Future Now Speakers

Art as Preview: Installations for Hopeful Adaptation

Carolina Aragón is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the founder of Art for Public Good. Her creative scholarship blends artistry and transdisciplinary practices that bring together research, craft, and community engagement to improve knowledge and action around issues of climate change and environmental justice. Her work embodies a view of public art as a medium for climate communication, as well as a platform for experimenting with innovative materials and methods of public participation. Her work has won numerous awards and has been displayed in the Fifth National Climate Assessment (2023), at the World Bank’s Art of Resilience Exhibition (2019) and the United States National Park Service’s video: 100 Years of Arts in the Parks, among many others.

From Gen X to Gen Z: An Appeal for Public Service

Matt Arnn, FASLA, PLA, is the United States Forest Service’s Chief Landscape Architect. He provides professional leadership to the agency’s 100+ landscape architects practicing on over 190 million acres of National Forests and Grasslands. Matt has worked across the continent and abroad, designing and planning visitor centers, trails, campgrounds, interpretation experiences, scenic and night sky viewing areas, and other recreation infrastructure. His work after September 11, 2001 with the Living Memorials Project, led to the creation of over 50 new parks and open spaces to help affected communities. Before joining the Forest Service, Matt was a practicing landscape architect in New York City with Lee Weintraub Landscape Architecture and a founding partner with ISTUDIO Architects in Washington, DC. Matt holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in landscape architecture, urban design, and planning from the University of Texas at Austin, The City College of New York, and the University of Virginia.

Coastal Legacy: The Case for Graceful Retreat

Sarai Carter, SITES AP, is a restoration ecologist and landscape designer with over 10 years of experience in sustainability, working to advance the practice of regenerative design in landscape architecture. Inspired by years of service in a rural community organizing for environmental justice, Sarai dedicated themself to a career that would shape the environment and people’s relationships with it. To better bridge science and design, Sarai has worked in botanical conservation research, served as a Green Infrastructure Fellow of the Earth Stewardship Initiative at Yale University, and was a Sally Boasberg Founder's Fellow with the Cultural Landscape Foundation. As a team member at ecological engineering firm Biohabitats, Sarai has led work on coastal resilience, including the Charleston Comprehensive Integrated Water Plan. She takes joy in closely reading a site to reveal its many layers — geologic, hydrologic, historical, cultural, and ecological – and using design to enhance our appreciation of what makes a place unique.

Unlike Any Other Place: A Call for Regionally Specific Practice

Nina Chase, PLA, ASLA, is a Pittsburgh-based landscape architect and Founding Principal of Merritt Chase. She is committed to creating public spaces across Middle America. Born and raised in West Virginia, Nina graduated from West Virginia University and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and spent her early career in Boston designing and planning notable public parks and open spaces. Today, Nina leads Merritt Chase’s urban work, planning and designing public parks, plazas, waterfronts, and cultural districts. Nina is dedicated to the design community through teaching, writing, and advocacy. She frequently lectures and serves as a design critic.

Sensorium: In Pursuit of Wonder through Embodied Design

Nate Cormier, PLA, ASLA, LEED AP, graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1999 and for the last decade of his 25-year professional career has helped lead the landscape practice of RIOS, a global design collective with roots in Los Angeles and outposts in London, Shanghai, Singapore, Boulder, and Austin. In a world desperately needing connection, RIOS grounds people in places that are alive with primal power and eccentric imagination, harnessing nature’s abundance to reawaken an awareness of our reciprocal relationship with the environment and each other. Nate brings fierce curiosity to the exploration of each site and its unique history. Iterative cycles of research, experimentation, and craft yield authentic expressions that inspire wonder for the world around us, as in memorable projects such as Palm Springs Downtown Park, Boulder Civic Area, and 1 Hotel West Hollywood. Nate’s current research focus, Sensorium, positions landscape as a vanguard in defending authentic embodied experience as society and the environment are degraded by technological mediation of the senses.

Equitable Outcomes in Detroit's Underserved Urban Landscapes

Charles Cross, ASLA, APA, is the Director of Landscape and Urban Design at the Detroit Collaborative Design Center and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture and Community Development, located in Detroit Michigan. The focus of his work is grounded in community-engaged design. He believes design is an act of social justice and that all people deserve good design. His research interests include landscape performance, historic African American settlements, Underground Railroad heritage sites and cultural asset mapping in Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban communities. Charles holds a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from Western Michigan University and a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban Design from The City College of New York. Charles is a 2018 Fulbright-Hays Fellow.

PrideScapes: Documenting, Preserving, and Uplifting Queer Landscapes

Max Dickson, AICP, ASLA, is an urban planner and landscape designer who is committed to creating socially-engaged spaces that reflect those who live, use, and experience a place. With degrees in landscape architecture and urban planning from the University of Minnesota, Max has been involved in wide-ranging and community-driven plans including the Los Angeles Park Needs Assessment, Cleveland Parks and Recreation Plan, and the Caño Martin Peña Comprehensive Infrastructure Master Plan in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Max also leads an emergent research effort through OLIN Labs called PrideScapes, an exploration of LGBTQ+ landscapes and people within the field of landscape architecture.
 

