Kat Dovjenko is the Senior Creative Director at Muse & Company. Inspired by the dynamic energy around architecture and urban planning, Kat believes that the more complex, ambitious, and unsolvable the problem, the better. She drives talented teams to unite and achieve outcomes they would not be able to do individually—at multiple scales and in multiple stages of the design process. She most recently worked at Google's R&D for the Built Environment where she oversaw workplace innovation projects. Kat loves navigating speculative pockets of the future and weaving together how they might impact our built spaces. She never shies away from ambiguity, and is skilled at using foresight and storytelling to propel leading edge technologies into real products for the built world and beyond.
Read More#66 Designing for Inclusion with Lilian Asperin
Lilian Asperin is a partner at WRNS Studio, where she helps lead the design process and build teams that deliver aspirational outcomes. Lilian values a firm culture that embraces collaboration, connection to the community, risk taking, and fostering talent. Lilian utilizes her experience as a practice leader and licensed architect to develop synergistic relationships with leaders throughout the architectural and educational communities. Lilian acts as a Board Director of AIA San Francisco and is the Co-Chair of the Equity by Design Committee, a call to action for everyone to realize the goal of equitable practice and communicate the value of design to society.
Read More#56 A Career of Joy, Fearlessness, and Serendipity with Sylvia Kwan
Sylvia Kwan is a principal based out of DLR Group’s San Francisco office. She has practiced in San Francisco for more than 40 years and her past and present designs continue to impact the built environment in the Bay Area. She has a broad portfolio of building type experience and a focused expertise in the Transportation and Higher Education markets. Sylvia takes great pride in building relationships with clients and exceeding their expectations.
Read More#44 Hold Your Values with Bonnie Bridges
Bonnie Bridges is the founder and Principal of Studio BBA in San Francisco. A strategic, clear thinker, perceptive listener and creative dynamo, Bonnie leads Studio BBA with adaptability, energy and fearless optimism. Drawing on deep expertise in the skilled facilitation of decisions and processes, and an intuitive, analytic nature, she guides the studio’s atelier of designers in creating beautiful, enriching, successful spaces and buildings for their clients. She brings a keen awareness of place and purpose to her work, with an approach to the design process grounded in human experience, logic and thoughtful actions.
#32 COVID Diaries: Changing the Way We Practice with Evelyn Lee
Evelyn Lee, AIA, is the first-ever senior experience designer at Slack Technologies. In her role, she works cross-functionally with business operations, business technology, people operations, and their build team to create amazing experiences for employees, clients, partners, and visitors. Evelyn is passionate about finding new business models to elevate the profession of architecture, ensuring it remains relevant in an ever-changing economy. She also currently serves as the Treasurer of the AIA National Board.
Read More#31 COVID Diaries: Space is a Privilege with Rosa Sheng, FAIA
Rosa Sheng is a Designer, Architect, and Thought Leader who is known for innovating Architecture with over 26 years experience. When asked "What type of Architecture do you do?" Her answer is "The kind that hasn't been done before." She is a founder of Equity by Design, past AIA SF President, and Principal and Director of Equity, Inclusion, and Design at SmithGroup.
Read More#26 Digging Deep with Kathy Scott
Kathy Scott is a Principal at Walker Warner Architects where she leads the design on several of the firm’s projects, and mentors teams in the use of good processes to achieve the highest quality of work. Kathy believes that architecture has the capacity to elevate our daily lives, and that the best work results when designs evolve in a thoroughly considered and deliberate manner.
Read More#24 How to Be with Phoebe Lam
Phoebe Lam is the Director of Operations and a Project Manager at William Duff Architects in San Francisco. Along with managing the studio’s operations, planning, and hiring, she also works on projects in the single-family residential and commercial sectors. She excels at managing complex projects with large numbers of consultants and multiple decision makers, and continually looks for new ways to apply sustainable principles and methods in all of her projects.
Read More#21 Resiliency and Leaving the World Better For Others with Natalie Tse
Natalie Tse is a Project Manager at Tipping Structural Engineers with a broad range of design experience in educational, commercial/retail, residential, science and technology sectors. Natalie is deeply passionate about innovative solutions, well-integrated and cost-effective designs, responsiveness during construction, and open communication. She is profoundly committed to learning, mentoring, building strong relationships, family, and giving back to the community.
Read More#18 On Grit, Vulnerability, and Telling your Story with Bianca Koutsakos
Bianca Koutsakos is a Business Development Manager at Neoscape, a creative agency that specializes in branding and visual storytelling of the built environment. Neoscape uses strategy, design, and technology as fuel for their storytelling engine–whether that story is a daring real estate play, a bold corporate venture, or the next consumer innovation. Bianca represents the agency’s San Francisco office, and spearheads the market growth, business development and marketing strategy for their West Coast market.
Read More#15 Practicing with Intent with Anthia Wong
Anthia Wong is a Team Lead and Project Manager with the San Francisco-based interior and architecture firm FORGE, where she works on a wide range of commercial, interior, and tenant improvement projects. She focuses much of her time on relationship building and fostering the lines of communication externally with clients, as well as internally within the firm.
Read More#14 Making Connections with Angie Sommer
Angie Sommer, S.E. is an Associate at ZFA Structural Engineers in San Francisco. She’s currently a project manager and engineer for a wide variety of projects around the Bay Area and California, with a focus on the educational and senior living sectors. Angie is also the co-founder of Vow Muse which helps people craft unique wedding toasts, speeches, and vows.
Read More#11 Engaging Communities with Sandra Vivanco
Sandra Vivanco is a Professor of Architecture and Diversity studies at California College of the Arts, co-director of the CCA BuildLab, as well as the founding principal of A+D, Architecture + Design, in San Francisco. Based on the premise that inclusiveness and design excellence can and should co-exist, the work of A+D is globally recognized and operates at multiple scales. As one of a few of Latina-owned architecture firms in the country, A+D explores cultural identity representation as design inspiration for new and invigorated public spaces.
Read More#10 Speculative Futures with Jennifer Wolch
Jennifer Wolch is the William W. Wurster Dean and Professor of City and Regional Planning in the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley. She is a scholar of urban analysis and planning, and her past work focused on, among many things, urban homelessness, urban environmental justice and political ecology, and the delivery of affordable housing and human services.
Read More#9 Leap of Faith with Angeles Garcia
Angeles Garcia is a Project Executive at McCarthy Building Companies. Originally from Ensenada, Mexico, Angeles has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Tijuana Institute of Technology. Angeles started out at McCarthy over 20 years ago by answering a newspaper ad for a Project Admin position. Since then she has slowly worked her way up to an executive role, breaking down barriers all along the way.
Read More#8 What Makes Your Heart Sing with Anne Torney
Anne Torney is a partner at Mithun Solomon, and leads their San Francisco office. For more than 20 years, she has made affordable multi-family housing and transit-oriented urban infill the focus of her work. She believes that the two biggest challenges of our time are income inequality and climate change, but design has the power to address both.