Past Olmsted Scholars

Nina Weithorn (she/her) is a Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) student with a background in agriculture and environmental science. She has a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies with a minor in social work from New York University. Before beginning her MLA degree, Nina worked as a garden educator and collaborated on the establishment of food justice initiatives in Los Angeles, her hometown. She is passionate about soil remediation, agriculture, waste cycles, and community-based design. Nina plans to work at the intersection of agroecology, climate adaptation, and community engagement, developing frameworks to incorporate alternative food production models into landscape architecture.

Cameron Coronado (he/him) is a third-year master’s student at the University of Oregon pursuing a dual degree in Landscape Architecture and Community and Regional Planning. He has a Bachelor of Science from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. He spent his professional career working on salmon recovery efforts, low-impact development, environmental education, and racial equity practice in local government. Cameron would like to work at a large scale, focusing on community design. His goal is to plan and design sustainable and equitable communities for all, focusing on neighborhoods and communities that are historically disenfranchised. 

Aya Keskeso (she/her) is a Fulbright scholar and a MLA student at Kent State University in Cleveland, Ohio. Aya was involved with different NGOs back in her home country, Libya, working with local artists to educate the public about their stories and art as she worked with the British Council-Libya to enhance the experience of fundraising to set the art exhibition in 2017. Afterward, she became a social media manager for an entrepreneurial firm in partnership with UNDP and the UN, a sustainable coach with a Libyan NGO, and an architect, where she worked for three years on project management to provide services on different sites from designing and rendering to construction documents. She was an intern with CSU from 2021-2022 and LandDesign in 2023. She wishes to pursue her passion for environmental justice in landscape architecture. Her thesis looks at how unsheltered youth can be welcomed in the community. 

Tatiana Veloso (she/her) is an MLA student at North Carolina State University. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tatiana aims to address social disparities and environmental challenges in her work. While studying Architecture and Urbanism at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, she collaborated with community organizations in local informal settlements as a student researcher. Her work focuses on community-driven design and planning, environmental justice, social equity, and climate resilience. She plans a career that leverages landscape architecture as a tool for positive change and supports underserved populations through community-engaged research, practice, and education.

Julia Li (she/her) is an undergraduate student at Penn State University, where she is a Schreyer Honors Scholar pursuing a BLA with a minor in meteorology. She spent her childhood summers swimming outdoors, cloud-watching, catching bugs, and gardening alongside her parents. Merging her design and scientific training, Julia is passionate about creating tangible solutions that mitigate the consequences of climate injustice. She will stay at Penn State to earn an MS in Landscape Architecture, and her research will further explore how the perception of climate change affects the way people interact with built and natural landscapes.

Juan Perez (he/him) is an interdisciplinary designer studying landscape architecture and philosophy at the University of Florida. He focuses on the dynamic interplay of design, culture, and environment. As a first-generation American and college student, Juan is dedicated to exploring the ethical dimensions of computational, parametric, and AI-driven solutions in promoting equity, social diversity, and biodiversity. In his design philosophy, he prioritizes empathy, curiosity, and versatility. Outside of the studio, Juan loves to read, bike, and learn new software.

Madison Sanders (she/her) is a student of landscape architecture at the University of Oregon whose interests lie in design communication and alternative approaches to community engagement. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Madison has an interest in communities’ connections to place and their overall willingness to engage in place-based stewardship and advocacy. Her passion for the value of productive landscapes has shaped the direction of her work, research, and the motives behind her leadership experience in using design communication as an advocacy tool. Madison intends to practice research-based landscape architecture to continue to unearth and uplift unique voices and stories in the landscape.

Ellen Sedlacek (she/her) is a graduating senior at Louisiana State University, set to earn her bachelor’s degree with honors distinction. Her passion for sustainable landscapes was inspired by her New Orleans roots and early volunteer work at the Audubon Zoo. Currently serving as the treasurer for LSU's ASLA student chapter, her leadership is recognized by both her peers and faculty. With experience in both public and private sectors, Ellen seeks to push boundaries and explore non-traditional roles within the field. Ellen is currently researching the various applications of mycology in the field of landscape architecture, advocating for designs that enrich environmental health and promote sustainability. 
 

After finishing his BLA in the Philippines, Keith secured his professional license and worked in Manila for two years. He wanted to extend his skills to the other 99% of the population who can't avail themselves of design services that could potentially improve their quality of life, so he is now pursuing an MLA to explore design activism and apply landscape architectural concepts and low-carbon design solutions to spaces that need attention in this ecological crisis like agricultural areas and marginalized communities that face life-threatening climate impacts. He plans a career that utilizes inclusive landscape architecture for the greater good.

Leslie is a dual degree Master of Landscape Architecture and Heritage Conservation candidate at USC. She received a Bachelor of Art in Anthropology and Concepts of Human Nature from Colorado College. In the Rocky Mountains, she taught environmental ethics, local ecologies, and wilderness skills to high school students from across the country. Her design work prioritizes community accessibility through direct engagement with residents that is rooted in their histories. Leslie believes the most powerful way to experience a place is through walking. Her current research focuses on exploring the possibilities for co-authorship in reimagining large landscape infrastructure.

Allison is interested in new paradigms for spatializing and communicating collective memory. While at Penn, she studied landscape architecture and historic preservation simultaneously. Focused on cultural landscapes, her research and designs experiment with memory as a thread relating identity, presence, access, and equity through spatial interventions and storytelling. Currently, she is exploring how a folktale can be experienced as part of a Black cultural landscape. Her work at Monument Lab investigates the relationship between power and public memory. She comes to landscape architecture from a background in architectural salvage, historic restoration, youth design-build programs, and environmental studies.

Justin completed his architecture undergraduate at Kamla Raheja Vidhyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies and is pursuing his Masters in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California Berkeley. In the past, he has worked with studios on designing public infrastructure and healthcare projects. Additionally, he has worked independently with the government on street and junction improvement projects. He believes collaboration is the need of the hour and wishes to situate his practice within the public sector. He is also interested in exploring community relationships to ecology, inclusivity and local resiliency.  

Maryam is a passionate undergraduate student pursuing a Bachelors in Landscape Architecture degree at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. She believes that landscapes are powerful tools that can foster welcoming and equitable communities. Maryam is passionate about creating functional and sustainable environments through a community-oriented approach and facilitates strengthened relationships between humans and the natural environments. Outside of the profession, Maryam enjoys traveling to experience new cultures, painting, and maintaining an extensive collection of houseplants and orchids.

Mallak is a senior landscape architecture student at Washington State University. She was born and raised in Oman. She spent her summer of 2022 as an intern at Perkins Eastman in Seattle, WA, where she worked closely with professionals. Mallak was awarded the VCEA Outstanding Junior in Landscape Architecture of the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture for her outstanding work in 2021/2022. Mallak is actively engaged in the Landscape Architecture program by working as a TA and RA, which helped build her management and communication skills. Mallak’s desire to expand and develop her understanding of how Landscape Architecture knowledge can be used to address climate change and mitigate natural disasters has propelled her desire to pursue grad school in the fall of 2024.

Growing up as a Latina in a formally redlined neighborhood inspired Maria's passion and advocacy for green spaces and socially just landscapes. Learning and experiencing the inequity in outdoor spaces in Seattle neighborhoods and living near the Duwamish River Superfund, Maria noticed a difference in the South Seattle communities' lacking accessibility, size variation, and healthy ecosystems. Maria hopes to become a part of a movement in which designers are advocating for the preservation of community, and improving the ecological health of landscapes. A slow pace movement in need of immediate change is why Maria pursues a degree in Landscape Architecture.

Olivia is a National Udall Scholar and Schreyer Honor Scholar earning a B.L.A at The Pennsylvania State University, with a research focus in Recreation, Parks and Tourism Management. Olivia is an emerging innovative designer and researcher who is dedicated to enriching lives of people and wildlife by creating spaces in protected areas that are equitable, culturally informed, and ecologically responsible. Through Olivia's research with the Penn State Protected Areas Research Collaborative, she learned that interdisciplinary relationships are essential to dissolving borders, restoring ecological flow, and bridging gaps in communication globally. As Olivia enters the public service realm as a practicing Landscape Architect, she wants to inspire meaningful collaborations globally and across disciplines to create designs that are informed by research across many fields.

Landscape architecture is where Katie's passions, experience, and creative talents intersect to create more inclusive and healthful public places. Katie holds a BS in Environmental Planning and Management and focuses on social and environmental justice in her MLA career. She weaves together deep research, advocacy, and supportive design to address social inequities, enhance climate resiliency, and benefit communities through landscape architecture. With a commitment to public service, Katie has worked with the National Park Service and AmeriCorps’ Watershed Stewards Program. She continues her service leadership by volunteering with environmental groups, supporting underserved populations, and through community-engaged research and neuro-inclusive design.

Robert is a Master of Landscape Architecture candidate at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from Northern Arizona University.  He comes to landscape architecture with a background in community organizing, political economics, landscape construction, and urban farming. Recognizing the power and need for community action to make sustainable change, Robert is cultivating a practice that centers community participation in ways that inspire resilient transformations, support healing, and embody radical hope.