A Call to Reflection: What if We Practice as Relatives?

Aiman Duckworth, PLA, is a landscape architect and ecologist. For over two decades, his work has focused on the planning and design of living systems that enhance and regenerate ecological, cultural, and economic vitality. At regional, city, neighborhood, and site scales, Aiman contributes leadership in biodiversity, climate resiliency, and environmental justice. He brings a scienced-based expertise in geospatial modeling, biodiversity metrics, habitat connectivity, and ecosystem service quantification. In his practice, Aiman recognizes the need for right relations and reciprocity between land, water, humans, and our more-than-human relatives. He leads Biohabitats’ focus in collaboration with Indigenous nations, supporting sovereignty and rematriation.

Influence, Economics, and the Necessity of Advocacy

As President and Principal Landscape Architect at Troyer Group, a multidisciplinary community infrastructure design firm, Jonathon Geels, FASLA, PLA, has established a purpose-driven approach to every project with a distinctive commitment to people and experiences. As his role has expanded, his emphasis on adaptive and hyper-local practice provides leadership across disciplines to each of the firm’s three regional offices. His design ethic and process seek to create lasting positive change by connecting people to new ideas through design, research, advocacy, and activism. He received his MBA from the University of Notre Dame and is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Inspiring the Next Generation of Federal Conservation and Recreation Grants

David Goldstein, PhD, is an anthropologist who has worked with the National Park Service for 15 years. He has served in the US Virgin Islands, in Detroit, and as the Northeast Region’s Tribal Affairs Lead. Currently he oversees the Land and Water Conservation Fund programs that support military, low-income, and tribal communities to realize recreation and conservation projects close to home.

Revealing Care and Neglect in Legacy Cities through AI

Jianxing Guan is a PhD candidate in landscape architecture at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. As a researcher, she is dedicated to fostering more livable environments for vulnerable populations by strengthening landscape stewardship. Integrating landscape theory with emerging computational tools, her dissertation investigates how visible signs of maintenance and care in residential landscapes influence, and are influenced by, the conditions of adjacent properties in highly vacant neighborhoods in Detroit. As a landscape designer, Jianxing is interested in ecological landscape design, including green stormwater infrastructure and pollinator gardens, and collaborates with community organizations to promote low-maintenance residential rain gardens.

Towards a Living Landscape 

Aaron Hernandez is a registered landscape architect and Assistant Professor at the University of Guelph's School of Environmental Design and Rural Development. His research investigates relationships between landscapes, socioecological systems, and public policy. Aaron’s work has been featured in Landscape Architecture Magazine, exhibited at the Toronto Biennial of Art, and awarded by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture and the Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation. Aaron was awarded the 2024-25 Landscape Architecture Foundation Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership. Before joining the University of Guelph, Aaron was an Associate at Reed Hilderbrand in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he worked on a wide range of commissions across the US. He holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of English Rhetoric and Professional Writing from the University of Waterloo.

Why Levees Won’t Keep Rising Seas from Flooding Coastal Cities

Kristina Hill, PhD, is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Kristina’s research is focused on urban adaptation to flooding from sea level rise. She works with the State of California to provide guidance to cities and public agencies specifically about adaptation to rising shallow groundwater in coastal areas. Contaminated soils, underground pipes and conduits, building foundations, and transportation systems are all exposed to this change long before groundwater will emerge at the surface, creating risks to public health and safety as well as ecosystems. Pumping can increase rates of ground subsidence and draw contaminants towards buildings. Kristina lectures in North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia on this topic, advising city governments. Her new book on coastal urban adaptation will be published by UC Press in 2026.

Design Isn't Neutral: AI Infrastructure and the Landscapes We Choose

Kendra Hyson is an urban planner and landscape architect with over a decade of experience working at the intersection of design justice, cultural memory, and ecological infrastructure. An Associate at SmithGroup and Adjunct Professor at the University of the District of Columbia, she teaches emerging designers to read landscapes as living systems shaped by history, power, and possibility. Her practice spans comprehensive planning, public space design, and community-centered engagement, across cities throughout the US, with a focus on how design and policy can repair historic inequities while building resilient futures. Kendra's recent research explores how infrastructure, from food and technology systems to public and open spaces, shapes who thrives in the city and who is left out. Through her practice, teaching, and writing, she challenges the profession to confront a central truth: design is never neutral. Every plan, policy, and landscape reflects choices about the futures we are willing to build. Kendra holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Arizona and a Bachelor of Arts from Spelman College.

