Stand Aside: Interview with Page & Turnbull President Ruth Todd

I recently went one on one with Ruth Todd, President of Page & Turnbull.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Ruth: There have been three distinct phases of my career to date and I have worked in almost all sectors of the economy, including public/private, non-profit, government, institutional, and private professional practice. I also worked in retail while in school long ago, and have helped out with my husband’s manufacturing business a few times. 

I moved to California not knowing anyone and had my position eliminated a year later. That was hard, but it allowed me to be independent and self-employed. For four years I worked independently in the field of architecture, which helped me to establish a good reputation. I also learned that I did not move 3,000 miles from home to work alone. I am motivated by being a key contributor on a high-performance team — architecture and planning require complex multi-disciplinary teams – and those are the opportunities and challenges that I find rewarding. I’ve worked with a lot of different people and have a sense of what can drive or motivate them.

Sometimes, I’ve found, I work at a different pace than others, which can lead to frustrations on both sides. If I could do a few things over again, one of them would be to be quiet for a long while when starting a new endeavor, especially if it is already underway, to observe the culture and become accepted more easily into the fold. I have been around long enough to have felt gender discrimination, but then there are heroes like Jay Turnbull, who recruited me to a leadership position at the firm where I work and currently serve as president, Page & Turnbull, a full-service architecture, design, planning, and preservation firm. Jay allowed me to thrive; to navigate office culture and think strategically with a long view. Now, we’re primarily a women-led firm with almost 50 employees.

I’ve come to understand that it’s important to acknowledge when it is time to find a new job and not stay at a place if your path gets blocked, if you stop learning, or are not able to contribute as meaningfully as you want to. Change is good and the only constant, so overcome the natural fear of it.

Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?

Ruth: This is a timely question since at work we used some of the initial down-time of the early COVID era to focus on refining our office infrastructure to develop efficiencies and establish processes and templates and such that allow us to work remotely in an efficient way and to scale. 

These systems, along with a cohesive culture, provide a common understanding of a firm’s typical services and deliverables, which enables companies to bring on new teammates with shared values and expectations. Mentoring is also critically important. We allow for new teammates to be mentored by those who have performed similar tasks. This encourages both individuals to grow and stretch in new directions. It provides an opportunity for organic growth from within and growth that can scale, if the right people are in place or available. People are key and having a high-performance team enables infinite possibilities.

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?

Ruth:  A good leader listens, inspires and empowers others to participate and contribute to the whole. Unless they are sole proprietors, leaders are typically part of a continuum. Page & Turnbull works to create a legacy business and that goes back to hiring the right people; people who are part of a continuum that help to build the firm’s continuity and success. You need the right people on the bus; those who can self-manage and self-direct. They should be steering toward a common goal and developing their skills. Nurturing good, smart and talented people allows for the leader to spend less time and energy involved in making corrections. 

A leader must have an understanding of and deep connection to the core mission of the organization and experience that supports that. Leaders need to communicate well and motivate people. Another plus is having the ability to assemble a good team and support it for shared success, including for an individual, the team, the client, and the business. 

We had a summer intern, for instance, whose exceptional work was noticed by a staff member. After she graduated from school, we hired her and saw how she fit the firm’s culture, grew and stepped into increasing responsibilities. Now she can do things that she couldn’t five or ten years ago, and I am comfortable handing off some of my responsibilities to her. Hiring good people and allowing them to develop helps them achieve and adds to a firm’s legacy.  

Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Ruth:  Empowering others to work independently and responsibly gives leaders the ability to focus on and improve their own skills. 

Learning from mentors or peers can help, too, although I didn’t have access to a female mentor to learn from early in my career. I made my own path, with most of my career advances coming through recruitments, including my current role as president of Page & Turnbull, which I came into by consensus. I enjoy being a driver although not necessarily the primary driver. In fact, our firm is examining ways to rotate people into leadership positions so that everyone can develop skills associated with the job. 

Leaders that want to advance need to be aware of which of their skills need improvement or have a mechanism in place to become aware, perhaps through the insight of a trusted peer or colleague. At some point, people stop giving feedback to people in leadership positions. An in-house mentorship program is one way to provide a mechanism for constructive criticism. 

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?

Ruth:  First, hire good people, which can be complicated. Many people hire candidates who are like themselves, but it’s important to take what may seem like a risk and hire those who may not fit your typical profile, but have the skills needed for the job and believe in the same values that drive your firm. In the long run, employees that don’t follow a firm’s ethos, regardless of their level of talent, often don’t have the same heart for the company or the work it does, as those that do. 

Second, trust your employees to succeed and third, stand aside and forge new paths for yourself and others. Bringing up team members by observing how they work and guiding them into subsequent steps is an effective way to provide them with growth opportunities and allows leaders to refocus on their own position and decide what their next steps could be. If the system is working and the motor is running, you can figure out your next destination. If you’re still repairing the engine, you can’t go anywhere. 

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams?

Ruth:  Know what skillsets are needed, allow for a little bit of redundancy, provide clear direction, build trust through communication and good work, and then get out of the way. Repeat.

Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing and branding?

Ruth:  Branding is important, but there needs to be content to back up the first impression. Websites, for example, can be designed to look great, but they have to be rooted in strong content. You want to be able to share a strong portfolio of work so people realize there’s depth and quality to what your firm does. A fantastic design, logo and website graphics are desirable, but they’re superficial if they don’t have meaningful content behind them. 

Nurturing existing clients is another way to boost a company’s sales goals. Have a program in place that both cultivates clients and incorporates outreach for new ones. Quality work speaks for itself when it meets the eyes of potential clients.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Ruth:  From my father: Be nice to everyone; they might be your boss one day.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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