Page 43 - BusinessWest October 31, 2022

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The new Girls Inc. headquarters in Holyoke is one of many projects in the diverse portfolio compiled by Kuhn Riddle and its president, Aelan Tierney.
things they never thought they would be dealing with,” she said. “They need to communicate clearly and frequently in an ever-changing and rapidly changing crisis. They need to make tough decisions, and hopefully keep the business and all of the staff afloat.”
Tierney said everything she experienced prior to the pandemic helped prepare her for that moment — as much as anyone could have been prepared. And to understand, we need to go back to that internship. Actually, our story goes back further, to Tierney’s childhood, when
she spent considerable time in her father’s woodworking school for fine furniture and watching him craft pieces to meet a client’s specific needs. It was through such experiences that she developed an interest in architecture.
“I thought it was fascinating to take something from paper and transform it into an object,” she said, adding that this interest eventually led her to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where she majored in architecture and minored in architecture history.
She graduated during one of those aforementioned downturns in the economy, the lengthy recession of the early ’90s. Unable to find work, she joined the Peace Corps as a community-development volunteer and was assigned to work in Guinea in West Africa — a learning experience on many levels, and one in which she put her education to good use.
“I was a health and community-development volunteer, and I
renovated an old warehouse building into a workshop for a women’s W cooperative,” she recalled. “It was amazing job to have to have as young woman in a developing country.”
She started her career in architecture at Dietz & Co. Architects in IMPACT Springfield, led by Kerry Dietz, a member of BusinessWest’s inaugural
class of Women of Impact, whom Tierney described as a great mentor.
She then joined Kuhn Riddle in 2005 and became president and majority
owner in 2016.
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