Designing a Mega-eco Project: An Example from Dakar, Senegal

Robert Levinthal is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Calgary School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape (SAPL) in Alberta, Canada. He is also a PhD candidate in City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated from their Master of Landscape Architecture program. Before this academic turn, Rob served in the US Peace Corps in Senegal as an agroforestry extension agent. From his time there, he grew fascinated by the Great Green Wall initiative, which starts its 8,000-km journey across the continent to Djibouti not far from where he lived. His research interests focus on large-scale ecological restoration and construction works, which he termed “mega-eco projects.” In 2023, Levinthal and his partners won a United Nations Environment Programme competition to design and implement a greenbelt and blue-green infrastructure network around Dakar. He was a 2022-23 Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) Fellow for Innovation and Leadership and a 2020 LAF National Olmsted Scholar Finalist.

Cinematic Tools for Climate-Literate Landscapes

Evan Mather, FASLA, is Principal and Director of Landscape Architecture and Los Angeles Operations at MIG. Evan is a landscape architect and filmmaker whose award-winning work has been exhibited globally. His hybrid practice merges ecological design with narrative storytelling, using cinema to illuminate temporal processes and cultural memory in landscape projects. His approach synthesizes Halprin’s experiential choreography, Lynch’s legible mental mapping, and Corner’s systemic imagination — translated into accessible, emotionally compelling narrative forms. He has extensive experience communicating complex environmental concepts to public audiences and interdisciplinary teams.

Marc Miller is Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interests focus around media in popular culture and ways they can be leveraged in landscape architecture. He has held numerous roles related to work in equity, diversity, and inclusion. He is a past president of BlackLAN, the inaugural Vice President for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Recruiting for the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), and the inaugural Associate Director for Access, Well-Being, and Equity in the Stuckeman School at Penn State. He served on the 2025-26 jury for the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, sponsored by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book. He is currently heavily invested in science fiction and tabletop role play game podcasts.

Landscape as Refuge: Care, Comfort, or Exclusion?

Fiwasewa Ogundipe, ASLA, is a Landscape Designer at BASE Landscape Architecture in San Francisco. Raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Fiwa’s journey from architecture to landscape architecture is rooted in her passion for connecting the built and natural environment in service of uplifting underserved communities. Her work explores how design can foster resilience amidst environmental and social challenges. While at UC Berkeley, she co-chaired the College of Environmental Design Students of Color (CEDSOC) and served on the American Society of Landscape Architects' (ASLA) Lecture Committee, advocating for students of color. A 2022 LAF Olmsted Scholar and a 2025 WxLA Scholar, Fiwa currently serves as the Secretary of the ASLA Northern California Chapter. Through design, writing, and mentorship, she seeks to create community-centered landscapes that honor culture, celebrate beauty, and amplify stories of place, especially for those least remembered.

Designing Biocultural Futures: Cultivating Youth Storytelling and TEK in Landscape

Jade Rhodes is a landscape designer at SCAPE and a 2025 Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) Olmsted Scholar. Born and raised in Detroit, Jade developed an early understanding of landscape as a living intersection of ecology, culture, and justice. She holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and undergraduate degrees in Pacific Island Studies and International Sustainability Policy. Her work spans design practice, curriculum development, and research at the intersection of GIS, local knowledge systems, and community stewardship. She has served as a lead researcher with the University of Hawaiʻi Office of Indigenous Knowledge and Innovation. With 2 years of interdisciplinary experience in architecture and landscape in Hawaii and Pasifika with the Hawaii State Department of Land and Natural Resources, Community Resilience planning with National Park Service, and her graduate school research focusing on agroecology and data visualization, Jade's approach to design is driven by place based knowledge. Her background in urban forestry, agroecology, and data visualization grounds her ability to speak to culturally accountable, place-based methodologies in landscape architecture.

Landscape Architecture in the Rural Industrial Environment

Carl Rogers, PLA, ASLA, Heidi Hohmann, PLA, ASLA, and Hans Klein Hewett, PLA, ASLA are Associate Professors at Iowa State University in Ames. Representing two generations of practitioners, they live, practice, and teach in the rural Midwestern landscape.

Plants as Inventors

Catherine Seavitt, FASLA, FAIA, FAAR, is the Meyerson Professor and Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is the faculty co-director of the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology and creative director of the department’s LA+ Journal. A registered architect and landscape architect, she is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Institute of Architects, the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, and the American Academy in Rome. Her research explores urban landscapes, post-industrial sites, toxicity, and inventive plant knowledge, with a focus on actionable responses to the climate crisis and decarbonization. Seavitt’s books include Depositions: Roberto Burle Marx and Public Landscapes under Dictatorship,Structures of Coastal Resilience with Guy Nordenson and Julia Chapman, and Four Corridors with Guy Nordenson and Paul Lewis.