Kate is a current masters’ student in both City & Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture with a focus on just, natural environments. She has a background in clean energy technology and accessible design. She was the 2020 co-social chair for the Organization of Cornell Planners (OCP) and served as a project manager for Cornell’s Design Connect program in Fall 2020, where she co-led a team of six students to redesign a neighborhood park in Norwich, NY. Kate holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Wheaton College.

Daniel is a licensed landscape architect in Illinois and Georgia and a LEED AP in Neighborhood Development. His professional portfolio includes constructed linear parks, trails and streetscapes in the public realm and residential patios and gardens. He served for one year in AmeriCorps addressing homelessness in Lake County, Illinois where he recruited and trained 87 volunteers to provide outreach to people experiencing homelessness. In his current research he designs, pro-bono, instructional guides for a Navajo traditional agriculture instructor. After graduating with a Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban Planning (2022), he will continue utilizing his skillsets in service. 

Born and raised in Northeastern Ohio, Trecia is a passionate activist whose work advocates for Black and Hispanic communities afflicted by environmental injustices incited by the aftermaths of deindustrialization. Since the age of 14, she has had engagement with organizing, leading, and planning efforts for social and racial justice in Ohio and across the Midwest. This advocacy work continues to manifest and motivate her leadership as the President of Ohio State NAMLA and as a BlackLAN Student Council member. After graduation, she plans to travel and construct her research as the Environmental Injustice Atlas of the Midwest.

Megan grew up on the outskirts of a small rural town where she spent the majority of her time outside--immersed in the beauty of the outdoors. Megan's love for landscape started from an early age and ultimately drew her to landscape architecture. Currently, she is studying healthcare design and how mental health and wellbeing can be activated in the built environment through connections with nature. Looking forward, she plans to specialize her research and career designing for neurodiversity and inclusivity.

A connection to Louisiana landscapes and a desire for creativity inspired Avery to pursue a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture at Louisiana State University in their hometown of Baton Rouge. They take special interest in equitable, artful, and plant-specific design and want to find creative ways to intersect caring for people and caring for the land. Through advocacy work and community engagement, Avery has found a powerful connection between art and landscape that they hope to explore in practice.

Since joining the Coastal Resilience Design Studio, Leigh’s focus has been on developing a holistic approach to community resilience. Her work expanded in 2021 when she led a team of landscape architecture, engineering, and environmental policy students to win the 2021 Coastal Estuarine Research Federation student design competition. She is currently exploring the meaning behind her self-derived concept - the landscape of decency while working with the AGU Thriving Earth Exchange to design a community-driven program to geolocate industrial toxins on the neighborhood level. This fall, she is continuing her work pursuing a PhD in Plant and Soil Sciences.

Harshat earned a 5-year Bachelor’s degree in architecture from Gurgaon, India, after which he worked for over three years professionally as an architect and eight months as a landscape intern. He also worked in a nonprofit organization for eight months to mentor under-privileged students. Currently, he is completing a 3-year Master’s degree in landscape architecture from The Ohio State University. He intends to work in the US for a few years to expand his knowledge in climate resiliency and, later, return to India to open a reach-driven landscape practice.

Taylor is a Master of Landscape Architecture candidate at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. She holds a BA in Feminist Studies and a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her passion for Landscape Architecture comes from merging her love of plants, gardening, and the physical environment with her love of design and art. With a background both in social justice and sustainability, landscape architecture  is a natural conduit through which she can begin to affect social and ecological change in our built environment. Being that systems of marginalization exist by design, it is important to her that, as a designer, her practice actively attempts to dismantle those systems. She hopes to facilitate and design spaces for communities to utilize and to thrive in.

Leah is a Masters of Landscape Architecture candidate at the University of Virginia, and holds Bachelors of Arts in Anthropology and the Growth and Structure of Cities from Bryn Mawr College. She delights in justice-oriented storytelling in, through, and of landscape, particularly in her home region of the Gulf South. Leah’s current research as a Benjamin C. Howland Fellow explores the possibilities of an abolition ecology through speculative fictions at the site known as Louisiana State Penitentiary or Angola Farm. She also serves on the editorial board for UVA’s student-led design journal, LUNCH.

Jared Edgar McKnight is a Master of Landscape Architecture + Urbanism candidate and research assistant at the University of Southern California. He is Assistant Director of the Landscape Justice Initiative and President of USC’s ASLA Student Chapter. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, he received his B.Arch. and B.A. (Pennsylvania State University, 2011), his M.Arch. (University of Pennsylvania, 2012), and worked as an Associate at Philadelphia-based WRT. Captivated by landscape's potential as a system to support environmental and social resilience, Jared's interests focus on policy and design interventions that challenge the structures that isolate, exclude, and oppress communities and ecosystems.

Abigail Long is a first-generation college student in the landscape architecture program at Temple University. She is interested in the role of education to advance landscape architecture’s impact in creating accessible public spaces. Recently, she began volunteering with Green Schoolyards America, which champions the creation of sustainable outdoor classrooms for students across the United States. She serves as the co-president of Temple University’s American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) chapter and was inducted into the Sigma Lambda Alpha Landscape Architecture Honorary Society in 2020. After graduation, she plans to join a firm that prioritizes inclusive and ecological design.

Born and raised in the dense urban city of Los Angeles, Tracie has utilized her lived experience in underrepresented communities to address equity and inclusivity in her design projects. Her involvement in student-led organizations such as ASLA and NAMLA have inspired her to advocate for minority representation in academia as well as the profession.  As a first generation college student and member of the Latinx community, Tracie plans to further represent women of color in the profession through leading by example in attending graduate school, working in private practice, and eventually lecturing future designers at a university.

Madison is from Virginia and currently studying landscape architecture at Virginia Tech. She chose to study landscape architecture because it combines her love for creative thinking, working with people, and the outdoors. She is inspired and informed by the places and people she has met through personal travel, volunteering, and internships around the US. These experiences taught her the importance and power of public space and the great responsibility that comes with designing them. She covered this concept in her thesis, exploring how the design and programming of public space can build strong relationships and equity.

Barbara’s personal interest in mental health inspired her to study landscape architecture in terms of its neurological and physiological impacts. She developed these interests after witnessing a shortage of outdoor green spaces within medical facilities and amid housing units subsidized for the mentally ill. Her family’s personal struggles with mental illness and their repeated interactions with New York City hospitals further prompted her pursuits. In the future, she hopes to design landscapes that encourage particular physical and mental responses and treat targeted mental illnesses. Simultaneously, she aims to bridge the fields of medicine and design, challenge the conventions of the medical industry, and prove the efficacy of landscapes as grounds for healing.

Born in Burundi, Lys Divine Ndemeye later moved to Niamey, Niger and then to Edmonton, Canada. Growing up in such distinct political, economic, climatic, and cultural milieu prompted her to examine the complex ways in which spaces embody and reflect ideologies, culture, and systems of power. Her interest in landscape architecture lies at the intersection of cultural identity, critical thought, social justice, and design. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Human Geography from the University of Alberta.

Madalyn Baldwin’s academic and professional background in studio art and agriculture inform her interests in landscape architecture and design research. Her recent work focuses on working lands, rural landscapes and economies, and high-performing landscapes. She has a particular interest in geospatial analysis, planning of complex environmental networks, and the ecological integration of native and threatened plant communities. Madalyn received her BA in Studio Art from Warren Wilson College and her Master of Landscape Architecture from North Carolina State University.  She currently works as a Research Associate at the NC State College of Design’s Coastal Dynamics Design Lab.

A Chicago native, Martin Egan became interested in abandoned structures from the deindustrialization and economic decline of the region. While living near Jens Jensen’s Humboldt Park, he began to appreciate the design of inclusive landscapes that celebrate a region’s culture and ecology. During his time at the University of Colorado, Martin served as ASLA Student Chapter President and assisted with student recruitment. He has a BA in Speech Communication from the University of Illinois. His research and creative focus are based on how public space can contribute to social and emotional well-being and bridge social disparities.

Rob Levinthal is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (2013-15) from the rural village of Drame Sadiabou in Senegal, West Africa. As an Agroforestry Extension Agent, he and his work partners planted thousands of trees and made a prosperous women’s garden. In his current position with the Dredge Research Collaborative he works on alternative imaginaries to Army Corps of Engineers’ projects. Guided by these experiences, his research and activism explores how landscape architecture and regional planning can influence foreign aid and climate change reparations to create more holistic and collaborative infrastructure projects in the United Nation’s Least Developed Countries.

David Hooper spent the last ten years traveling the world as a photojournalist in the US Navy, first on active duty and since 2015 through the US Navy Reserve. He documented humanitarian missions in Bahrain, Singapore, and the Republic of the Philippines and came to increasingly understand the power of artistic expression and design. He considers designing landscapes both a great privilege and responsibility that can set the stage for meaningful change at many scales: societal, communal, and personal.

