When asked about his favorite projects, Vince Myers doesn’t mention buildings in DIGroupArchitecture’s education or civic portfolio, or even senior living passion projects. Instead, the co-founding principal and president of the majority Black-owned architecture firm expounds on client relationships. “I’m not somebody that walks in and opens up a portfolio or brings anything or anybody to a meeting,” Myers says. “I feel confident that I can let my character come out and build trust.”

The 65-year-old’s relationship-driven approach helped the New Brunswick, N.J.-based firm successfully open a Philadelphia office in 2019 after only completing a few small projects there. Myers and his team quickly secured contracts through Rebuild Philadelphia, an initiative to renovate libraries and recreation centers in underserved communities. The firm’s work on two city libraries funded and built by industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie before the mid 1920s—the Paschalville and Cobbs Creek branches—blend preservation with modern functionality. By year-end 2023, DIGroupArchitecture secured more than two dozen contracts in the city. “We care about community-based work, nonprofit work,” Myers says, “and that message resonated right away.”

The firm also contributes to the city’s workforce development efforts. In cooperation with Rebuild Philadelphia and a local high school, Myers hosted a design competition for students, whose winning mural design would be integrated into a newly renovated local library branch. Additionally, a high school student was selected for an internship and worked with the firm during design of the Paschalville Library project.

Myers also offered pro bono design services for two nonprofits in Philadelphia. These include the Enterprise Center—which supports growth of diverse small businesses and partners with West Philadelphia communities on revitalization strategies—as well as One Day At A Time, which serves low-income, homeless and unhoused individuals and families that are affected by addiction.

The 45-person architecture firm, two-thirds of which are licensed architects, supports diversity and inclusion of women and people of color. Women account for 40% of the architect team, compared with an industrywide average of 17%. Also 30% of the firm’s staff are minorities. Myers recently won the Philadelphia Business Journal’s 2025 Diversity in Business Leader award.

The firm performs 80% of its work for repeat clients, including for the Plymouth Group for the last five years.

“Vince’s natural positivity, creativity and energy make him a wonderful partner for a developer who faces countless challenges and detours as a project progresses,” says Asher Schlusselberg, partner at Plymouth Group. “He can get to the heart of the problem in only a few minutes, sort to the challenges and present a way forward that is efficient and often simple.”

The $22-million renovation of the Edwin Forrest Elementary School in Philadelphia included the auditorium, where the design of an existing mosaic tile on the building’s exterior was replicated as an interior mural graphic.
Photo by LoriAnne M. Jones, Senior Project Manager/DIGroupArchitecture

Undaunted

The son of one of the first licensed Black architects in New Jersey—the late Harvey Myers—Myers was mesmerized by his father’s sketches and blueprints.

“I’ve been around architecture since I can’t remember,” he says. “I always enjoyed drawing independent of architecture, and I always enjoyed writing, and I always enjoyed the process of architecture.”

Myers worked for his father during summers and joined his firm, EHM Architects, after graduating from Syracuse University in 1984. Drawing on lessons he learned from watching his father build a practice during a period of intense racial strife in the 1960s and ’70s, Myers is not allowing current unpredictable political swings—including increased scrutiny of diversity initiatives such as minority business enterprise certifications—dampen his infectious spirit. “I’m a reflection of what my father believed: ‘Keep working, and there will always be challenges.’”

But he says just because his father, who he calls a “unicorn,” succeeded without government programs for minority businesses doesn’t mean MBE initiatives should not help level the playing field today. Myers says large firms tend to land large projects that help build generational wealth. “Historically, people have been careful to safeguard those opportunities,” Myers says. “That’s a different kind social advancement that isn’t talked about the same way as an [MBE] program that provides opportunities.”

Breakthrough

In the early 2000s, a lawsuit against the state of New Jersey for failing to provide equitable education led to an $8-billion initiative to improve schools in underserved communities.

Myers and his father joined a consortium of several other small firms to provide services to the New Jersey School Development Authority called NJK-12 Architects. The coalition, which eventually merged to form DIGroupArchitecture, landed the $143-million Cicely Tyson School for Performing Arts in East Orange, N.J.

Years later, Dr. Bibi Taylor, a former school board member in East Orange involved with the Cicely Tyson project, called Myers after taking a leadership role in nearby Union County. She needed an architect to design a $120-million government complex. Now under construction, it is expected to be completed next year.

Taylor was impressed by Myer’s “work ethic and client-first approach,” she says, which were “deeply ingrained in him” by his father. “His legacy is not just in the buildings he designs, but in the trust and respect he earns with every project.”

As principal-in-charge of DIGroupArchitecture’s senior living studio, Myers is also committed to educating others on the complex housing needs of a new generation of aging adults. He is a former board member and president of Springpoint Senior Living, a nonprofit, mission-driven organization committed to serving the elderly. Its Life Plan Communities include senior care facilities, affordable housing residences and age-in-place home care options.

Myers recently starting thinking about his own retirement as his firm began succession planning.

“I absolutely want to hand over the reins and find a way that I could continue to work on some level and still provide value,” he says. “I’m always going to want to do that because that’s just kind of in my DNA.”