Reading the Low-Carbon Landscape

Jonah Susskind leads SWA’s decarbonization efforts, overseeing the implementation and advancement of the firm’s Climate Action Plan. He works to drive innovative climate action across SWA’s global portfolio, ensuring climate-positive strategies are embedded into every facet of the firm’s operations and design processes. Previously, as Senior Research Associate in SWA’s XL Lab, Jonah led award-winning research on wildfire resilience, coastal adaptation, and large-scale land management. He has held research and teaching appointments at MIT and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). Before joining SWA, he directed research at MIT’s Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. Jonah holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard GSD, where his thesis won an ASLA Honor Award, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture and critical visual studies from Pratt Institute.

Including Animals: Co-creating with Our More-Than-Human Neighbors

Roxi Thoren, FCELA, ASLA is the Department Head and Stuckeman Chair in Interdisciplinary Design in Penn State’s Department of Landscape Architecture. She is an award-winning educator and scholar who studies the integration of cultural and productive landscapes in landscape architectural design, including a series of research and design projects around agriculture, forestry, and co-design with animals. A recipient of the 2020-21 Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership, she is the author of Landscapes of Change: Innovative Designs Reinventing Sites and co-author of Farmscape: The Design of Productive Landscapes.

Little Things That Run The World: Designing Insect Biodiversity

Gena Wirth, FASLA, RLA, works with cities, community advocates and landowners to reveal the immense ecological and cultural potential of public landscapes. As Design Principal, she translates research into practice, leading the design and implementation of complex, multi-stakeholder landscapes — including public and private waterfronts, regional trail systems, parks, plazas and climate adaptation plans. Gena is also a tenacious advocate for ecological systems design across the design fields, both as a member of the non-profit Dredge Research Collaborative and through past teaching positions at Harvard, Columbia, Syracuse, and Rutgers universities. She also serves on SCAPE’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee (DEIC), helping advance the firm’s commitments to social and racial justice within its work and throughout the field. She is co-author of Silt Sand Slurry, published by Applied Research + Design Publishing.

Workshop - What is the Landscape Architect's Role in One Health

Dr. Leann Andrews, PhD, RLA, is a registered landscape architect who has been practicing, researching, and teaching One Health domestically and globally for over 10 years. Leann leads transdisciplinary action research and design activism projects that support One Health in underserved communities and damaged ecosystems. Her work strategically designs to address interconnected mental, physical, and community health of humans, animals, and plants, and can be seen from the urbanized Amazon Rainforest to the tiny home 'homeless' villages in Seattle to steel mill communities in Pittsburgh. Leann has been trained in ecological restoration, global and public health, participatory design techniques and landscape performance. She was the Landscape Architecture Foundation's (LAF) 2013 National Olmsted Scholar and is a LAF Board Emeritus, co-founder of Traction, and Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at The Pennsylvania State University where she lives on a homestead in central Pennsylvania.

Workshop - Landscape Architecture as Climate Translator

Mohammad Arabmazar, ASLA, is a landscape designer at SWA Group in Sausalito. Trained as both an architect and landscape architect. He holds dual master’s degrees in architecture and landscape architecture + Urbanism from the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he received multiple awards for design excellence and research. His work bridges research and practice, exploring environmental performance, social equity, and long-term resilience. His projects and collaborations are ranging from urban ecological systems to international research initiatives.

Workshop - Soil Literacy in Practice: From Diagnostics to Digital Workflows

Nik Braun is a highly motivated and detail-oriented graduate with a Master of Engineering in Landscape Architecture, equipped with a solid foundation in sustainable design, urban planning, and environmental management. Quick to adapt in dynamic environments, with a proven ability to learn new concepts and tools efficiently, Nik is eager to contribute innovative solutions to landscape design projects, while continually expanding expertise in current and future landscaping technologies and practices. Nik applies strong design skills and a passion for creating functional, aesthetically pleasing spaces within a collaborative team setting.

Workshop - What is the Landscape Architect's Role in One Health

Dr. Justin Brown, PhD, DVM, is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University and a wildlife veterinarian at the Pennsylvania Game Commission. He was formerly a wildlife disease diagnostician at the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on a One Health understanding of the impacts of diseases on wildlife populations and the potential for wildlife species involvement in diseases of agricultural or public health importance. He often analyzes environmental conditions and landscape connections in his work and values collaboration across disciplines and with communities to find actionable solutions. Current projects are focused on avian influenza virus ecology in wild birds, parvoviruses of carnivores, retroviruses of wild turkeys, chronic wasting disease in deer, elk and moose, and mange in black bears. 

Workshop - Water Signals: Storytelling as a Climate Resilience Tool

Linda Chamorro is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture + Environmental and Urban Design at Florida International University. She is a 2021-22 Landscape Architecture Foundation Fellow for Innovation and Leadership, a 2021-22 Miami Studies Fellow with the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a 2019 recipient of an Ellies Creator Award with Oolite Arts. Her landscape and art practice is focused on the relationship between art, ecology, public space, and the human-nature relationship. Her current research examines landscape making and practice across Latin America and within Latina, Latino, and Latinx culture. Through a collaborative research process, she is working to introduce a new lexicon for the discipline of landscape architecture informed by non-western perspectives. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art and Photography from Bard College at Simon’s Rock in 2003 and a Master in Landscape Architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2010.