Aaron Lewis grew up in Iowa where vacations often incorporated trips to farming communities throughout the south and central plains where his family is from. He has maintained his rural roots, even as his curiosity and interest in the city grew. He hopes to address issues facing both rural and urban communities with a landscape architect’s perspective and expertise realted to government and land development. He is interested in environmental and social issues, such as climate change and demographic shifts.

Growing up in Virginia, Jake Tiernan spent many of his days hunting for turtles, snakes, and anything he could get my hands on in the woods. Through minors in Environmental Inquiry and Wildlife and Fishery Sciences, he has brought that love for wildlife into his education. Involvement in the Musser Gap to Valley Lands project sparked a passion for community design, which he now carries into his research. Jake plans to further merge and build on these two ideas by pursuing both graduate school and private practice, while birding during whatever free time he has. 

Audrey Wilke believes the advantages of dyslexia — spatial reasoning and systematic thinking — enhance her design abilities. However, it’s the challenges that have really shaped her. Advocating for herself naturally led to advocating for the disability community. It’s not hard to see that landscape design often forgets those with disabilities. Angered by the discussion of accessible design only in terms of regulations and restrictions, Audrey has set out to shift the focus to one of user experience. Her goal is to consult different disability user groups in order to create a guide of accessible design best practices for landscape architects.

Areti Athanasopoulos, a Colorado native, earned her BA in French and Italian from CU Boulder.  An enthusiastic linguist, she has traveled extensively and hopes to work internationally on global issues. She has worked in the non-profit world as an arts educator and environmental activist, and is currently completing her dual degree in Landscape Architecture and Urban & Regional Planning at the University of Colorado Denver. Areti's core mission is to improve living conditions for people experiencing displacement and to create a more equitable world through empathetic spatial design. She advocates for refugee rights and volunteers with the International Rescue Committee.

Jennifer Lauer brings an academic and professional background in art, social science, and horticulture to her design practice, with a particular emphasis on design as a catalyst for socio-ecological healing, connection and reciprocity. She received a BA in environmental studies from Allegheny College, where she was awarded a faculty prize for best interdisciplinary research project for her work connecting people in transitional shelter to ecologically sustainable food options. In her free time, Jennifer enjoys swimming, gardening, and travel. She hopes to achieve a research and design role working with landscape architects to creatively reveal multiple narratives affecting significant cultural landscapes.

Fatema Maswood is a Tunisian-Bengali-American designer and educator working towards participatory models for enacting environmental justice. Some of Fatema’s design work explores decentralized water management, in-situ soil and water remediation, tools for community land ownership and engagement in design process, and interactive disaster preparedness merging play and asset mapping. Fatema holds a BA in Architecture from Barnard College and is a candidate for a Masters of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington. She lives and works on Duwamish land in Seattle, Washington, where she gardens, swaps seeds, or works in a wood shop whenever possible.

Grace Mitchell Tada comes to landscape architecture from a background in art history and the culinary arts, which have influenced her landscape interests in cultural histories, sustainability, and aesthetics. Spanning landscape architecture and journalism, her work incorporates varied methods of visual and narrative storytelling to envision and describe new and inclusive paradigms for the built environment. Her current work investigates the design of refugee and migrant center landscapes. She strives to communicate how the agency of landscape can allow for transitory manifestations of home and percipient responses to trauma.

Anjelyque Easley focuses on the historic preservation of cultural landscapes on a regional and national scale. She has always felt that landscape architecture and historic preservation are vastly underrepresented in education and throughout society, which has driven her to strive to understand and promote historical preservation whenever possible. After graduation, she plans to attend graduate school and subsequently work toward a PhD to teach landscape architecture.

Having grown up and been educated in Indiana in a post-industrial region facing complex socioeconomic and environmental issues, Madelynne Clark witnessed how shifts in industrialization and technology affect layers of culture and ecology. This drove her to study landscape architecture, where she saw the ability to open conversations into socio-ecological disturbances that plague these landscapes and invite new infrastructure models that focus on renewables, biodiversity, health, and inclusion. In the face of current ecological forecasts for the Earth, Maddie aims to mobilize humanity through new landscape predictions.

Adriana Hernandez Aguirre developed a keen love and respect for nature while growing up in an agrarian, colorful town in Mexico. At an early age, she was involved in community service, working with low-income families to build timber shelters and plow fields. A critical thinker by nature, Adriana's experiences, heritage, boldness, passion for art, and admiration for ecology steered her towards landscape architecture. As a self-motivated student, her personal commitment is to make this world more sustainable and equitable. She aims to design safe and efficient environments that accommodate autonomous transportation and design sustainable developments on Mars.

Christian Moore double majored in landscape architecture and humanities studies at The Ohio State University. Born in South Africa and raised in rural Illinois and Ohio, Christian’s research examines agricultural village development in global temperate grasslands. With grant support from Ohio State, the Garden Club of America, and the Landscape Architecture Foundation, Christian has conducted fieldwork throughout the northern hemisphere, most recently in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Uzbekistan. After graduation, Christian intends to continue his design advocacy work for rural populations.

From Detroit to the Mississippi Delta, Liz Camuti’s research investigates how landscape architects can couple cultural practices with non-human forms of intelligence to design responsive modes of infrastructure. At its core, her work expresses an optimism about the potential for varied conceptions of durability in rapidly evolving landscapes. Before transferring to the University of Virginia, Liz received a bachelor’s degree in International Agriculture and Rural Development from Cornell University and worked as a designer at Spackman Mossop and Michaels in New Orleans, LA where she contributed to the Fitzgerald Revitalization Project, a 2017 ASLA Professional Honor Award recipient. Influenced by her personal experiences living in Louisiana and working in post-industrial cities, Liz’s work primarily engages communities faced with de-urbanization and climate-related relocation. Coupling highly specific cultural narratives with new technologies, she strives to design infrastructural ecologies that allow for more gradual social and ecological adaptation to change.

Rachel Ison is interested in exploring the intersection of public health and landscape architecture. Her design-research thesis focuses on addressing issues of lead contamination in vulnerable communities of Los Angeles and exploring alternative remediation strategies. By addressing the health effects of toxic environmental exposures, she strives to convey the importance of landscape architecture in communicating issues of environmental justice. Her undergraduate education in anthropology and environmental studies has informed her interest in designing for the well-being of both the environment and the people who inhabit it. Rachel hopes to continue to emphasize the role of landscape architecture in advocating for the health of communities. 

Originally from a small town in Minnesota, Nicholas Jabs has since lived in New Jersey, Arkansas, New York City, and Philadelphia. He is interested in the environmental and economic performance of working landscapes in middle American cities. At Penn, Nicholas has pursued this topic through independent research and a thesis project that explores how emerging forms of manufacturing can build on the region’s legacy of making and be leveraged to create new types of dynamic urban environments. His work also includes participating in the McHarg Center’s inaugural piece of research. The national study, “The Next 100 Million Americans,” illustrates the effects of a changing climate and population growth on development patterns and natural systems over the next half century.

Steven Nuñez, a first-generation college student and veteran, has a BS in Architecture and is completing his final year of the MLA program at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is a proponent for urban agriculture as a means for achieving social, environmental, and economic equity. Steven is the founder of the Mind Your Garden Urban Agricultural Center. The Center’s mission is to support the creation of healthy, vibrant, and sustainable communities through farming, social engagement, and self-sufficiency training and education. Through the Center, Steven hopes to make positive contributions to his community and to the profession.

Karina Ramos is passionate about using landscape architecture to design informal settlements to help others on a larger scale. Her Peruvian background has had a huge impact on her life and influenced her when choosing landscape architecture as a career path. She has seen first-hand the socioeconomic disparities in developing countries, especially in Lima, Peru. Karina is focused on creating a strong framework using landscape-based designs for the development of informal settlements. She wants to apply these principles in Lima. She is determined to use landscape architecture as a to tool that will provide societal benefits.

Blending her background of graphic design and civil engineering ultimately led to Toni Candanedo's passion of landscape architecture. Toni actively participates in her community as president of the ASLA Arizona State University Student Chapter and serves on the Design Student Council. She helped found and now serves as treasurer to the Latino Architecture Student Organization and is also a charter member of the National Organization of Minority Architects. Through community workshops, a passion emerged for environmental justice, cultural preservation, and urban habitat restoration. Toni's aspirations include working in a progressive firm upon graduation, deepening her knowledge of landscape architecture, and eventually teaching.

Bryce Donner hails from the tropical metropolis of Miami and aims to reignite our connection to water. His work as a BLA student at the University of Florida has focused on reframing our historical understanding of Florida’s springs and artfully redesigning spring landscapes in their ecological and cultural contexts. Upon graduation, Bryce will examine European approaches to the design of freshwater springs in karst landscapes and continue to advocate for the preservation of outdoor spaces in urban and rural environments.

