It started with a tweet.
And ended with Zurich Esposito out of the top job at the American Institute of Architects’ Chicago chapter after 14 years.
In between, tension mounted between Esposito and his nominal boss, April Hughes, president of the chapter’s board. The standoff escalated when lawyers were hired by the board to investigate financial and workplace conditions.
It became too much for one director, the board’s treasurer, who resigned and later signed a petition along with hundreds of other architects seeking Esposito’s reinstatement. A part-time financial manager also quit, later terming the legal probes a “witch hunt, a fishing expedition, whatever you want to call it.”
The blowup shocked the local architecture profession and rattled the trade group's national office. The Chicago chapter had prospered under Esposito, growing in membership and becoming a model for how to revive and diversify professional service organizations.
Helmut Jahn, Dirk Lohan, Margaret McCurry and former national AIA President Don Hackl are among nearly 600 architects and others who have signed the petition backing Esposito and decrying how the situation was handled.
“This board ought to follow the wise action of its treasurer and resign,” commented another signer, architect Roula Alakiotou.
The wheels were set in motion earlier this year with a tweet from architect Katherine Darnstadt, whose firm has turned shipping containers into microstores for startups. What the tweet was about is disputed, but it was sufficiently sharply worded to raise hackles at the AIA and, Darnstadt confirms, was soon deleted.
According to AIA members, tensions escalated between Esposito and Hughes over who should ask Darnstadt—and how firmly—to remove the tweet.
Esposito and Hughes haven’t commented, except for an Aug. 27 email from Hughes that said, “Regarding the departure of our former executive vice president, the decision made by the board of directors was thoroughly and carefully considered.”
Darnstadt declines to be interviewed. In an email, she says, “While the one-day tweet may be frustrating to some, it was ultimately rectified well before the recent events. It was not an issue in the employment termination of the EVP, nor taken into consideration. Any focus on it is a narrative distraction.”
Eventually, two Chicago lawyers arrived at AIA offices to investigate workplace conditions and financial affairs, according to sources that include Kathy Jessen, the financial manager who resigned.
She says attorney Jeanne Kerkstra, a CPA whose website indicates she specializes in estate planning and asset protection, asked for financial records “to make sure everything was clean.” The other lawyer who was on the premises, Alisa Arnoff, is a labor and employment attorney whose webpage says she conducts investigations and advises clients on employee morale, separation issues and “workplace problems.“
Neither attorney replied to calls and emails seeking comment. The probes infuriated Jessen, prompting her resignation last month. She and others say the board’s treasurer, architect Patricia Saldana Natke, also resigned. Natke hasn’t returned calls.
“Because of what they did to Zurich, I couldn’t work with those people,” Jessen says. “They were very unprofessional in their approach. The board had no (prior) issues" with him.
Another prominent actor said to be involved was Jessica Figenholtz, the chapter’s president-elect. Reached at her Perkins & Will office, she said, “I apologize. I can’t comment at the moment.”
The showdown between Hughes and Esposito came after the lawyers finished their work and he was asked to sign a document relating to alleged workplace conditions, according to sources including Jessen.
He refused, they say, and his employment soon ended. Esposito hired a lawyer, and the chapter appointed an interim executive vice president, John Syvertsen. Normally, election of directors and officers of a trade group like AIA Chicago doesn’t stir passions. This year, however, architects say they plan to pay more attention.
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