Career depth from design training, ready for what comes next.

We help architects, engineers, and designers clarify their trajectory, articulate their value, and connect with aligned work. Employers and collaborators work with us for signal, not noise, in talent and storytelling.

Career coachingTalent services
Architectural sectional drawing showing interior spatial depth, from the Out of Architecture book illustrations.
A visual from our book: architectural training can translate into strategic, creative, and operational roles across many industries.

We did not picture this desk job either.

Erin Pellegrino and Jake Rudin

We expected big-firm energy after school. Instead, we kept seeing how design training quietly prepared people for problem framing, visual communication, and delivery far outside a traditional studio.

Out of Architecture is the career advisory and resource network we wished existed: candid, practical, and grounded in practice. We work with individuals exploring their next chapter and with teams who need that perspective in hiring and narrative, including people leaving architecture and imagining life outside architecture.

Meet the founders

The people behind OOA

Jake Rudin, co-founder of Out of Architecture

Jake Rudin

Co-founder · Designer · Strategist

Jake's career began in architecture, with work at Massimiliano Fuksas Architects, ZGF, and the Shenzhen Institute of Building Research. His interest in how design tools shape both ideas and organizations led him from international practice into education technology, product innovation, and business.

At Adidas, Jake led teams in computational design, digital technologies, and pattern engineering. Alongside that work, he taught architecture and design at Harvard, Cornell, Northeastern, and Portland State, experiences that continue to inform how he helps people translate creative training into new forms of leadership.

Jake holds degrees from Cornell and Harvard and an MBA. He co-founded Out of Architecture in 2018 and co-authored Out of Architecture: The Value of Architects Beyond Traditional Practice.

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Erin Pellegrino, co-founder of Out of Architecture

Erin Pellegrino

Co-founder · Architect · Educator

Erin is a registered architect whose career has always connected design with making. After studying at Cornell and Harvard, she worked with Studio Gang and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects before expanding her practice into fabrication, technology, teaching, and entrepreneurship.

Through Matter, the studio she founded, Erin has led award-winning work across architecture, products, and brand design. Her projects have been recognized by AIA New England, Core77, and the Architizer A+ Awards, and her experience includes material and technology innovation at Adidas.

Erin has taught at Harvard, Cornell, Parsons, CUNY, and NJIT. With an MBA alongside her design degrees, she brings practice, education, and business together to help designers build careers with greater agency and impact.

LinkedIn

Architectural education is a leadership substrate, not a narrow trade license.

For employers and collaborators, that often shows up as systems thinking, visual clarity, and stamina on complex programs. For practitioners, it is permission to claim those strengths in interviews, portfolios, and negotiations.

Conversations and long-form listening live in our podcast library on Press. Reading, features, and book context sit alongside them in the book and editorial index. Stories from AEC professionals are shared on The Collective.

OOA in Media

Recent features and conversations, collected on Press so you can read or listen in one place.

See all press
The Creative Insider: "A Book About How to Get Out of Architecture"
The Creative Insider

The Creative Insider: "A Book About How to Get Out of Architecture"

This is the second round with Erin Pellegrino and Jake Rudin, two Harvard graduates who have started a consulting company called Out of Architecture. Since last time we have talked they have now written also a book titled the same way. In this one hour conversation we have discussed how did they write, why did they write it and who is this for? Enjoy the conversation and you can watch here the round one!

Architizer: "Architects, We Need To Talk"
Architizer

Architizer: "Architects, We Need To Talk"

Architects, we need to talk. We need to talk about being overworked, underpaid and undervalued. We need to talk about how sacrificing your health, sanity and relationships at the altar of architecture and for the glory of good design is not okay. Burnout is like a dormant virus. It incubates in architecture school, spreads through architecture companies and slowly infects your entire life.