Growing up in a low-income, immigrant home, Karen learned that education is the most powerful tool to mitigate for poverty, social inequality, and environmental injustice. Her focus is to research and explore the social impact that landscape architecture has on communities, and how landscape architects can promote social equality. For her senior project, Karen is working with local organizations and schools to determine how cultural identity can be established through the revitalization of urban rivers. As a professional, Karen wishes to focus on social impact public projects and to remain involved with ASLA, specifically in outreach programs catered towards underserved youth.  

Davíd de la Cruz, a first generation student in higher-education has been able to ground his values in his education at the University of Washington. Davíd was a participant in the Informal Urban Communities Initiative centralizing the importance of community-based and participatory research. Moreover, his current commitments lie in collaborative curriculum building with youth from historically oppressed communities. With an emphasis on place-based education models in the South Seattle Region, injustices within our built environment can be explored and brought into public school curriculum. This work is a reflection and attempt to build on his values of communal well-being, instilled in him by a Mexican mother, growing up in South Central Los Angeles. Instrumental components of his future work lie at the intersections of youth education, community engagement, and contextualizing historical injustices to approach healthier and just futures for historically oppressed communities in urban areas.

Catharine McCord holds a master’s degree concentrated in biochemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo and earned certificates in healthcare garden design and horticultural therapy. Her studies focus on pairing the health benefits of green space with the resiliency of the brain to heal itself through plant-based therapies. Her current research addresses applying landscape solutions to ameliorate epigenetic modifications of the brain caused by early life trauma. Her grant-funded thesis project integrates her research with design interventions to build a sensory garden for children with special needs. Catharine is working toward reframing the social and political understanding of trauma to encourage the field of landscape architecture to advocate for more immersive and engaging landscapes.

Ruth Nervig became interested in landscape architecture as a Peace Corps Volunteer extending sustainable agriculture techniques in rural Senegal, but her previous academic and professional experiences in ethnography, youth work, and community organizing equally shape her sensibilities in the field. While researching the nuclear and fossil fuel industries and in her professional work with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, she identifies connections across spatial and temporal scales, incorporating narratives in her analyses and fostering community stewardship. In her final semester of her MLA program, Ruth is exploring the translation of cultural practices into urban design strategies to design a soft infrastructure network in a growing city in the south of Senegal. Ruth hopes to continue to work across disciplines to incorporate constituent participation and innovative design to bolster the cultural and ecological capacities of both people and place.

Ylan Vo is an interdisciplinary designer focused on strategies that integrate social and economic development with sustainable natural systems management. Her recent investigations concern the role of natural systems and environmental discourse in post-conflict and militarized landscapes. This research spans a range of sites across the United States and Vietnam, centered on landscapes impacted by Agent Orange from the Vietnam War. Ylan earned her Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. She also holds a BA in History of Art and Architecture from Brown University, where she served on the planning committee of the international conference Better World by Design. Ylan has previously worked in design-thinking education and outreach at Washington University, St. Louis Artworks, and The Nature Conservancy. She currently works as a landscape and urban designer at Forum Studio in St. Louis.

Lauren Delbridge is interested in the remediation of highly disturbed landscapes. Landscape architects have the skillset to tackle large-scale issues, which is an aspect of the field that has always captivated Lauren. She believes that landscape architects have the ability to combine science, engineering, ecological understanding, and design in a way that sets them apart from scientists, engineers, ecologists, and other designers. Her thesis project “Coal Ash Wastescape” deals with the national issue of coal ash ponds and remediating the waste-filled landscapes in a designed way. By pushing her work into the public realm, she has begun conversations about the future lives of coal ash ponds and has emphasized the important role that landscape architects can have in solving these issues.

Kristi Lin is passionate about using landscape architecture to facilitate cross-cultural understanding. As the granddaughter of Japanese American citizens interned during WWII, Kristi discovered her passion for cultural landscapes and social justice at Manzanar National Historic Site, a former Japanese internment camp. Since then, Kristi has helped organize and mentor UC Davis students on intergenerational, cross-cultural pilgrimages to Manzanar. Through internships with the National Park Service’s Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation and California Delta Protection Commission, she helped inventory and manage cultural landscapes. For her senior project, Kristi is researching how memorial designers can incorporate landscape growth and decay into their designs in order to commemorate climate change. An aspiring landscape architecture professor, Kristi plans to contribute her experiences in community building, sustainability, and commemoration to help landscape architects design spaces where diverse individuals and the environment find common ground.

As a student of the fine arts in Miami, Nathania Martinez found a deep appreciation for landscape architecture’s relationship to the arts and humanities and sensitivity toward the social fabric of communities. She is a Student Representative for the Future Landscape Architects of America non-profit organization and a member of the UF Student ASLA Chapter Advocacy Team, which collaborate on building lesson plans to introduce K-12 students to the profession. She volunteered to design and lead the construction of a Reading Garden at Liberty City Elementary in Miami, where she coordinated with the Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida (NHSS) to allocate materials, discuss installation details, and organize volunteers. Nathania continues to work on similar projects and plans to advocate long-term for outdoor educational environments on primary and secondary school campuses.

Raised by an artist and a geographer, Stephen Zimmerer’s drawings, maps, and models are an ongoing exploration of the politics of space in contemporary city-making. In 2015, he was one of a four-person team to be selected as a finalist in the national World War One competition in Washington, DC. In the spring of 2016 alongside a classmate, he pioneered a semester exchange program with Hong Kong University, where he studied ecological planning and design in industrializing Myanmar. He returned to Hong Kong the next fall for his thesis, which explored landscapes of control within the booming Pearl River Delta region. Illustrations from this work were awarded professional solo exhibition at Woskob Gallery in Pennsylvania. Having finished his degree a semester early, he currently works with a boutique landscape architecture studio in Hong Kong where he explores politically, socially, and environmentally sustainable design in the developing countries of Southeast Asia.

Azzurra Cox grew up in Florence, Italy, and Charlottesville, Virginia, which gave her a deep appreciation
of vastly different notions of landscape. She is interested in the power of landscapes to shape
collective narratives and in landscape architecture as an engaged, political discipline. She has researched
the links between landscape, politics, and culture in multiple contexts, including the Lake Titicaca
watershed and postindustrial American cities, and aspires to expand the narratives that designers consider
part of the conversation. After completing her BA in Social Studies at Harvard College, Azzurra’s
professional experiences included behavioral economics research in Chennai, India, education reform grantmaking at Carnegie Corporation of New York, and editorial work at The New Press. She hopes to
continue working across disciplines to design powerful spatial experiences, encourage environmental
stewardship, and foster meaningful engagement with a place and fellow citizens.

Jorge ‘Coco’ Alarcon is a cofounder of the Informal Urban Communities Initiative (IUCI) and has 10+ years of experience leading design, construction, and research of architectural and landscape architectural projects in neglected communities with a community participatory approach. His current projects include designing for urban resilience to climate change, fog water farms in Lima, Peru, and research on how landscape architectural interventions can impact human and ecological health including addressing water quality, vector-borne diseases, nutrition, and mental health and wellbeing. Coco is currently exploring relationships between landscape architecture and vector-borne diseases for his thesis, as well as implementing a project in the floating communities of Iquitos, a city in the Peruvian Amazon. His long-term goals are the promotion of research, design, and activism in landscape architecture, specifically within developing countries in Latin America and globally.

Olivia Fragale is invested in the discipline of landscape architecture with a sharp focus on the role of spaces as they pertain to landscape planning and ecological systems. Her previous exposure to the field of environmental science and ecology at the University of Vermont has guided her towards a vision of trying to learn about interrelationships by reading the landscape and identifying patterns, which reveal opportunities for landscape interventions. Her work in cataloging ant species through a comprehensive series of field expeditions in the Western Providence of South Africa enabled her to highlight the ecosystem benefits of biodiversity. Olivia’s interest in biomimicry technology has her exploring living wastewater design interventions. She believes the diverse application of biomimicry wastewater technologies reveal and expose systems as they relate to human development and biological existence. It is a transformative approach to linking humans with the regenerative capacity of natural systems. Olivia hopes to continue her understanding and synthesis of applied ecology and applied art as a means to bridge science and the design professions. She believes landscape architecture helps to facilitate mutually beneficial habitats between humans and all biotic species.

Ellen Oettinger White is a landscape designer, certified planner, transportation planner, and GIS analyst, focusing on the landscapes of transportation infrastructure. Her work combines macro-scale analysis, landscape history, ecology, and design. While at Rutgers, Ellen has used research grants to explore green infrastructure implementation, document road history in the Appalachian Mountains, and conduct research on the built environment implications of connected and autonomous vehicles. These projects come together to inform designs for the complete streets of the future, which promise to be not only conduits of goods and people, but also sponges for stormwater, habitats for pollinators, exercise networks, and sinks for carbon sequestration. Prior to her MLA studies, Ellen received a Master’s in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked as a transportation planner, helping communities design better transit systems and streets. Ellen is a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Landscape and Environmental Design Committee.