Workshop - Shade for All: Design for Equity in the Urban Heat Era

Workshop - Currents of Change: Imagining Adaptive Climate Futures

amalia deloney, JD, is a speculative designer and relational futurist who helps communities and mission-driven organizations design the conditions for alignment, agency, and long-horizon action. As the founder of Point A Studio, she creates the "relational architecture" for teams navigating thresholds where traditional planning tools no longer fit. Her practice integrates strategic foresight and systems thinking to provide a calm signal in shifting conditions, rooted in place and belonging. Born in Guatemala and raised in the US, amalia brings a cross-cultural lens and a grounded presence to every collaboration. She holds a Juris Doctor with a concentration in Social Justice and is currently an Master of Arts candidate in Design for Social Innovation at the University of Cyprus. A recent Association of Professional Futurists Fellow, her work explores speculative governance — treating land and water as active participants in civic life.

Workshop - Design for Healing: Trauma-Informed Community Engagement

As Landscape Designer with Design Workshop’s Raleigh studio, Corey Dodd’s experience includes community landscape action planning for communities, cultural landmarks, and nature preserves through multi-jurisdictional coordination and authentic community engagement. His approach integrates site-specific cultural and natural heritage into public experiences that achieve environmental stewardship goals while celebrating public memory and place-keeping.

Workshop - Rigor, Trust, and Time: 30 Years of Sustained Community Engagement in Detroit

Lisa Du Russel, RLA, LEED AP, ASLA, is an educator and practitioner of landscape architecture whose work centers on translational practice, integrating ecological design and stewardship, partnership-building, and long-term community engagement across research, built work, and teaching. She is Associate Professor of Practice and Engagement at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability.

Workshop - Designing for Time: Bridging Ecological Design and Long-Term Landscape Management

Sasha Eisenman received his PhD in Plant Biology at Rutgers University and is currently the Chair of the Department of Architecture and Environmental Design at Temple University. Throughout his career at Temple, Sasha has molded the department by forging a path that marries design excellence in the public realm with the hard science of plant functionality, beauty, and sustainability.

Workshop - What is the Landscape Architect's Role in One Health

Dr. Kara Fikrig, PhD, is a vector ecologist and epidemiologist with a PhD in entomology from Cornell and an Master of Public Health in epidemiology of microbial diseases and global health and Bachelor of Science in ecology and evolutionary biology from Yale. Her research addresses questions at the intersection of entomology and public health with a focus on understanding the drivers, barriers, and built environment connections of mosquito invasions in US and South American landscapes. Her work is highly collaborative across disciplines and with communities to produce action-oriented public health education and interventions using participatory research approaches to support One Health. Kara is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology at The Pennsylvania State University and is currently conducting on-site research in rural communities in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest.

Workshop - Work in Progress: Design and Labor

Michelle Arevalos Franco seeks to cultivate thriving social and ecological relations through the work of landscapes. Her research is informed by her Mexican roots and explores landscape architecture’s dependence on Latine immigrant labor for construction and maintenance. This work is both academic and activist, calling for institutional and individual reforms within the discipline. Her publications illuminate landscape architecture’s complex political and social entanglements with immigration. Landscape practitioners, academics, and students as well as contractors, laborers, and tradespeople, have acknowledged the urgency of Michelle's scholarship, which is committed to strengthening the value of physical labor and laborers within the discipline. Michelle is currently an Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at the Knowlton School at The Ohio State University She holds an Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona.

Workshop - Shade for All: Design for Equity in the Urban Heat Era

Workshop - Rigor, Trust, and Time: 30 Years of Sustained Community Engagement in Detroit

Keenan Gibbons, PLA, LEED GA, is a practitioner of landscape architecture whose work emphasizes evidence-building, spatial documentation, and the integration of community knowledge into measurable design outcomes.

Workshop - Transforming Underutilized Parkland into Native Meadow through Cross-sector Partnerships

Kate Gmyrek is the Natural Areas Manager and Assistant Chief of Landscape Architecture at the City of Detroit. She is a licensed landscape architect in the state of Michigan and holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture.

Workshop - Currents of Change: Imagining Adaptive Climate Futures

Varun Gole is a Senior Design Strategist at SCRD with more than 8 years of experience at the intersection of civic design, technology, and the built environment. A Parsons graduate in Strategy Design and Management, and with a background in architecture and product management, his work has always started in the same place: listening to people and seeing how they actually move through a space, a service, or a system. The most useful moments have come from hearing why what's been built isn't working. That instinct now shapes how he helps public and mission-driven organizations bridge digital and physical environments to create places and services that work better for the people using them.

