Sherm Moreland is DesignGroup's trusted CEO. In 1998, Sherm joined DesignGroup wanting to both excel in his technical role as a healthcare planner and contribute to the growth, prominence, and reputation of the firm. His passion, curiosity, willingness to lead, and bias for action saw him quickly rise to Managing Partner and eventually to CEO in 2008. Systems thinking, building a resilient organization, life-long learning, and elevating expertise and customer service have been hallmarks of his approach to leadership and request of others.
A range of life experiences prepared him for this role. Sherm can’t remember a time when he didn't want to be an architect, and as a first generation high school graduate, he had to scrap to achieve his career goal. He worked as a draftsman for a local factory starting his senior year in high school, and did it every weekend and holiday he could to help pay for college. His educational journey took him through three community colleges and two major universities in pursuit of his undergraduate (Kent State) and graduate (University of Colorado Buffalo) degrees.
While in Colorado for graduate school, Sherm worked with the AIA to lead the state’s second state-wide award for design excellence in ADA. “This was a big deal,” he recalls. “Design for the disabled had just been signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. It was landmark civil rights legislation to increase access and opportunity for people with disabilities across community life.”
Sherm is a board-certified healthcare architect, speaks and publishes nationally, and is a frequent contributor to research by the Advisory Board Company. He has devoted his career to the programming and planning of complex, award-winning healthcare and education projects totaling more than 25 million square feet nationwide. DesignGroup clients benefit from his unique depth of industry-specific knowledge and understanding of the changing trends that lead to best-practice thinking and innovation.
Sherm understands the life-changing possibilities that higher education and cultural institutions present to young people. And he embraces every opportunity DesignGroup has to plan and build facilities that make those aspirations possible, whether it’s a modest community college dorm or a billion-dollar learning hospital. Sherm is quick to credit many mentors throughout his career, from his first boss at the factory (“He challenged me, supported me, and gave me responsibilities that no 20-year-old ever gets that early in their career”) to DesignGroup’s previous CEO, Bob Vennemeyer, who defined the idea of “steady hand on the wheel” and set a model for kindness and dedication that every DesignGroup leader follows today.