Casey Howard’s interests are deeply rooted in environmental values, which drive her work and span a broad series of topics related to environmental justice, biodiversity, environmental education, and restoration. She volunteered as a project manager for the University of Oregon’s Center for the Advancement in Sustainable Living (CASL) where she took on the responsibility of the budget, fundraising, volunteer coordination, and hands on construction. Her skills evolved further as the leader of the winning team in the 2015 Biomimicry Global Design Challenge for which she led the research, design, and communications as the only undergraduate. Casey is continuing her involvement in the competition’s next phase and will consult with professionals in related fields to complete a working prototype and business model. She plans to continue her work in innovative design and further her education in environmental studies in order to broaden her knowledge of educational landscapes.

Kate Chesebrough's studio projects have included “hope+certainty”, strategies for biodiversity in blighted communities, and “work+spectacle”, bringing events and creating a working landscape at a historic site. She led the Red Cup Project in picking 17,500 party cups off of university neighborhood streets. Her off-campus thesis focused on the dynamics of an innovative school being developed by an international artist in a favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Current studio work in Jackson, Mississippi engages DIY urbanism with the urban forest to transform a corridor. She looks forward to working in Ithaca, New York with a progressive group of landscape architects. Favorite past times include hiking to waterfalls, gardening, exhibition planning, watching independent movies, and picking up trash to create public art.

An ardent student of the humanities in his early years, David Duperault has worked in residential construction for more than a decade. He recently followed his passion for sustainable design, community involvement, and inspirational places to pursue a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture. Prior to his return to school, David worked with community development organizations and with Habitat for Humanity as a project manager, teaching building skills and working alongside community members to produce quality affordable housing. He has continued to find opportunities to work at the grassroots level while in school, as well as to contribute his knowledge and experience in support of younger students in the program with him. Upon graduation, David intends to work toward professional registration, with an eye toward an advanced degree in the future and a continuing role as an educator in the field of landscape architecture.

Lyna Nget graduates from the University of Washington with a Bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture and three minors in Architecture, Environmental Studies, and Urban Design & Planning. She has developed her path as an empathetic designer, aspiring to create therapeutic, inclusive, and resilient places that creatively address the issues of human and environmental health. She believes that landscape architecture is uniquely positioned to advocate for and address deeply entrenched and ignored issues of social justice, inequity and evolving demographics through the creation of places. For her future research and career goal, she wants to focus on evidence-based design for vulnerable populations – to design for, empower, and create accessible places for those suffering from mental, physical, and social health disabilities.

Grant Fahlgren's explorations have focused on the capacity for landscape architecture to foster social engagement and on the operative processes of the landscape, from ecology to sustainable energy. He firmly believes in indigenous leadership through design and the mutually supportive roles that landscape architects and holders of traditional ecological knowledge can have in confronting climate change. Grant is currently exploring these ideas in his graduate project by focusing on the Fraser River Estuary, where the Musqueam have lived for at least 9,000 years. Professionally, he hopes to build upon current knowledge of these topics and realize projects that will make a substantive difference for future generations. Grant recently held an internship at PFS Studio in Vancouver and previously received a Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Manitoba specializing in landscape and urbanism.

Andrea Johnson's previous work with migrant farmworkers, disadvantaged female entrepreneurs, and immigrant victims of crimes combined with her landscape studies has evolved her understanding of justice to include an explicit spatial dimension. She believes landscape architecture can and should take a prominent role in working to affirm human rights and a more just society. From collaborating on a forest fire restoration project with an indigenous community outside of Bogotá to developing an upgrading methodology for an informal settlement in Cape Town, she has recognized the capacity of strategic design to promote grassroots access to the processes that shape people’s immediate surroundings and to facilitate vibrant spaces that are socially as well as ecologically performative. She hopes to continue working at a community design and planning scale in New York City.

Teresa Pereira is pursuing a Master of Landscape Architecture degree with a focus on ecological restoration. She holds a BA from Connecticut College in Film Studies and Art History. Her background in film/video has been influential in her goals of expanding interdisciplinary applications within landscape architecture. At Temple, she’s collaborated with fellow students to create videos highlighting the importance of design and restoration to the greater societal health. Those videos were presented at national conferences for the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) and the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER). In 2014, she traveled to Lima, Peru to present in panels and workshops at Fundacion Espacio Telefonica about the role of landscapes in our daily experiences. Her capstone (thesis) is an urban design of an industrial corridor reimagined as a biophilic arts avenue in North Philadelphia.

With a strong passion for socially responsive design, Harris Trobman develops appropriate, replicable, and scalable, interventions to improve health and prosperity. Utilizing waste materials and repurposing as platforms, Harris designed and oversaw the implementation of multiple food, nutrition, water, and sanitation systems throughout Haiti. He taught the local communities to use, maintain, and expand the systems. Most recently Harris designed and managed the construction of a biological filter that captures rainwater in an underground cistern; a green roof to grow vegetables and herbs; an improved latrine; and a playground built out of repurposed tires for a school of 600 children in a remote section of Northern Haiti. He also assisted in the preparation of an environmental curriculum to teach the school children to develop environmental awareness. Harris has a degree in environmental design from Delaware Valley University.

Being heavily influenced by her grandmother’s commitment to landscape ecology, sustainability, and community participation in Puerto Rico, Maria Muñoz grew a special interest in the relationship between people and their environment, specifically within Latin America. She believes by emphasizing the individuality of a place and using local recourses and methods, we can improve human well-being, local economy, and urban development both locally and globally. Her time in Puerto Rico, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil has been spent searching for better questions, comparing and contrasting, and overall thinking critically about ways to highlight existing methods of engaging with our environment to be more effective, resilient, and socially responsible. She aspires to hold a leading role as a global humanitarian through further education, research, and career in landscape architecture.

Erin McDonald is pursuing a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture with an emphasis in history. While at Iowa State, she has been heavily involved with the Student Society of Landscape Architecture. As chapter president, she strove to provide opportunities for students’ professional growth, facilitate a strong student community, and provide opportunities for design exploration. Going forward with her studies and career, Erin hopes to use landscape architecture as a vehicle for social and environmental change. She wants to accomplish these objectives on behalf of people whose needs, interests, and voices have traditionally been ignored. Throughout her career, she intends to engage people and communities directly in order to facilitate place attachment and ensure the long-term success of design interventions. Erin believes this is the responsibility of all who have been privileged with an education in environmental design.

Nathaniel Oakley transferred to the University of California, Davis in 2013. Before and during college, his work at YMCAs in both Los Angeles and Sacramento gave him the opportunity to lead small teams and to promote community volunteerism. He has used this experience as an ASLA student chapter officer and as a volunteer aiding in research and design projects within the community. During three internships with area landscape design firms, he has greatly increased his knowledge and hands-on experience in this field. His senior thesis investigates design interventions for aging dams in California in a time of extreme drought. After graduation, he wants to continue this research and play a key role in working with multi-disciplinary teams to find novel design solutions for aging infrastructure.

Daniel Zhicheng Xu was born and raised in Chengdu, China. With experience with diverse cultures, he is particularly interested in using landscape strategies to represent culture through the restoration of nature. Daniel’s research project "Natural Water as Cultural Water" focuses on the balance between residents’ cultural activity and existing natural integrity along the Wabash River in Lafayette, Indiana, which is currently underappreciated because of flooding, vacancy, and disconnection. The regional planning phase of the project won the Award of Excellence from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2013. Daniel had undertaken a year-long internship at Sasaki Associates in Watertown, Massachusetts, where he developed a strong interest towards the urban design aspect of landscape architecture. He is committed to the practice of landscape urbanism. He believes that to design landscape is to create place -- place that generates positive social impact, place that has a cultural identity, place that respects natural integrity. Daniel plans to pursue a master’s degree with a concentration in urban design.

Sara Zewde ultimately believes that good design empowers people. She has explored her interests in cultural landscapes and their potential to inform ecological design through her studies in Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand, and beyond. Her professional experiences have proven to be test laboratories for these ideas on cultural landscapes, ranging from sustainable transportation planning in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to landscape design in Oakland, California and Houston, Texas, and urban design in New Orleans, Louisiana. Professionally, she aspires to practice research-based landscape architecture, in view of designing landscapes that are culturally and ecologically relevant, as much as they are beautiful. She holds a Master of City Planning from MIT and a BA from Boston University.

Vera Giampietro is in love with the city. Her work aims to design cities that are loved by many and that inspire through spontaneous interaction. She is working toward concurrent Masters degrees in Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, and she focuses on social entrepreneurship, urban design, and landscape performance. She worked previously with a design-build architecture firm specializing in urban residential infill, framing houses and drafting construction documents. She found her calling when she discovered that the city could be a vibrant, pulsing, cosmopolitan place at the same time that it grows food, infiltrates stormwater, and produces its own energy. She is driven to design urban landscapes that showcase both human ingenuity and nature’s intimate wonders. In that vein, her Masters thesis is a design for a healing, therapeutic, educational, playful, and productive permaculture landscape at a school in Beit Sahur, Palestine. 

