CITIZEN DESIGNER | BIOGRAPHIES
Maria Blair joined the Rockefeller Foundation in 2005. She is Associate Vice President and Manager Director, providing leadership and strategic direction for all Foundation initiatives, and leading major initiatives in climate change and innovation. Blair leads the Building Climate Change Resilience initiative, a multi-year, $70 million project to catalyze attention, funding, and action in building climate change resilience for poor and vulnerable people globally. The initiative focuses on testing and experimenting with local action to prevent, reduce and alleviate the impacts of climate change on sub-Saharan African agriculture and mid-sized cities in Asia. The initiative also works on building networks for replication and dissemination of resilience practices, and increasing pressure on international and US funders, practitioners, and policy-makers to support increased resilience funding and action.
Prior to joining the Rockefeller Foundation, Blair was an associate principal with McKinsey & Company, where she focused on private sector development, microfinance, corporate social responsibility, and strategy development for nonprofits. She also worked with leading global financial services companies on strategy, new business development and performance management. Blair, who earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University’s Balliol College, where she received a master’s degree in politics, economics and philosophy.
John Cary is Executive Director of Public Architecture where he leads the development and outreach of the organization as well as serves as the staff liaison to the board of directors. He writes and speaks extensively on issues relating to architectural education, internship, licensure, and public-interest design. In 1999, he co-founded ArchVoices, a nonprofit organization and think tank focused on the future of the architecture profession. For over seven years, Cary was actively involved at all levels of the AIA, including national service on its 2005 Gold Medal & Firm Award Advisory Jury. Cary serves as a board member, advisor, and consultant to over a dozen nonprofit organizations nationwide.
In 2006, at 29, he became the youngest person ever recognized as a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council, alongside nine building industry and environmental leaders including Nobel Laureate & Former Vice President Al Gore, Nobel Laureate & Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and others. A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Cary was a 2008 recipient of the Rome Prize fellowship in design. In 2009, he was recognized alongside President John Peterson with the 2009 Designer of the Year Award from Contract Magazine.
Maurice Cox was appointed Director of Design for the National Endowment for the Arts in October 2007 where he supervises the grant making process in design, oversees the Mayors' Institute on City Design, Governors' Institute on Community Design, and Your Town programs, and provides professional leadership in architecture and design to the nation.
He is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he developed an ACSA award winning beginning design curriculum based on "the city as an artifact." His most recent studio design series, “Urgent Matters” has focused on the revitalization of challenging American cities such as New Orleans, after Katrina and downtown Detroit, Michigan. Cox recently completed eight years on the Charlottesville City Council and served as Mayor of Charlottesville from 2002-2004. As mayor, architect, and urbanist he was widely recognized as the principal urban designer of his city.
He was a founding partner of RBGC Architecture, Research and Urbanism from 1996-2006 in Charlottesville, Virginia. RBGC's groundbreaking use of design as a catalyst for social change in the rural town of Bayview, Virginia, received national acclaim and has been featured on "60 Minutes," in the documentary film, "This Black Soil," in Architecture Magazine, and the book, Design Like You Give A Damn (2006).
Cox is on-leave as a partner with Ken Schwartz in Community Planning + Design WORKSHOP which is working on urban design strategies for the cities of Richmond, Virginia, and Moss Point, Mississippi. A recipient of the 2004-05 Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the 2006 John Hejduk Award for Architecture, Cox has lectured widely on the topics of democratic design, civic engagement, and the designer's role as leader. He received his architectural education from the Cooper Union School of Architecture, has taught at Syracuse University's School of Architecture, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and held the 2006 Kea Visiting Professorship at the University of Maryland's School of Architecture.
Dorothy Dunn is Director of Visitor Experience at the Philip Johnson Glass House. She designed the public tour experience as well as programs, strategic partnerships and products to position the Glass House as a catalyst for inspiration and innovation. She is project director and producer for Glass House Conversations and the Glass House Oral History Project.
Dunn was the recipient of the inaugural Smithsonian Education Achievement Award in 2004 in recognition of her leadership as Education Director for Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. While at the Smithsonian, from 1989 through 2004, she envisioned and directed the signature programs A City of Neighborhoods: Bridging School and Community, Summer Design Institute, and Design Directions. She produced numerous international conferences and tours, including Icons of Modernism: LA and Palm Springs (1999), The Architecture of Landscape and Light (2003), Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan (2004 and 2005) and Craft and Design: Hand, Mind and the Creative Process (2004). As the former Program Director for AIGA, the professional association for design, she produced national conferences on design and business and envisioned and repositioned the International Design Conference at Aspen to the change and advocacy-focused Aspen Design Summit and Aspen Design Challenge.