Workshop - Making Chicano Public Landscapes 

MaFe Gonzalez is a botanist with a strong interest in ecology and conservation of plants. Her journey into landscape architecture started with botany. The need to participate in world-making led to proposing, through design, spaces that re-establish reciprocal relationships between people and the environment. Her current work spans several roles, including lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia; leader and researcher of the Salinas River project "Reshaping borders, designing river-people reciprocities"; and landscape designer. At BASE Landscape Architecture, she has had countless opportunities to support and initiate projects and visions aligned with her interests and passions.

Workshop - Adapt to Coastal Groundwater Rise in Cities with Equity

Kristina Hill, PhD, is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Kristina’s research is focused on urban adaptation to flooding from sea level rise. She works with the State of California to provide guidance to cities and public agencies specifically about adaptation to rising shallow groundwater in coastal areas. Contaminated soils, underground pipes and conduits, building foundations, and transportation systems are all exposed to this change long before groundwater will emerge at the surface, creating risks to public health and safety as well as ecosystems. Pumping can increase rates of ground subsidence and draw contaminants towards buildings. Kristina lectures in North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia on this topic, advising city governments. Her new book on coastal urban adaptation will be published by UC Press in 2026.

Workshop - Bodies In Space

Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD, is a choreographer, teacher, performer, and scholar based in Oakland. A dance nerd through and through, she holds an Master of Fine Arts in Experimental Choreography and a PhD in Critical Dance Studies. She has taught at Santa Clara University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, In Dance, and Life as a Modern Dancer. She is currently a member of the Belonging Resident Company, the dance research arm of the Othering and Belonging Institute. Melissa is also the co-founder of a racial justice-oriented media production company called Who’s With Me.

Workshop - Work in Progress: Design and Labor

Jenny Jones is a principal in the Terremoto Los Angeles office. She grew up in Virginia and received a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies, a Master of Landscape Architecture, and a Master of Urban and Environmental Planning from the University of Virginia. She previously worked at OLIN and RIOS. Her work is rooted in ecology, localization, process, and community, working on private gardens, public parks, and schools in California and beyond. Jenny co-founded Test Plot, an ongoing experiment in stewardship and restoration of public landscapes, and also co-leads the Land and Labor internal working group at Terremoto.

Workshop - Leveraging the Power of Food Systems, Food Cultures, and Activism

Elizabeth J. Kennedy, FASLA, RLA, is the 2022 recipient of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) Medal, which honors a career of distinguished work in landscape sustainability. She heads EKLA, whose projects intersect cultural heritage and ecology in socially just ways and exemplify landscape architecture’s potential to engage a broader critical understanding of place and identity. Her firm’s highly disciplined and minimally invasive approach to landscape architecture is reflected in national recognition and awards for design excellence, innovations in green infrastructure, historic preservation, cultural interpretation, and site management.

Workshop - Design for Healing: Trauma-Informed Community Engagement

As Executive Director of the Design Workshop Foundation, Sarah Konradi, PLA, ASLA, leads the organization’s strategic vision, programming, and operations. She partners closely with Design Workshop studios to deliver pro bono, community-engaged projects nationwide. A licensed landscape architect with more than 15 years of experience, Sarah advances inclusive, nature-based solutions through community-driven design, environmental advocacy, and cross-sector collaboration. Her nonprofit-rooted practice blends technical expertise with relational fluency to center equity, elevate youth leadership, and strengthen climate resilience.

Workshop - The Site Question: Architecture, Landscape, and Partnership

Vladimir Krstic, Associate AIA, is Academic Programs Director Emeritus of the Kansas City Design Center (KCDC) and Professor Emeritus of Architecture at Kansas State University, where he served on faculty for over two decades. Born in Sarajevo and trained at the University of Sarajevo and Kyoto University, his career spans practice, research, and design education across three continents — including formative years at Tadao Ando Architect and Associates. As Executive Director and later Academic Programs Director of KCDC, he led visionary urban design studies across Kansas City that garnered recognition from the American Institute of Architects, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His work bridges civic imagination and design pedagogy, with a sustained focus on urban revitalization, public space, and community vision-making.

Workshop - Bodies In Space

Sarah Kuehl, FASLA, is recognized as a creator of spatial and other relationships and an idealistic pragmatist. She is a founding partner of EinwillerKuehl Landscape Architecture, an award-winning landscape architecture and urban design practice known for guiding generative collaboration and interdisciplinary innovation across a range of project types and scales. Sarah is known for her ability to translate financial goals, words, desired experiences, community empowerment, and ecological goals into three dimensional spatial ideas. She thinks at a big scale and likes dialogue with others who think differently. Sarah has extensive experience creating urban design visions that can be implemented through phased projects which culminate in generational impact for institutions and communities. 

