennsylvania considering architecture or construction careers, what advice would you offer as they begin to explore the field?
For young women who are still applying to colleges, visit multiple schools and programs to assess which is the best for you. For women who are thinking about a change in career, contact women in the field to ask for an informational interview to learn more. In my experience, women who have navigated these fields, which have been male-dominated for so long, are willing to share their experiences to help other women in pursuit of their dream career.
What decision in your career felt most pivotal to get you where you are today?
Taking time to go to graduate school and then work in Pittsburgh for several years was crucial to my development as a manager and leader. The firm I worked at focused on urban design as well as architecture, which enabled me to be part of projects from the planning phase through construction. I got to participate and lead stakeholder sessions, learn how to communicate technical information in a manner that was accessible, and focus on distributed ownership of project decision making. These skills were essential when I began leading projects with healthcare systems.
What excites you the most in your design-filled career and helps engage you to create well designed spaces?
When people visit our area, they often express surprise at what we have to offer for our residents and community. It’s fun to be a part of that! KTH has been able to design some really cool buildings and places. Knowing that what we do has a real and tangible impact on the quality of life for the people around us every day in this community has been very rewarding.
