Maryia Lackansingh Awarded with 2024 Emory R. Rodgers Leadership in Building Safety Fellowship

Maryia Lackansingh, Code Specialist III in the Commercial Building Division of Land Development Service for Fairfax County, Virginia, has received numerous awards and accolades throughout her career, including Fairfax County’s Outstanding Performance Award in both 2020 and 2023 and was voted the City of Alexandria’s Most Valuable Team Player in 2016.

In 2024 she took home the Virginia Building and Code Officials Association (VBCOA) Jack A Proctor Meritorious Service Award for her work with Women in Code Enforcement and Development (WICED) both nationally and in Virginia (WICED of VA). She serves the National WICED Chapter as Vice President and is the immediate past president of WICED of VA, which received the 2024 ICC Chapter of the Year Award, thanks to Lackansingh’s hard work and commitment. And, earlier this year, Lackansingh was among the Northern Virginia 40 Under 40 Honorees.

She is also the proud recipient of the International Code Council’s 2024 Emory R. Rodgers Leadership in Building Safety Fellowship.

The fellowship was created to honor Emory R. Rodgers, who devoted more than 40 years to building safety. Recipients receive up to $20,000 to cover the cost of an educational program and any associated travel, allowing them to learn and grow as they advance their careers.

“This award means a lot to me and honestly it couldn’t have come at a more perfect time in my life,” said Lackansingh. “While I was looking at the award and the past recipients, I was thinking about what I wanted to gain from it if given the opportunity. Immediately I thought about a women’s executive leadership program. Leadership looks different for women, and I wanted to participate in a program that highlighted those differences while also helping me to navigate my leadership style.”

Lackansingh found what she was looking for in the Women’s Leadership Program at Yale School of Management, a week-long on-campus leadership program designed to invigorate women leaders. She is scheduled to attend the next program in September 2025 and hopes that it will help her prepare for her first managerial role.

“I believe I am more than ready for that next step,” said Lackansingh.

A Design Professional by Training, A Code Official by Fate

With a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering and an associate’s degree in interior design, Lackansingh didn’t plan on having a career in building safety. Her college internships were with architecture studios, and she assumed she would work for a typical design firm after graduating.

While applying at design firms, another opportunity caught her eye: Assistant Architect in the architecture department at Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA). The job would allow her to improve accessibility for veterans, and as someone who had a passion for improving accessibility for those who need it, Lackansingh eagerly applied for the role.

This job gave Lackansingh her first taste of code enforcement.

“I traveled across the country to review existing federal structures, mostly VA medical centers,” Lackansingh recalled. “We would walk the spaces, make sure they were fully accessible to those that needed to frequent the facilities, make sure there weren’t any barriers. If needed, we would come up with plans to eliminate barriers found in the field. It was like a mixture of review, design and inspections.”

In addition to VA medical centers, Lackansingh inspected D.C. monuments to make sure they were accessible. She also completed drawings for accessible features that needed to be implemented in existing buildings.

“PVA staff were also tasked with reviewing Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority stations to make sure the space between the trains and the platforms were accessible,” she said. “I actually visited every single metro station in the D.C. metropolitan area and measured along the platforms where the trains are to make sure that gap wasn’t too big and there wasn’t too much of a height difference between the train and the platform.”

Lackansingh also had the opportunity to attend the ICC A117.1 Committee meetings as a representative of PVA, which was a voting member. This experience taught her more about the code development process and all the people and resources that feed into regulations and standards.

“I knew the PVA job was about accessibility, I just didn’t know what that meant until I started doing the job, and then I learned I loved it!” said Lackansingh. “I also learned so much about myself and that I have this constant need to help people. I learned how much of the built environment is inaccessible to people with disabilities and I gained a profound level of sensitivity for those individuals. That experience not only shaped my career, but it shaped who I am as a person.”

Lackansingh’s heightened awareness about accessibility, and the challenges some people face in navigating the built world, served her well as a commercial plans examiner. She has become the go-to person for accessibility issues and accessible code interpretations and is committed to finding solutions to any problems that may arise.

A Background in Architecture Propelled Lackansingh’s Career

There aren’t many design professionals in building safety, nor are there many design professionals who possess a high level of code expertise. This gives Lackansingh a distinct advantage over her peers. She said that her education gave her a “foundational understanding of how buildings are designed,” which helped her in code enforcement.

“Most people that come into code enforcement do so as a second career or retirement job; where they started their careers as contractors, tradespersons or inspectors,” she explained. “I don’t have that background. But my ability to draw floorplans definitely aids in my ability to thoroughly review and read construction documents.”

Lackansingh intends to stay in building safety, but she estimates that if she went back to the private sector, she would be “that much more valuable” because of her code experience.

“A lot of people in the design world don’t understand code the way code officials do,” she added. “Honestly, I have the best of both worlds. I can draw up floorplans and do so in a way that my permit would be approved quickly.”

Lackansingh is also committed to educating the next generation of building safety professionals. She moonlights as an instructor for the Virginia Department of Health and Community Development’s Virginia Building Code Academy, where she teaches CORE, a mandatory course for all newly hired code and fire officials in Virginia.

She is also a strong proponent of the “Virginia Way,” a philosophy that focuses on teaching building safety professionals to find a way to say yes. Instead of using the code to say no, the Virginia Way encourages code officials to be a partner in the process of helping customers achieve code compliance.

As if that weren’t enough, Lackansingh has presented at the Code Council’s Chapter Leadership Academy multiple times. Last year she participated in a panel about the White House National Initiative to Advance Building Codes, which was hosted by the Code Council and Federal Emergency Management Agency. Lackansingh currently serves on the International Energy Conservation Code® Consensus Committee and is scheduled to speak at the CodeComply Summit in July.

“I am presenting with my wonderful colleague and friend, Christina Jackson,” Lackansingh boasted. “She is a Senior Code Compliance Inspector with Newport News, VA. Our presentation is really a crash course on figuring out your leadership style and how you can tap into those strengths to prepare your involvement in volunteer organizations, such as Code Council chapters. We want to help extend your personal growth by looking at the various pathways to a successful career in code enforcement. We will also discuss leading within your family and finding the work-life balance that we all seek to achieve while also avoiding burnout.”

Applications are currently being accepted for the 2025 Emory R. Rodgers Building Safety Fellowship, you can learn more and apply here.