Workshop - The Site Question: Architecture, Landscape, and Partnership

Maria Landoni, PLA, ASLA, is a licensed landscape architect and founder of SUR Landscape Architecture, a Kansas City-based ecological design practice. With over 15 years of experience spanning urban design, horticulture, and planning, she brings a culturally informed perspective shaped by her upbringing in Patagonia and Buenos Aires and more than two decades of practice across the US. Her portfolio ranges from civic landscapes and tech campuses to botanical gardens and urban watersheds, with award-winning work including the ASLA Honor Award–recognized Glenstone Museum. Maria is Vice President of Advocacy for the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Prairie Gateway Chapter, is a member of the ASLA National Climate and Biodiversity Action Committee, and leads Missouri Stream Team #7112. She is a frequent lecturer and critic at institutions including Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Workshop - Co-building a Design Activism Toolkit

Claire Latané, FASLA, is Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture at Cal Poly Pomona and founder of the national Emergency Schoolyard Design Volunteers (2020-2021) and the Collaborative for Healthy and Inclusive Learning Environments (CHILE). Her work advances community-led, nature-based, evidence-informed strategies that support mental health, equity, and climate resilience, especially in schools and everyday landscapes. Claire authored Schools That Heal: Design with Mental Health in Mind (2021, Island Press) and co-edited with Jean Yang Activism in Design Education: Health, Justice, and Climate Action (forthcoming, Routledge). Her activism and design work has appeared in Landscape Architecture Magazine, Outside Magazine, and The Progressive. 

Workshop - Currents of Change: Imagining Adaptive Climate Futures

Jenn Low leads her own consultancy working with planning and design partners to create culturally and environmentally resilient places with communities. Jenn spent the first 12 years of her career as a landscape architect, strengthening the quality of and access to public space across the East Coast, California, and the Pacific Northwest. Since then, she's translated her design and planning experiences towards community research, program design, cultural activations, leadership development, and strategic partnership development at the Landscape Architecture Foundation, The Urban Studio, and the 1882 Foundation. For the past four years, she served as the Design Director at Openbox, where she led cultural and infrastructure planning projects in collaboration with municipal, nonprofit, and design partners. 

Workshop - Making Chicano Public Landscapes 

Fernando Magallanes, PLA, received his Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and his Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from Texas A&M University. With over 40 years of teaching design studios and university experience, Fernando has taught at North Carolina State University, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Michigan State University, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  His research includes Latino/a/x history and design, contemporary urban design, landscape architecture history, and landscape surrealism. He has has led international travel studios for design students in study abroad programs since 1992, including courses in Spain, Berlin, and Prague.  His contributions to teaching have been recognized with the national award for Outstanding Educator from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, by the NC State College of Design, and with an honorary doctorate from the Universidad de Aquino Bolivia in 2019. 

Workshop - Designing for Time: Bridging Ecological Design and Long-Term Landscape Management

Scott Martin is CEO of the Fort Monroe Authority, which manages the 565-acre decommissioned US Army installation and current National Monument located on the Old Point Comfort peninsula in Hampton, Virginia. He has learned that the globe's most cherished public landscapes are dynamic, lovingly tended, and consistently shaped (and re-shaped) by designers, stewards, activators, and guests who are themselves unapologetically optimistic and aspirational. He believes that public landscapes, waters, and historical places carry story and that in these stories we can discover a well spring of capacity to work together. Scott is an executive board member of World Urban Parks. He previously worked as Administrator for Parks and Outdoors for the City of Chattanooga and was the Executive Director of River Heritage Conservancy in the Louisville metropolitan area.

Workshop - Actualizing Just Transitions through Transdisciplinary Design and Participatory Scenario Planning

Workshop - Work in Progress: Design and Labor

Nuith Morales is a first-generation Mexican immigrant and practicing landscape architect. She grew up with the sense of being “wrapped” by the vast Chihuahuan Desert sky and later fell in love with the cool, dark forests of New England. Nuith has 10 years of experience working across many scales and geographies and has executed both technically challenging and beautifully crafted projects. She seeks to bring rigor and poetry to each project by caring for the life and history of a site and through respectful collaboration with laborers and craftspeople. In her current work, Nuith is curious about what it means to “cultivate the gardener” while cultivating the garden and about creating or rediscovering rituals of stewardship. She holds an Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and has been a guest critic at the Rhode Island School of Design and Northeastern University.

Workshop - Water Signals: Storytelling as a Climate Resilience Tool

Claire Napawan  is a Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of California, Davis and co-founder of Group Projects, a non-profit design collaborative. She holds advanced degrees from Washington University in St. Louis’ School of Architecture and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her research and creative work includes co-design methodologies to achieve community resilience to climate change. Examples of her design and research include: Smart Sidewalks, the winning proposal for Reinventing Payphones in New York City, which seeks to address the digital divide and improve urban environmental resilience; #OurChangingClimate, a research and design project that broadens and diversifies climate conversations; FOGWASTE, a public art installation that seeks to bring greater awareness of San Jose’s vital infrastructures to local communities; and The Alameda Creek Atlas, a selected proposal for the Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge that looks at unlocking flows of sediment, people, and fish.