Harriett Jameson grew up on a farm in Southwest Tennessee that her family has owned for almost 200 years. Her parents and grandparents instilled in her a love for working in the ground; a fascination with plants; the values of land, water, and habitat conservation; and the importance of a strong sense of place. After college at the University of Virginia, she worked for the U.S. Green Building Council, where she became interested in the design of sustainable cities for the creation of healthy and socially just communities. As a dual graduate degree candidate in Landscape Architecture and Urban and Environmental Planning, she has furthered this interest, researching with the Biophilic Cities Project and serving on the University’s Arboretum Committee.  In 2013, she and a colleague Asa Eslocker were awarded the Howland Travelling Fellowship for their interdisciplinary research project studying the qualities of places with extremely high longevity--Loma Linda, California; Sardinia, Italy; and Okinawa, Japan. They have produced a documentary film of this work.

Prior to graduate school, Anneliza Carmalt Kaufer worked as a civil engineer, focusing on water resources and sustainable site development on local and international projects. Anneliza turned to landscape architecture for its unique capacity to grapple with the ways people and communities interact with natural systems and infrastructural networks. Finding value in teaching and collaboration, she works as a teaching assistant to bridge the gap between engineering and landscape architecture in workshop classes and guide students’ work on energy and infrastructural systems in design studio. Her research focuses on impacts of current fracking activity in the Marcellus shale region of northeastern Pennsylvania and the role that landscape architecture has to reposition this disturbance toward alternative and more resilient economies and environmental systems for the impacted rural communities and individual land owners.

Erin Percevault is interested in identifying and eliminating root causes of environmental degradation and social conflict in landscapes suffering from contemporary methods of production and extraction of natural resources. Her undergraduate studies, research, and volunteerwork at Louisiana State University have inspired her current explorations into design strategies addressing relationships between communities, ecological health, and energy production. Originally from New Jersey, she has had the opportunity to study cultural landscapes in rural and urban environments in Louisiana, Italy, and China. Throughout her future studies and career, she hopes to highlight current global challenges that externalities impose on communities and to design infrastructural landscapes that protect people, industry, and landscape.

Viviana Castro is pursuing a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture with a minor in urban and regional planning. She was born in Colombia and has had the opportunity to travel to many countries, which has inspired her to find different approaches to design, planning, and working with social and environmental concerns. Viviana has shared the foundations of landscape architecture with other disciplines through organizations in her university, high schools, and educational programs in Colombia. The more she learns, the more she sees the profession's potential to help different aspects of Latin American development, from improving the built environment and restoring natural resources to recovery from natural disaster. Viviana hopes to engage landscape professionals in the US to expand the profession through education and involvement in different communities, both in the US and Latin America.

Clemente Rico grew up in a poor community in Guanajuato, Mexico, where he had many experiences that shaped his perspective of landscape architecture and how he could provide good standards of living for everyone. Throughout his studies, Clemente's work has focused on developing sustainable designs that promote social and environmental justice. His passion for the discipline shows in both academics and his community involvement. He participates in a volunteer group called Freedom by Design that focuses on design interventions for underprivileged communities. He developed a program for high school students called Future Designers in an academically challenged high school in the Phoenix Union School District. Clemente was selected to represent the Future Designers program as a "commitment to action" at the annual Clinton Global Initiative University meeting held at Arizona State in 2014.

Blythe Worstell's interests in landscape architecture lie at the intersection of modularity and urbanism, where landscape interventions work to invigorate public space and redefine social construct. She is particularly interested in the idea of user-generated urbanism, where modular landscapes support the redistribution of agency in the city. Blythe has defined her academic career through her dedication to service. As volunteer coordinator for the Ohio State Student Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (SCASLA), Blythe led her peers to donate over 200 hours of service and co-founded a community garden in south Columbus. Outside of school, she has worked as an intern for NBBJ and studied in China under the US Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship program. Upon graduation, Blythe hopes to gain a foundation in landscape architecture before returning to her hometown of Toledo to found a non-profit landscape firm to catalyze change in Toledo and other rust-belt cities.

With the lens of design as preventive medicine, Leann Andrews melds her education and professional background in both dance and landscape to explore opportunities for landscape architects to improve human and environmental health in a range of contexts. Her global health work tackles complex health issues in developing countries and confronts global issues such as climate change. Her work through the Green Futures Lab advances environmental health through innovative green design and research projects. Leann’s award-winning projects include an ecological education garden in Peru, a biodiversity living wall, a self-sustaining artist community, and an interactive video game to playfully teach teenagers about sustainability. She is currently working on a home gardening program to increase health and well-being for an informal "slum" community in Peru. Leann hopes to continue to apply her background in dance, health. and environment to a career of applied health-design research and educating future design professionals.

Jose Alvarez, a Colombia native, has refined a unique understanding of tropical and sub-tropical landscapes in areas including South Florida, the Caribbean, and South America. He has had the opportunity to work for Studio Roberto Rovira, in a wide variety of projects locally and abroad in Miami, Seattle, the Middle East, and Colombia. Jose is proud to have been recognized for awards of Merit in 2011 and 2012 by the Florida Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects. His work has strongly focused on the Latin American context and using landscape architecture as a catalyst for urban and cultural regeneration. In 2012, he was awarded the EDSA Minority Scholarship, for his focus on Latin culture. He has also contributed projects to the National Park Service, the city of South Miami, and several projects renovating open spaces at Florida International University.

Tina Chee’s path towards landscape architecture stems from her passion for cities, land art, and a sense of urgency for the state of the natural and built environments. She has lived in Paris, Hong Kong, and London which has had a profound impact on her development. As an architect and LEED AP, she has worked with some of the most influential architects on several groundbreaking projects that span urban planning, architecture, landscape, and infrastructure. She was an architect in residence at the Académie d’Architecture de France and was awarded the top prize in an international housing competition in Japan. Tina’s interests stem from the visual and tactile arts and have evolved towards the productive and performative. Her current educational pursuits focus on the juncture of landscape, infrastructure, and urbanism that meld ecological processes and social programming into transformative multi-purposed experiential and infrastructural networks that regenerate communities and fulfill essential services. After graduation, Tina plans to work on public works projects and continue to research contemporary design issues as a designer and educator.

Graham Laird Prentice's fieldwork, research, and building experience have strengthened his conviction that economic and social justice are inextricably bound to land use practices. From working to implement a sustainable agroforestry initiative with a farming cooperative in Costa Rica’s Caribbean lowlands, to living with shepherds in Spain to investigate the regional integration of nomadic pastoralist corridors, he has recognized the capacity of strategic design and planning to effect transformative outcomes. He imagines a paradigm of infrastructure that is not just "green", but a living, productive, economic and spatial generator for people, operated by as well as for communities. In his view, humanitarian design is not just for poor people or a social service for the "developing" world to be funded by the benevolent. It is everyday design — and should be practiced in the "developed" world as well. He is committed to working in this way, as landscape architect, artist, and activist.

McKenzie Wilhelm's focus on creating better communities through landscape intervention is demonstrated through volunteer efforts and academic work. Her academic ability has been recognized by her professors through the annual faculty prize for scholarship and her induction into the Sigma Lambda Alpha Honor Society. McKenzie is also representing the Knowlton School of Architecture through her nomination for the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships. Outside of the academic realm, her passion for leadership and volunteering are demonstrated through her work as the president of the Ohio State Student Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (SCASLA). McKenzie and her executive board doubled the number of opportunities for professional networking and volunteering. She is also project manager for a group of undergraduates building a community garden in Columbus that has raised over $5,000 for the implementation of their award-winning design.

Throughout his studies, Zachary Barker has pursued extracurriculars, internships, and independent coursework relating to the revitalization of post-industrial urban landscapes. In his final year, Zachary completed his independent thesis project analyzing landscape infrastructure in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Zachary would like to continue to explore the integration of landscape, infrastructure, and architecture as a professional and later as a graduate student. His recent experiences as a teaching assistant for sophomore design studio have solidified his desire to be involved in design education throughout his career. Zachary is a dual citizen of the United States and New Zealand and aspires to create sustainable and beautiful landscapes in both countries and worldwide during his career.

Born in Alberta, Canada, Pamela Blackmore grew up with a deep love for the great outdoors and a desire to help preserve the natural world. Pam is currently participating in the Landscape Architecture Foundation's Case Study Investigation (CSI) program as a Research Assistant for her second term, quantifying landscape performance benefits. She is also heading a team of students doing stormwater sampling research in Daybreak, Utah. Pam plans to focus her future studies on water issues in the arid West and hopes to pursue this in graduate school.

Eliza Rodrigs has traveled extensively throughout many areas of Latin America and the Caribbean, which has allowed her to explore themes of ecology, food systems, and landscape design through volunteer work, field study, and immersion living. This international experience was capitalized on during her recent fall semester abroad, studying the successful Urban Design models of Scandinavia while living in Copenhagen, Denmark. After graduation, Eliza intents to embark on an exploration of the connection between the idea of the "livable city” and the “livable landscape”, drawing on her interests of ecology and food systems within the context of Latin America. She believes strongly that the field of landscape architecture is capable of bridging the gap between design and cultural and environmental challenges, a potential she intends to capitalize upon not only through continued research but also throughout her professional career.

