Mariah Kiersey, Senior Principal, has a long history with Ankrom Moisan, having first joined the firm in 2004. Over the years, she’s built a broad foundation of expertise across office, retail, community, campus planning, and urban design, using those experiences to shape the projects and studios she supports. 

Recently, Mariah embraced a new chapter as Healthcare Studio Co-Leader, partnering with Principal Ashlee Washington. While the role is new, healthcare design is not unfamiliar territory for her. Her first project in the sector was OHSU’s Pediatric Dentistry School more than 20 years ago, and she has contributed to healthcare projects nearly every year since. In fact, since 2020 she has been actively supporting the Healthcare Studio, making her transition into a dedicated leadership role a natural next step. 

Sitting down for a “90-day review,” Mariah shared insights about stepping into her new role, collaborating with Ashlee, and their shared vision for the future of Ankrom Moisan’s Healthcare Studio. 

Q: You’ve been at Ankrom Moisan a long time, but what has surprised you most about our healthcare team in your first 90 days? 

A: I knew that the healthcare team had a strong rapport, but it really is impressive how they support each other. When life throws somebody a curve ball, the team is there to pick up their work, and they know who has the expertise to step in when needed to cover our projects, keeping our clients happy. They’ve got each other’s backs to a degree that I haven’t really seen elsewhere. The other thing that really struck me was how the healthcare team balances the seriousness of the work we do with our daily routines since we deal with a lot of heavy topics – designing spaces for patients receiving cancer treatments, extents of ligature resistive throughout a space, and going through the process of cleaning up all the various bodily fluids. It’s been nice to see how the team can uplift each other after having those conversations without making light of the situation. 

Q: In three words, how would you describe your leadership style? 

A: Collaborative, empowering, and supportive.  

Mentoring is a big thing that’s been really important for me – empowering the team and being there to mentor them. I’m not going to drop them right into the deep end. I’m there to help them and give them the tools they need to be successful. 

Collaboration is first and foremost, maybe even more so with the healthcare studio. The only difference is that you’re collaborating with a much wider range of user groups as well as the quantity. It’s not just collaborating with the same types of consultants that you find in other studios, or your teammates; you’re also collaborating with specialty doctors and nurses and all their equipment on an even bigger scale as well as zooming into the smallest details. Even though we could be talking about one room when trying to coordinate how a patient checks in and walks through the space before leaving, there might be 40 people on a call; and while I need them all to be there, they each really only need only a little piece. It’s collaboration on a different scale. It all fits together in the end. 

Mariah Kiersey in the Ankrom Moisan Portland office materials library.

Q: What do you bring to the Healthcare studio from your previous involvement with the Office/Retail/Community (O/R/C) studios? 

A: I think it comes down to complex project deliveries. Instead of dealing with not just complex rooms like for a high tech company and their testing, it’s dealing with diverse stakeholder needs and managing them, as most of these have not been a part of a design process before. There’s a balancing of creativity with technical precision. Where we can be creative in healthcare is much different than other studios. When I worked on a lot of workplace projects, we had a very tight budget where we had to be creative with design was shown, but there were so many options. With healthcare there are different types of constraints due to cleanability requirements so we are limited with what materials can be utilized. I’m used to having all the options there and working with those kinds of financial constraints, it is learning to manage those new constraints.  

There’s also the cross-collaboration between our studios here. One project we’re working on right now will have a behavioral health outpatient clinic, primanary care, office space for the healthcare staff, but also supportive housing and their supportive amenities. So, there’s the housing portion and the clinical side, and all of the supportive places in between. It’s a project that’s shared between studios, and because it’s ground-up I’ve got previous experience and an abundance of resources to pull from for the design process to be successful. 

Q: How would you describe the Healthcare studio to somebody outside of Ankrom Moisan? 

A: We’re great listeners and technical experts who are committed to creating healing environments that are designed thoughtfully for both the health systems we partner with and their patients. Our healthcare group cares deeply about the lives of the patients and staff who occupy the spaces we design. 

Q: What excites you most about healthcare design right now? 

A: Technology keeps pushing forward. How we have been able to treat people has advanced, and seamlessly integrating those changes into the projects we work on takes a lot of coordination, which is very exciting. There’s also the challenge of providing new technology within an existing space, like the Providence Swedish Cancer Center CyberKnife. It’s all about learning what the new emerging technologies are and how they can be integrated into existing healing spaces through applying our consultants’ expertise, user group meetings with the staff and equipment provider coordination. Integrating new technologies means our clients can help more patients within a day as it’s more efficient, and that alone is exciting.   

Q: What are your goals for this new position? What does success look like to you at the one-year mark? 

A: I want to strengthen Ankrom Moisan’s healthcare brand so that people know we are solidly in the healthcare market in both Seattle and Portland, and they know what our team can do. I want to really get our name out there, but I also want to support our internal team’s growth. It’s important that our team learns from one another and is balanced in their work, so that there is just one person that knows only CTs and linear accelerators. We need to make sure that knowledge is shared. 

To me, the one-year mark is about getting our clients’ trust that we’re growing and are here to do the work they need. It’s about increasing cross-studio collaboration within Ankrom Moisan, leading to more projects like CCC Blackburn and the Compass Health Marc Healing Center beyond just Oregon and Washington. 

Q: What do you think this team does exceptionally well? Where do you see our biggest opportunities to grow? 

A: This team excels at delivering technically complex projects — our SPAKL work is a great example of that; The SPAKL team is Ankrom Moisan’s thorough and decisive resource for solving complex and challenging Healthcare project designs.

We have many people who truly enjoy digging into that level of detail, and it’s a real advantage that several of our senior staff bring 20+ years of experience, including ground-up project knowledge. That combination allows us to lead projects like Evergreen Treatment Services while also drawing in expertise from other studios to tackle things like exterior cladding details. The cross-studio collaboration we’ve developed is a real strength, and there’s always more opportunity to build on that as a firm. 

Looking ahead, the growth opportunity is about taking the innovation and lessons from SPAKL and applying them at larger scales, like at Evergreen Health’s emergency department expansion in Monroe. It’s about telling our story more boldly: showing that while we’re highly skilled at renovations and technically demanding work, we’re equally capable of expanding on what our clients already have and shaping the next generation of healthcare facilities. 

Mariah and Ashlee together in Ankrom Moisan’s Portland office.

Q: What is one word that describes your partnership with Ashlee? 

A: Synergistic. Ashlee and I have a really natural balance in our strengths, which creates a strong flow in how we collaborate. We’re often juggling a lot of moving pieces, but because we trust each other and have each other’s backs, nothing gets dropped. That synergy not only makes our partnership effective, it makes the work more enjoyable. 

Q: If the Healthcare team had a mascot, what would you nominate for it to be? 

A: Hmm. I’d nominate the hummingbird. They’re small but incredibly agile, resilient, and purposeful which are qualities that feel true to our Healthcare team. Like hummingbirds, we bring a lot of focused energy into every project, moving quickly to understand the challenges and deliver solutions that make a difference. They’re also known for persistence as they don’t stop until the work is done, mirroring our commitment to seeing complex healthcare projects through to the very end. And just as hummingbirds are drawn to spaces of nourishment and growth, we’re drawn to creating environments that support healing, dignity, and hope. 

Jack Cochran

Marketing Content Coordinator

jackc@ankrommoisan.com

503-977-5220