Meet Jaime Matheron | Member Spotlight

Jaime Matheron always knew she wanted to be an architect. As her parents explored building a custom home, 10-year-old Jaime found herself looking through the planning books and imagining how she would design the home. The architect was born. In 2006, she graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and began working on K-12 architectural projects. In 2014, she made the jump to residential projects, fulfilling the destiny of the 10-year-old leafing through design books.

As a residential architect, she currently leads a team designing a variety of residential projects, from single family homes to townhomes and everything in between. Deeply concerned about California’s housing crisis, Jaime strives to provide solutions for housing. “It is easy to be passionate about housing right now because you can see how much need there is for housing and creativity and whatever solutions we can come up with.” As a fifth-generation East Bay resident, she has a drive to solve the housing crisis in the Bay Area. The challenge of housing attainability is personal to her, as she is determined to someday purchase and restore an old home of her own. 

 Jaime is a licensed architect and AIA was a natural fit for her, as the AIA supports the public knowledge of what an architect does and they advocate for architects. It is important for her to help young architects and “provide them mentorship in their early career path.” She also strives to be a voice in AIA for gender and racial diversity. Working in a field historically dominated by men, Jaime is an advocate for women in architecture. She also participates in an architectural summer camp cosponsored by the AIA with the goal of making architecture as a career accessible to everyone and loves to teach children and watch as their design talent blossoms. Jaime is a cofounder of DAHLIN Barkitecture, a design-build competition that has raised funds in support of animal rescue organizations while providing hands-on construction experience for young architects.

Her dream projects stem from a love of sports. She would love to work on designing a baseball stadium. She finds it fascinating to see how “fans gather to collectively experience spaces”, how each stadium connects with its city and how it can revitalize a community. As a leader, she excels at problem solving and building successful teams. Whether it is within AIA as a board member, molding young architects on their career path or exposing students to a job they never considered as a career option, she is a great motivator. Jaime also leaves time for fun, as she plays on a team with her co-workers during their company softball games.