Sunny Fischer is the Executive Director of The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and has consulted with many other foundations including The Joyce Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Chicago Community Trust. Among other activities, she served twice on Architecture and Design panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and co-chaired a committee in Chicago to create better community access to the arts. She served as Secretary of the board for the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and on a committee for the Urban Design/ Open Space/ Waterfront Task Force for Chicago’s Central Area Action Plan.
The Driehaus Foundation makes grants primarily to organizations working to enhance the urban environment. A sense of place -- valuing particular places, preserving them, renewing them, building them -- leads to support for historic preservation, open space, the arts, and architectural projects, and is particularly interested in programs that bring the benefits of historic preservation, good design and the arts to under-resourced communities. The Foundation also supports efforts to help residents become more economically and socially secure. Recently, the Foundation has begun a program to fund community based museums and cultural centers that combine culture, history and art of ethnic populations. Fischer has also been on the board and a lead organizer for the National Public Housing Museum, based in Chicago, which is scheduled to open in 2012.
Nicola Goren is the Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Federal Agency that oversees America’s service and volunteering programs, including AmeriCorps State and National, AmeriCorps VISTA, AmeriCorps NCCC, Senior Corps, Learn and Serve America and other domestic volunteering programs.
Goren is an 11-year veteran of the agency, having served since 2006 as Chief of Staff to the former CEO, David Eisner. Goren joined the agency in 1998 as Associate General Counsel and led the successful AmeriCorps rulemaking process and grants streamlining initiative. Between 1993 and 1998, Goren worked in the legislative branch, first with the Congressional Budget Office and then with the Office of Compliance. She is a graduate of Cornell Law School and Brandeis University.
Dr. Theodore Landsmark is President and CEO of the Boston Architectural College, an independent, accredited college of spatial design offering degrees in Architecture, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, and Design Studies. He has worked as Special Assistant to the Mayor of Boston. He currently serves as a Trustee of the American Institute of Architects Architectural Foundation and a Trustee of the American Society of Interior Designer Foundation, on the AIA Long Range Planning Advisory Group, and on the Real Estate Advisory Committee at MIT. Landsmark is a Trustee Emeritus of the MFA Boston and serves as a member of the Boards of Historic Boston, Boston Fund for the Arts, and New England Foundation for the Arts. He currently serves on the Mayor of Boston’s Climate Action Leadership Committee and on the Advisory Committee for the National Trust for Historic Preservation Partner’s in Preservation Advisory Committee, the Boston Society of Architects (1997-present) and served as National Chair for the AIA Committee on Diversity (2003–2006). He received the AIA Whitney Young Jr. Award (2006) and served as the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture President (2006-2007).
Christy MacLear is the Executive Director of the Philip Johnson Glass House. She was brought to the National Trust for Historic Preservation to develop the strategy, hire all staff and prepare the site and Visitor Center to open to the public in June 2007. With the goal to "reshape the historic house museum model", MacLear and the staff team of the Glass House have sold out tours through 2009, completed a survey of 90+ modern homes in New Canaan, structured a "center for Modernism" to co-lead the National Trust's investment in Modernist preservation, managed the NTHP board approval to purchase adjacent properties to preserve the Glass House view in perpetuity, and developed the "conversations" series to continue the legacy of new ideas through diverse leaders on-site.
MacLear is known for her ability to conceive of and lead large-scale projects through opening and on-going operations. She was the Manager of Strategy for the Walt Disney Company's new town project called Celebration, was the Director of the Museum Campus in Chicago where she represented 3 museum boards through the movement of Lake Shore Drive and the creation of a lakefront park, and was an independent consultant in Strategy & Visitor Experience to such clients as the Field Museum, the Cleveland Clinic and the leaders of the UAE. She has a degree in Urban Design from Stanford University and an MBA from Wharton in Real Estate Finance where she received a Barnes fellowship. She has been a professor in the graduate program of Arts Administration for the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and has served on the boards of Chicago's Three Arts Club, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and Steppingstones Museum for Children.
