Urban values a diverse workforce. We believe that building a workforce through inclusion, acceptance, understanding, and respect of diverse cultures and backgrounds leads to the production of fresh ideas, personal and professional growth for our staff, and, ultimately, better projects and service to our clients.

An Internal and External Focus 

At Urban, we view our DEI efforts through both an internal and external lens. The internal lens focuses on our commitment to an inclusive and equitable workplace, continually evaluating our practices to cultivate a diverse workforce and enhancing DEI accountability at all levels of our firm. 

Our external focus begins with our efforts in supplier diversity, which focuses on providing equal opportunity to diverse suppliers to be included in our strategic sourcing and procurement process. Another important piece of our external focus is recognizing our part as engineers to stay involved and develop our industry pipeline. 

Resources and Support

In our commitment to an inclusive and equitable workplace, Urban has enabled our employees to develop employee resource groups (ERGs) organically. These are employee-led groups that help foster inclusivity and community within Urban. These groups provide an environment for their members to support each other in the workplace, provide educational and career opportunities, and collectively provide feedback to the firm for continual improvement.  

• Urban Young Members Forum (UYMF)
  • The Urban Young Members Forum (UYMF) provides social and educational enrichment, networking opportunities, and helps build a sense of community within Urban with a focus on the needs of employees between the ages of 18 and 35.
• Urban Women's Professional Network (UWPN)
  • The UWPN's goal to provide professional guidance to all women at Urban, through mentoring, social and education enrichment, and networking opportunities.
• Parent Connection
  • The Parent Connection is an Employee Resource Group dedicated to supporting parents employed at Urban by providing valuable information, resources, and practical tools to address a wide range of family needs.
• Urban Alliance
  • The Urban Alliance is an LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group started at Urban Engineers in 2020 with a mission to promote collaboration, awareness, and understanding of the LGBTQ community within Urban, our clientele, and the engineering industry.

“Engineering excellence through collaboration, awareness, and understanding of the diverse communities within Urban, our clientele, and the industry.” - Tim Dunn, PE

Knowledge and Understanding

Continuing our commitment to an inclusive and equitable workplace, Urban fosters a learning culture through Urban's Training Institute. We have developed an internal training series, “The Equity of Us: Strengthening Diversity & Inclusion,” at Urban to provide training on DEI topics to our employees.

Through our employee resource groups and strong communications team, we also provide knowledge-sharing touchpoints to our staff celebrating specific cultural days or months, many of which can be found on our social media, too! Employee Voices Article

Expanding Our Reach

At Urban, we are committed to continuing our involvement with industry associations, many of which our employees have a long-standing personal interest in. Our participation in associations such as ACE Mentoring, SWE, COMTO, WTS, Future City, and NSBE has had a direct impact on developing the interest of STEM students to become our future engineers and helps to improve the engineering industry's pipeline of diverse candidates.

We celebrate our internal leaders who partner with industry peers through work on association committees dedicated to the progress of DEI in the A/E/C industry. Just to name a few: Carol Martsolf sits on many diversity-related committees including as the chair of ASCE's MOSAIC (Members of Society Advancing An Inclusive Culture) and on WTS International's Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Jennifer Waters is a member of the Forum of Executive Women and serves as the Director of Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion for the Philadelphia Chapter of WTS; Meredith Clark participated in ACEC DPC's D&I Working Group which focused on developing DEI best practices for ACEC members.