Becoming an architect was always the goal for ULI Global Chair Diane Hoskins. “I’ve always loved buildings,” she said during the WLI Americas Presents a View from the Top session at the ULI 2025 Spring Meeting in Denver, Colorado, where she was interviewed by Emma West, partner at Bousfields Inc. and ULI Chair of the Women’s Leadership Initiative’s Americas Executive Committee.
Hoskins, who is also a ULI Global Governing Trustee and a member of the ULI Foundation Board of Directors, said, “No matter where you live in Chicago, you’re constantly seeing the great skyline and the great city, and feeling proud of being part of such a beautiful place. People in Chicago—it doesn’t matter who they are—they know their buildings.”
Hoskins—who is global co-chair of Gensler, the world’s largest architecture and design firm by revenue—said it was natural to learn an appreciation for the built environment while growing up in Chicago. She also said that building with Lego blocks and assembling Barbie houses from an early age made her think about “how places impact people.”
During a high school music lesson, when she was intent on attending college and majoring in architecture, Hoskins discussed her plans to enroll at an Illinois university rather than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her French horn teacher encouraged her to reconsider.
“That was sort of the end of the music class,” Hoskins recalled. “It then proceeded as an hour-long lecture from her as to why I was making the wrong choice, and that I needed to get out of my comfort zone, even though friends [of mine] were going to be at this other school. It was still a great school. I would certainly be challenged, but that getting out of the norm, going to another city—going into an entirely different environment—was the best thing in the world for me.”
Her music teacher’s encouragement made all the difference. As a result, Hoskins enrolled at MIT instead. She said being educated in that challenging, male-dominated environment, which had a ratio of more than 5:1 ratio of male students to female students at the time, helped prepare her for her career.
After graduating, Hoskins worked at the architecture and design firm SOM in Chicago. She later left to pursue an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Then she did a stint in real estate development at the now defunct Canadian firm Olympia & York, which was then the biggest development company worldwide.
Missing architecture, she returned to Los Angeles and became office leader at the architecture firm A. Epstein & Sons International Inc. She remained there for a few years, until her family relocated to the East Coast. There, she was asked by Art Gensler to lead Gensler’s Washington, D.C. office.
Hoskins said she was initially invited six years ago by Raymond Ritchey—who then headed the Washington, D.C. office of developer Boston Properties, now known as BXP—to be part of the ULI Washington host committee. He introduced her to Boston Properties’ CEO, Owen Thomas, who eventually invited her to join the ULI Board. Hoskins said she gravitated toward the organization after reading Urban Land and finding ULI to be good resource for distilling the complicated world of real estate and the layers involved in building projects.
“I felt like ULI took the challenge of trying to explain, to put those things together, so that anyone who’s coming from any part of this ecosystem can learn more about the other parts of the ecosystem,” she said.
For Hoskins, being a leader in ULI has been “really career enriching.” Furthermore, she applauds the powerful impact ULI leaders have had in their communities, pointing to ULI Los Angeles and its research report “Project Recovery: Rebuilding Los Angeles after the January 2025 Wildfires,” as one example.
“I think everyone is hungry for ULI to be bold and to have a bold vision, to be courageous in these places where our cities need the voice,” said Hoskins, who is also co-author of Design for a Radically Changing World. “They need the support. They need the leadership of people from ULI, our members, our leaders, and the organization as a whole.”
Taking Gensler from an approximately $200 million firm, when she and Andy Cohen became co-CEOs, to an organization around $2 billion in terms of annual revenue is another source of pride for Hoskins. Yet, regardless of whether she was at ULI or at Gensler, she said, her approach remains the same: She focuses on bringing out the best in people, just as Hoskins’ own mentors did for her.
“I try to do that as a leader,” Hoskins said. “I do try to push people outside of their comfort zone. I think people don’t see their greatness, and I really do believe strongly that everyone has that potential.”