Wendy Nicholas is the Director of the Northeast Office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation where she leads the National Trust's activities in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. The National Trust's Northeast Office is located in Boston, Massachusetts, with a field office in Philadelphia. During her tenure with the Trust, the Northeast Office has been a leader in saving historic places in the Northeast and strengthening preservation organizations by providing training, technical and financial assistance, leadership development and mentoring. The Northeast Office is also a leader in identifying and addressing regional issues, such as the 'invasion' of Main Streets by national chain drug stores; renovating historic neighborhood schools; teardowns; revitalizing older neighborhoods in the face of high levels of housing vacancy and abandonment; and currently, building bridges between land and historic conservation organizations to protect whole cultural landscapes.
Nicholas joined the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1994 after serving as Executive Director of the Providence Preservation Society for 13 years. There, she raised the profile of the preservation society, giving it national recognition as one of the most effective local organizations in linking historic preservation and community vitality. Prior to joining the Providence Preservation Society in 1981, Nicholas was assistant director of the Preservation Alliance of Louisville & Jefferson County, Inc., in Kentucky.
Chef Nils Norén is the Vice President of Culinary Arts of The French Culinary Institute and The Italian Culinary Academy, both of which reside in New York City’s International Culinary Center. Chef Nils is the embodiment of the new international chef: disciplined in the classic sensibilities and driven by immense creativity.
Previously he served as Executive Chef for Aquavit. During his tenure there, Chef Nils helped to demonstrate to the world the fine tastes and techniques of Swedish cooking. Prior to joining Aquavit, Chef Nils worked in Stockholm as Executive Chef at Restaurant Riche, which features a fine dining room, tapas bar and bistro; and as Chef de Cuisine at Restaurant KB, one of the country’s classic Swedish restaurants in the center of town. a graduate of Culinary School in Gävle, Sweden, Chef Nils also coordinated cooking classes for Restaurant Akademin.
John Peterson is Founder and President of Public Architecture. He is the chief spokesperson and strategist for Public Architecture as well as design director and a member of the board of directors. He maintains a small private architectural practice, Peterson Architects, which for over 15 years has dedicated an extraordinary amount of time to pro bono work, serving arts institutions, city agencies, community development corporations, nonprofit organizations, and social service agencies.
He was appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom to both the San Francisco Green Vision Council and Open Space Task Force. He is an elected member of the South of Market Business Association board of directors as well as past chair and a current member of the Urban Solutions board of directors.
Peterson is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Nice Modernist award from Dwell magazine, the Jefferson Award for Public Service, numerous citations from all levels of the AIA, as well as the 2009 Designer of the Year award jointly with Executive Director John Cary. He was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Monica Ponce de Leon is the dean of Taubman College at the University of Michigan. She is also a Principal in Office dA, an internationally known design practice that she launched in 1991. Professor Ponce de Leon’s work addresses the critical importance of digital production to the future of the profession and the re-establishment of the architect’s role in the construction industry. Through her strong commitment to teaching and her successful practice she has proven her ability to link the profession and the academy.
The portfolio of Monica Ponce de Leon’s firm, Office dA, includes institutional, residential, commercial, housing, governmental, industrial design and urban design projects all over the world. Among the more recent are the Fleet Library at Rhode Island School of Design, the Tongxian Arts Center in Beijing, Helios House/ Rebranding of a Gas Station in Los Angeles, an Intergenerational Housing Center for the City of Chicago, a dynamic low-cost housing for the Elemental program in Chile, the first LEED certified large residential project in Boston and a border station between the U.S. and Canada. Among her authored works are numerous articles in U.S. and international publications on topics ranging from Latin American architecture to eco-tourism to public infrastructure for the tropics.She has received honors from the Cooper Hewitt Museum (National Design Award 2007), the Architectural League of New York (Emerging Voices, 2003, and Young Architects Award, 1997) and the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Award in Architecture, 2002). In 2007 she received a Target Fellowship from United States Artists. Her practice has received over 30 design awards, among which are the AIA/LA Design Award (Helios House, 2007), the I.D. Magazine Award: Environment (2007) and the AIA/ALA Library Building Award (2007) for the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design, and eleven Progressive Architecture Awards or citations. Most recently Office dA was awarded the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment’s (COTE) Top Ten Green Projects for 2008 for the Macallen Building in Boston.
As Design Director for the United States, Peter Schubert oversees the management of all projects undertaken by any of RMJM’s four U.S. offices. Honored numerous times throughout his career for excellence of design and engineering, Schubert’s work focuses on transforming and enhancing the urban environment through designs consistently outstanding in their functionality and aesthetic appeal.