 After graduating magna cum laude from Brown University with a BA in visual art, Jack Ohly worked for years on a sustainable agriculture and cultural revitalization initiative in the drylands of Northeastern Brazil. The profound, evolving outcomes of these mutually-reinforcing projects convinced him of the value of addressing social needs, ecology, and culture in concert. After working for years as a climbing arborist while pursuing his own artistic and musical path, he turned to landscape architecture as a synthesis of his passions and skills. Having developed a range of integrated social and ecological strategies in his student work, Jack plans to pursue a professional, academic, and activist career devoted to creating resilient and imaginative public space.

As an undergraduate, Marin Braco studied art history where she became interested in the field of environmental art. Upon graduation in 2008, she served as an AmeriCorps volunteer working on a coal mine reclamation project with environmental artist Patricia Johanson in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Three years later, she returned to the AmeriCorps program for her capstone project, living and working directly with a community in northeastern Ohio to develop a master plan which aims to convert an abandoned iron works into a park. During her time in graduate school, she has been nationally recognized for her work, receiving a 2011 ASLA Student Award in Analysis and Planning. Her interests and future goals include working in cities dealing with issues of vacancy and
disinvestment, using design strategies to return a sense of place and encourage sustainable development.

Tina Chee is an architect and LEED AP who has worked with some of the most influential architects of our time on three continents. Through this unique experience, Tina has developed a rigorous design process and acquired the critical precision needed for project realization at the highest level. She has worked with Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, and Renzo Piano on a number of important projects -- most recently as the Project Architect for an iconic 510-foot tall office tower, part of Gehry’s 8 million sf master plan for Brooklyn Atlantic Yards. She was also architect in residence at the Académie d’Architecture de France in Paris and was awarded the top prize in an international housing competition in Japan. Tina’s interests stem from the visual and tactile arts, have grown through the practice of architecture, and have evolved towards the beauty in the performative expressed through the synergy of environmental systems and social programming that effectuate change. Her current educational pursuits focus on the juncture of landscape, urbanism, infrastructure, and architecture that integrate ecological processes and urban programming. She is deeply interested in landscapes that are transformative and that repurpose and regenerate existing infrastructure systems to reconnect and heal communities. Upon graduation, Tina would like to work in the public realm as well as continue to research contemporary design issues as an educator.

Tera Hatfield is a recipient of the Finrow Endowed Rome Fellowship and the Copeland Endowed Fellowship in Urban Design to study infrastructure anchored to the Tiber River. She is interested in collaborative work on post-industrial landscapes and urban green infrastructure design that engages experimental research/representational methods while serving as public educational outreach. Building on her belief in the powerful combination of communication, writing, and design, Tera's work seeks to challenge the contemporary divide between academic and public knowledge on important issues such as climate change. Prior to attending design school, she was a writer and graphic designer in New York City. She received her BA in English from Vassar College. In her spare time, Tera enjoys racing through the city canyons on her bicycle and reading anything she can get her hands on.

Fadi Masoud holds degrees in planning and in landscape architecture from the Universities of Waterloo, Toronto, and Harvard University. Over the past ten years he has worked at a roster of landscape, research, and planning practices that helped enrich his professional and academic development. Fadi is interested in the intersection of large scale planning and environmental systems that inform multi-scalar landscape interventions within the public realm. Most of his projects find themselves in hydrological extremes -- sites of severe flooding or aridity. The demands of these contexts allowed him to test the medium of landscape to help inform and redirect urbanization patterns. He has been selected as a finalist in over 12 international design competitions and his work has been highly published and exhibited. Fadi aspires to start a research practice where he can deploy his findings on landscape systems and engage them in the design of territorial and public realms.

Kate Tooke graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College with a degree in civil engineering and studio art. Her passion for creative problem‐solving led her to a first career in education, initially working with at‐risk youth and later teaching mathematics and physics in the Boston public school system. During her tenure as a teacher, Kate earned a master's degree in education and became fascinated with how the urban environments her students inhabited influenced their school performance. She came to the MLA program at the University of Massachusetts in order to understand the design of quality urban open space. For the past three years, she has worked as a research assistant on a National Science Foundation grant evaluating urban greening programs in Boston, and her thesis research examines the ecological and educational impacts of the Boston Schoolyard Initiative. Kate works part‐time at Dodson Associates and imagines a career at the intersection of education and landscape architecture: designing engaging urban landscapes both for, and in collaboration with, youth.

After receiving his BA. degree in geography, Charles Hamilton worked in the public environmental sector and the technology industry. During his time as a graduate student, he has worked for the Syracuse Environmental Finance Center to help connect New York farmers directly to local consumers, and with the Center for Community Design Research, participating in a range of community design projects. Additionally, he created and conducted a series of community engagement activities for his capstone project at a 1,300-student girls’ school in Marrakech, Morocco. His interests and future goals include using design to help underprivileged groups and engaging communities in the design process. In his leadership role as a graduate teaching assistant, he has guided students’ work in design studios and community workshop facilitation.

Alison Hirsch received a doctorate in architecture in 2008. Her scholarship focused on twentieth-century shifts in environmental design and ecological planning and the implications of these shifts on the landscape architecture profession today. Alison also has a master’s in historic preservation, with a cultural landscape concentration. For this degree, she explored the potential of preservation as a tool for social and community sustainability and development. She has consulted community organizations and firms on design and neighborhood-based preservation projects and has published essays in a number of academic journals. She made the bold decision to return to school after working as a Visiting Lecturer in the Landscape Architecture department of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. After receiving her MLA, Alison will continue researching, publishing, teaching, and designing to make a socially-responsible impact on the quality of the environment and the direction of the landscape architecture profession.

During her time at at the University of British Columbia, Sarah Primeau has sat on the BC Society of Landscape Architects Board of Directors and done extracurricular green roofs research for UBC’s GreenSkins Lab. She recently copresented this research at CitiesAlive 2010, an international green roof conference. Prior to the MLA program, Sarah completed a master’s degree in ecology, where she studied landscape-scale ecological processes and their role in shaping a unique wetland on the Gulf of Mexico. For her graduate project, Sarah is designing a regenerative landscape in Richmond, BC, with the goal of helping the city adapt to rising sea-levels while increasing its liveability, ecological richness, and island identity. Sarah aspires to design landscapes that contribute to societal health and well-being through the generation of ecological services and the support of human aspirations for place.

Abigail Shemoel is spending her final semester at Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, studying Brazilian concepts of sustainability and completing her thesis on strategies for improving informal settlements. Her extensive international experience – studying the landscapes of Western Europe, interning in Argentina, and conducting research in Costa Rica – have earned her a Udall Scholarship and shaped her understanding of the various relationships people share with the land. Recognizing the need to improve this relationship where overpopulation and crowding threaten social and environmental well-being, she intends to complete a Master of Science in Urban Development Planning from University College London. Her passion for creative design will remain critical as she ultimately seeks to develop sustainable solutions to accommodate the growth of our cities through the United Nations Human Settlements Programme.

Andrew Zientek is a landscape architect completing a post-professional Master of Landscape Architecture program at Harvard’s Graduate school of Design. Having practiced professionally in widely varied contexts -- working in China for EDAW, with artist/designer Vito Acconci, with plantsmen Piet Oudolf, and overseeing design for a property development company – Andrew returned to the academic setting to define his position within the discipline of landscape architecture. Andrew is currently completing a thesis project, advised by Sanford Kwinter, entitled Nervous Landscapes. Working with two hospitals in the Longwood Medical Campus in Boston, the project seeks to highlight the delicate interplay of mind, body and environment by compressing and revealing the exchanges and rhythms that in exist in human-landscape relationships. Upon graduation, Andrew plans to start his own practice, Terrain Studios, to continue this work, both directly within the medical field but also by broadly championing the importance of landscape in our daily life.

Emily Vogler graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Environmental Design from the University of New Mexico in 2006 and has worked for the improvement of the environment in New Mexico, Texas, Oregon, and New York, where she worked on the PLANYC Million Trees Urban Reforestation Initiative. Focused now upon landscape architectural and urban design, Emily has broadened her interests in resource management, sustainability, and the ethical use of land to embrace the physical design and creation of new forms of public landscape, especially in challenging urban environments. Her leadership capacity derives not only from an exceptionally deep understanding of land and environment but also from a passionate and easy relationship with people – from the Arizona Navajo to Texas ranchers, Oregon loggers, Brazilian villagers, New York parks and recreation professionals, and with her fellow students and faculty teachers at PennDesign, where she was unanimously elected as the research editor for the school journal, VIA.

