KOFI BOONE

Professor // North Carolina State College of Design

Kofi Boone, FASLA is a University Faculty Scholar and Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at NC State University in the College of Design. Kofi is a Detroit native and a graduate of the University of Michigan. His work is in the overlap between landscape architecture and environmental justice with specializations in democratic design, digital media, and interpreting cultural landscapes. He serves on the Board of Directors of The Corps Network as well as the Landscape Architecture Foundation where he is President-Elect.

DIANA FERNANDEZ BIBEAU

Senior Associate // Sasaki

Diana Fernandez Bibeau, ASLA, PLA, is a proven thinker, collaborator and leader, who teams effortlessly with architects, planners, urban designers, ecologists and civil engineers on the design of equitable and sustainable places. Her experience spans a broad range of projects from planning to built work. Diana provides critical thought and design leadership for our landscape and planning practice in the Urban Studio. She leads and champions better equity and inclusion in our planning and built design practices from a landscape perspective. Prior to joining Sasaki, Diana worked as a landscape architect and project designer in Philadelphia where she worked on urban and campus projects in the metro area. She holds a bachelor of science in landscape architecture from Temple University.

SIGNE NIELSEN

Principal // Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architecture

Signe Nielsen has been practicing as a landscape architect and urban designer in New York since 1978. Her body of work has renewed the environmental integrity and transformed the quality of spaces for those who live, work and play in the urban realm. Ms. Nielsen believes in using design as a vehicle for advocacy to promote discourse on social equity and community resilience and has served on multiple panels to effect positive change. A Fellow of the ASLA, she is the recipient of over 100 national and local design awards for public open space projects and is a Professor of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at Pratt Institute. Born in Paris, Ms. Nielsen holds degrees in Urban Planning from Smith College; in Landscape Architecture from City College of New York; and in Construction Management from Pratt Institute.

BRIAN MCCORMACK

Founder and Principal // McCormack Landscape Architecture

Brian McCormack (Nez Perce), ASLA, is the Founder and Principal of McCormack Landscape Architecture in Lapwai, Idaho. As an enrolled member of the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho, Brian thought he could bring a unique design perspective to their projects. In 1994 Brian established McCormack Landscape Architecture (MLA). He has been commissioned to design cultural and interpretive landscapes for Indian tribes and organizations throughout the United States. Roughly 95 percent of his design work is in Indian Country. In 1997, he relocated his office to the Nez Perce Indian Reservation to be closer to his family and tribe. MLA has designed many landscape projects where sensitivity and personal understanding of Native American cultural values and beliefs were instrumental to the overall project concept.

DR. DIANE JONES ALLEN

Program Director and Professor // University of Texas, Arlington

Dr. Diane Jones Allen, D. Eng, FASLA is Program Director and Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Texas, Arlington. She is Principal Landscape Architect with DesignJones LLC which received the 2016 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Community Service Award. In 2017, she participated on the ASLA Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change. Diane serves on the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) as the Vice President of Education. Diane is author of Lost in the Transit Desert: Race Transit Access and Suburban Form, Routledge Press, 2017, and co-editor of Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity, Island Press 2017.

DR. AUSTIN ALLEN

Associate Professor of Practice // University of Texas, Arlington

Dr. Austin Allen has participated in over 15 years of recovery effort in New Orleans and four years in Jacmel, Haiti, assisting in rebuilding community, and also engaging graduate students in related service learning and design, projects. He is also a principal in Design Jones, LLC in New Orleans and the DFW Metroplex, Texas. He is an independent filmmaker, with works including “Claiming Open Spaces.” Allen is an Associate Professor of Practice, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Arlington. In 2017 he received the Distinguished Alumni Award, College of Environmental Design, University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) and Board Member, Black Landscape Architecture Network (Black LAN). Allen is also an Honorary Committee Member for Olmsted 200.

KHENSANI DE KLERK

Founder and Co-Director // Matri-Archi(tecture)

Khensani de Klerk is an architectural designer and planner from Johannesburg. Her efforts are centered on gender empowerment in the architectural industry through research and practice. She is the founder and co-director of Matri-Archi(tecture), which is a collective that empowers African women as a network dedicated to African spatial education and development. She is currently reading an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (RIBA II) at the University of Cambridge with her research focusing on safe space, infrastructure and social provision with aims to reduce Gender-based violence in cities. 

DR. GHAZAL JAFARI

Founding Director // OPEN SYSTEMS / Landscape Infrastructure Lab

Dr. Ghazal Jafari is a designer of Persian and Azeri descent and territorial scholar in exile. Originally from Tehran, her practice focuses on spatial and environmental justice, immigrant narratives, women resistance movements, and non-Western spatial discourses. She is founding director of Miyan Rudan (‘Between Rivers’), a long-term territorial initiative based along the Karun River watershed, borderlands of Iran and Iraq. She is a founding director of OPEN SYSTEMS / Landscape Infrastructure Lab, and currently an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at University of Virginia.

ANA MARÍA DURÁN CALISTO

Co-Principal and Co-Founder // Estudio0A

Ana María is doctoral candidate at UCLA. She is writing a dissertation on the history of urbanization in the Amazon basin, with a focus on the oil urbanisms of Ecuador. In the year 2010, she received a Loeb Fellowship in advanced environmental studies for her proposal to develop an open research network devoted to the infrastructural integration of South America, in lieu of the primarily entropic urbanization that follows the deployment of extraction infrastructures, particularly highways. Ana María co-founded Estudio A0 with Jazz Kalirai in Quito.