His award-winning projects reflect a sensibility for their surroundings. The Rohm & Haas China Research and Development Center in Shanghai, which won the 2007 AIA New York Chapter Merit Award, is located in the quickly developing Pudong District; the design utilizes textures and materials to communicate the technology-driven momentum of the facility while the solid form conveys the venerability and staying power of the brand. Schubert also received the AIA Honor award from the New Jersey chapter for his work on the LG Electronics Seocho Research and Development Campus in Seoul, Korea. The 1,200,000-SF structure that boasts a 25-story tower of glass and steel whose sleek profile asserts LG’s status as a leader in cutting-edge technology. The landscaping, in turn, celebrates a number of different spaces conceived as outdoor “rooms,” including a dramatic lobby exhibition space which overlooks a small lake and waterfall.
Additionally, Schubert has been recognized for the new medical school for Duke University and the National University of Singapore in Singapore, which implements a unique approach to planning in its “Vertical Campus” scheme. The design, which won the AIA Honor Award from the Pennsylvania chapter of the organization, is to be the first occidental medical school campus in Singapore.
Katie Swenson’s fellowship work included one of Piedmont Housing Alliance’s most ambitious projects to date: the design and construction of the 10th and Page Street Neighborhood Revitalization Project, adding 30 new and restored, affordable homes to a rapidly changing neighborhood sandwiched between the University of Virginia and downtown Charlottesville. And, while it assured a voice for the current residents, the project achieved a milestone as the first affordable houses in the EarthCraft Home Program for Virginia.
Other project accolades included an EPA Energy Star Award as one of the top five, green, affordable building developments in the nation and an “Honorable Mention” in the Home Depot Foundation Awards for Excellence for Affordable Housing Built Responsibly program. Katie continued to make a difference for the Page Street area during her fellowship, most notably initiating a collaborative design process with residents, nonprofits and local schools for the Hope Community Center.
Swenson was the founder and executive director of the Charlottesville Community Design Center. The co-author of the soon-to-be-released Growing Urban Habitats, she holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Art from the University of California, Berkeley. Swenson’s numerous awards include the Eldon Field Woods Design Professional of the Year Award from the Charlottesville Planning Commission, a Commonwealth Environmental Leadership Award from the Charlottesville Waldorf Foundation and the Sara McArthur Nix Fellowship for Travel and Research in France. Her essay "Growing Urban Habitats: A Local Housing Crises Spawns a New Design Center" appeared in the recent Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism. Katie has been the director of the Rose Fellowship Program since September of 2006.
Susan S. Szenasy is Editor in Chief of METROPOLIS, the award-winning New York City-based magazine of architecture, culture and design. Since 1986 she has lead the magazine through two decades of landmark design journalism, achieving domestic and international recognition. She is internationally recognized as an authority on sustainability and design.Szenasy sits on the boards of the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (formerly FIDER), FIT Interior Design, the Center for Architecture Advisory Board, and the Landscape Architecture Foundation. She has been honored with two IIDA Presidential Commendations and is an ASID distinguished speaker on the topic of ethics in design, as well as an honorary member of the American Society for Landscape Architects.
Along with METROPOLIS Publisher Horace Havemayer III, Szenasy was a 2007 recipient of the Civitas August Heckscher Award for Community Service and Excellence. She holds an MA in Modern European History from Rutgers University, and honorary doctorates from both Kendall College and the Art Center College of Design.
Billie Tsien is the co-founder of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Current work with Tod Williams includes a new museum for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, a performing and visual arts center at the University of Chicago, the Asia Society headquarters in Hong Kong, and an information technology campus in Mumbai, India. Work in New York includes Harmony Atrium, a new ticketing venue and public space for Lincoln Center, two residences, and two new skating rinks in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
Tsien has taught extensively in architectural programs throughout the United States including the Parsons School of Design, Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.
She and Tod Williams have received the Brunner Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Medal of Honor from the New York City AIA, and the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation. The partners have also been honored with The Cooper Hewitt's National Design Award in Architecture and the President’s Medal from the Architectural League of New York.
Tsien maintains an interest in work that bridges the realms of art and architecture. She serves on the advisory council for the Wexner Prize, and is a Director of the Public Art Fund and of the Architectural League of New York. Tsien is a Trustee of the American Academy in Rome, where she was in residence during 1999.
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