David Godshall was born in California and received his undergraduate degree in art history from UC Santa Barbara. He spent the next three years based in Los Angeles but traveled extensively designing retail stores internationally for a clothing company. Through this experience the idea of designing outdoor environments became appealing to David, and shortly thereafter he moved to Northern California to pursue his Master of Landscape Architecture. His design work focuses on creating an accessible language that will serve to democratize the medium of landscape architecture in ways that respectfully acknowledge past movements in landscape architectural history and theory. Outside the studio walls, David has recently founded and edited a landscape journal entitled “Landscrape,” constructed a chicken coop for a middle school in Oakland, and works part time for Peter Walker and Partners.

Lauren studied architecture and architectural history as an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, designing and building the first ecoMOD house (a multi-disciplinary design-build project for modular, ecological affordable housing) with a team of school and community colleagues in her final year. After working in Boston for William Rawn Associates, she returned to the University of Virginia as a dual-degree candidate in landscape architecture and architecture with a graduate teaching fellowship. Through her graduate work she has engaged in discourse that broadens and reframes landscape architecture’s role in public health and sustainable environments through teaching, editing the student-run academic journal lunch, and collaborating with architecture, business, medical, and engineering colleagues in multi-disciplinary initiatives. Her current research explores the transformative potential of disturbance and resilience in degraded sites and their contexts -- both for issues of public health and energy and for translating the media and practice of landscape architecture.

Arriving at Cornell in the fall of 2007 with a degree in biology from Duke University, Chris Hardy hoped to broaden his knowledge by registering in classes in landscape architecture, horticulture, and natural resources as well as entering competitions from site specific design to large urban scale projects. Taking over the leadership of the campus Design and Planning group, he helped expand the group’s mission, promoting interdisciplinary collaborative design on campus, by joining with the Community Development Studio to sponsor student teams that would assist local municipalities seeking design leadership and research. In the fall of 2009, this group volunteered over 4,500 hours of community service in these efforts at local engagement. Through these activities Chris has personally become more aware of the complexity of community participation and appreciates the results that can be achieved through both listening and offering assistance to communities. As a professional he hopes to continue his engagement with local communities while adding to his own expertise in restoration ecology and ecosystem services.

After receiving an undergraduate degree in history and art history, Caitlin chose to pursue her Master of Landscape Architecture degree. She is interested in the aesthetic and educational possibilities of waste landscapes and their potential to becomes spaces of cultural significance. Her master’s thesis, The Marpole Waste·Works, redesigns a city-owned waste transfer station as the hub of a materials recovery center. The redesign diverts municipal waste into reuse and recycling ventures and reveals waste and ecological systems to the surrounding community. While in graduate school, Caitlin held teaching assistant positions, was an elected member of the Landscape Architecture Student Association, and participated in design competitions. She also enjoys skiing, rock climbing, paddling, and hiking the dramatic landscape that surrounds her. After graduation, Caitlin plans to pursue licensure and will strive to integrate a respect for site and system into any landscape intervention she undertakes.

In 2008, Amanda Jeter led fellow first-year Masters of Landscape Architecture students to produce ROOT-- an annual publication highlighting the values and concerns of landscape architecture students and professionals. As a complement to her ROOT leadership position and coursework, Amanda engages in advocacy projects with FrontRange Earth Force, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). She has presented research at the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory Conference in Washington, DC and at the Denver Art Museum Student Symposium. She also presented two years of independent research on the ecological disturbance of the mountain pine beetle and its effects on future campground design at the RMNP Biennial Research Conference.

As an undergraduate student, David Malda studied art history, studio art, third world development. and Spanish at Calvin College. Following school, he worked for Integrated Architecture in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a LEED Accredited Professional. He is pursuing a dual degree in landscape and building architecture at the University of Virginia. His current research explores how increasing environmental concerns and shifts in mobility transform our understanding of the conflicts between global and local priorities and our expectations of the role of infrastructure in supporting the health of cities.

Peter Emerson undertook the bachelor’s degree program in landscape architecture after years of experience farming, teaching, and advocating for more sustainable land stewardship and healthier communities. His ambition includes the advancement and promotion of service-oriented planning and design for underprivileged communities. This purpose stems from Peter’s experience as a child growing up in the impoverished country of Haiti. From his early observations, and subsequent travels at home and abroad, he realized the potential of design as a catalyst for significant change. Peter has since interned with Thomas Comitta Associates and Sasaki Associates where he assisted on a variety of project types including urban redevelopment, park design, agricultural and campus planning. His current volunteer service includes farm master planning and urban agriculture systems design. Peter will continue to work professionally in private practice while expanding the role and scope of service opportunities within the profession of landscape architecture.

Brent Jacobsen received a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Stanford University. After working as a cabinetmaker for the US House of Representatives, he entered the field of landscape architecture for its ability to address environmental concerns through design. His interests include improving urban areas ecologically and socially and the intersection of art and landscape architecture. Topics include emerging living architecture technologies, urban habitat and green infrastructure, and the use of fine art as a communication and ideation tool for landscape architecture. Brent received a Sigma Lambda Alpha Travel Grant to tour green roofs in Germany and Switzerland in support of his thesis. He is developing a planning model for prioritizing green roof implementation in urban areas, emphasizing green roofs as urban habitat elements and environmental infrastructure for underserved communities. Brent hopes to continue his research through a Fulbright Grant to Germany and subsequent work with an urban design firm.

Tim Mollette-Parks spent 10 years working as a journalist at daily newspapers in Kentucky, Kansas City, Charlotte, NC and finally in Chicago. While in Chicago, he organized a community maintenance crew for a Jens Jensen-designed park. It was during this process that the notion of landscape architecture as a new career began to click. Soon after, he moved to the West Coast and began his pursuit of a Master of Landscape Architecture degree. His design and research work at Berkeley has focused on how landscape design can meld infrastructural needs with enduring placemaking -- finding the overlap of function and beauty. His work outside of school has led him to present design-research at the International Garden Symposium at the Kyoto-University of Art and Design and at the University of California Energy Symposium and to produce volunteer design work for the San Francisco Neighborhood Parks Council.

Emily Vogler graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Environmental Design from the University of New Mexico in 2006 and has worked for the improvement of the environment in New Mexico, Texas, Oregon, and New York, where she worked on the PLANYC Million Trees Urban Reforestation Initiative. Focused now upon landscape architectural and urban design, Emily has broadened her interests in resource management, sustainability, and the ethical use of land to embrace the physical design and creation of new forms of public landscape, especially in challenging urban environments. Her leadership capacity derives not only from an exceptionally deep understanding of land and environment but also from a passionate and easy relationship with people – from the Arizona Navajo to Texas ranchers, Oregon loggers, Brazilian villagers, New York parks and recreation professionals, and with her fellow students and faculty teachers at PennDesign, where she was unanimously elected as the research editor for the school journal, VIA.

Andrea Gaffney received a bachelor’s degree in architecture with a minor in photography from Cornell University and then went on the road, exploring the cultural and physical landscapes as an architect, photographer, and urban designer in various cities and capacities. Among other assignments, Andrea worked as a photo journalist in Nashville and taught photography in the Bronx. In 2006, she moved to California to pursue further studies in the integration of sustainable and ecological principles within urban design. In 2009, she will complete her coursework for concurrent Masters in Landscape Architecture and City Planning concentrating in urban design.

Stephanie Bailey received a BA in psychology before deciding to pursue her passion for design. Stephanie is interested in working in a multidisciplinary firm that specializes in sustainable and low-impact urban design.  Her particular focus is urban natural systems, specifically, urban rivers and stormwater management. In her master’s project she is analyzing the Los Angeles River revitalization effort and investigating how it could be expanded to serve the impoverished and underserved areas of Los Angeles County. She feels fortunate to have found a career path that will allow her to make a difference in the world by designing socially and environmentally responsible landscapes where people can thrive. 

Karl Krause received his undergraduate degree in English from Carleton College and worked as a teacher for several years in Minnesota before deciding to pursue a career in landscape architecture. In addition to his teaching experience, Karl spent a year as an associate at Moore, Iacofano and Goltsman, where he composed materials to support public design processes. Karl’s academic work includes research at UVA with an investigation of motion representation and a thesis that proposes methodologies for addressing the cultural and creative environmental adaptations of urban children. He likes to work collaboratively as an artist – most recently in an exhibit of green roof gardens supported by video, music and literature by invited participants.

Ellen Pond received her bachelor’s degree in human geography and then pursued a carpentry apprenticeship along with further studies in art and design. As a graduate student she is now working on a research study on "Revealing climate change mitigation in the landscapes of the future: Retrofitting residential neighborhoods, a Burnaby case study."  After graduation Ellen plans to continue working in research and capacity-building for low-carbon, resilient communities. She is also interested in performance art, an ephemeral form of site intervention and design, and working to support multimedia projects with high-risk youth in her inner-city neighborhood.

David Vogel completed his bachelor’s degree in political science from Kansas State University and a JD Degree from Drake University. After working as an attorney for nearly a decade, David returned to school to pursue a professional career in landscape architecture, focusing on site planning and design with a social and environmental mission. David has extensive local and international leadership and volunteer experience with Habitat for Humanity, and is currently working to bring the planning and design talents of the students and faculty of landscape architecture at Kansas State University together with Habitat’s land development department.