Workshop - Rigor, Trust, and Time: 30 Years of Sustained Community Engagement in Detroit

Joan Nassauer, FASLA, FCELA, is a leading scholar in cultural sustainability and ecological design, whose research has shaped understanding of how cultural preferences influence landscape performance. She is a Professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability.

Workshop - Leveraging the Power of Food Systems, Food Cultures, and Activism

Matt Potteiger is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Matt has sought to connect design with the cultural practices that make vital and meaningful places. His ongoing research and his teaching and community engagement focus on the fundamental link between food and landscape and leverage design to create more sustainable and socially just food systems. He has connected place-based food systems research internationally and led community-based projects for urban agriculture, public markets, New American refugee farming, and a regional food system plan. He is currently working with practices of public harvesting to develop a model for edible green infrastructure along a 9-mile urban riparian corridor in Syracuse. This work was recognized in 2025 with the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Community Service Award.

Workshop - Soil Literacy in Practice: From Diagnostics to Digital Workflows

Jason Radcliff, PLA, ASLA, LEED AP, CSI CDT, is a Principal and Firmwide Director of Technical Design at TBG Partners. He is a strategic leader with 25 years of experience in landscape architecture, specializing in the standardization of technical delivery and quality management. He serves as an expert in unifying multi-office operations to ensure consistent project processes, minimize liability, and maximize efficiency across the full project lifecycle. He leads firmwide initiatives that bridge the gap between design intent and technical execution for complex, large-scale projects. Jason also instructs a materials lecture course at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. He bridges the gap between academic theory and professional practice by focusing on soil science, green infrastructure, and life-cycle performance, preparing students to navigate the complexities of constructability, maintenance, and carbon-sensitive material selection in modern landscape architecture. 

Workshop - Speak with Presence: Turning Big Ideas into Action

Chelsey Rives is a communication consultant who partners with design firms to strengthen how leaders earn client trust, communicate value, and represent their work in high-stakes moments. Her work focuses on building clear messaging systems and repeatable communication practices that support business development, client relationships, and firm-wide alignment. She works primarily with architecture and design teams to translate complex ideas into clear, credible narratives and to ensure communication consistently reflects the quality of the work. Her approach combines strategic clarity with real-time application, helping teams move from inconsistent communication to aligned, confident performance across presentations, client conversations, and key business moments.

Workshop: Making Chicano Public Landscapes 

James Rojas is an urban planner, community activist, and artist. He has developed an innovative public-engagement and community-visioning method that uses art-making as its medium. He has engaged thousands of people by facilitating over 400 workshops and building over 50 interactive models around the world. James is also one of the few nationally recognized urban planners to examine U.S. Latino cultural influences on urban design and sustainability. He has written and lectured extensively on how culture and immigration are transforming the American front yard and landscape. He is the founder of the Latino Urban Forum, an advocacy group dedicated to increasing awareness around planning and design issues facing low-income Latinos. He and John Kamp authored the book Dream, Play, Build, which explores how to engage people in urban planning and design through their hands and senses.

Workshop - Water Signals: Storytelling as a Climate Resilience Tool

Halina Steiner is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Knowlton School at The Ohio State University where she runs the schools Co-Op and Portfolio Workshop programs. Her current research focuses on the visualization of hydrologic and infrastructure systems. Steiner has been a University Design Fellow for Exhibit Columbus, a Landscape Architecture Foundation CSI Research Fellow, and a James Owen Blaffer Fellow. Halina previously served as the Design Director for DLANDstudio Architecture + Landscape Architecture where she was the project manager for master planning, green infrastructure, temporary installations, and public design projects. This work included Paths to Pier 42, Public Media Commons, The QueensWay Plan, and HOLD System. She received a Master in Landscape Architecture from the City College of New York and a Bachelor of Science in Design in Visual Communication Design from Arizona State University.

Workshop - Time to Act: Draft Your Action Plan Now

Jonah Susskind leads SWA’s decarbonization efforts, overseeing the implementation and advancement of the firm’s Climate Action Plan. He works to drive innovative climate action across SWA’s global portfolio, ensuring climate-positive strategies are embedded into every facet of the firm’s operations and design processes. Previously, as Senior Research Associate in SWA’s XL Lab, Jonah led award-winning research on wildfire resilience, coastal adaptation, and large-scale land management. He has held research and teaching appointments at MIT and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). Before joining SWA, he directed research at MIT’s Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. Jonah holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard GSD, where his thesis won an ASLA Honor Award, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture and critical visual studies from Pratt Institute.

Workshop - Designing for Time: Bridging Ecological Design and Long-Term Landscape Management

Judy E. Venonsky, PLA, ASLA, has been with OLIN since graduating with a Master of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning from University of Pennsylvania in 2007. At OLIN, she has worked on projects that deal with the intersection of built landscape and complex living systems. Key projects include Pier 26 in Manhattan and the planting design of over 175 acres of native species for Apple Park, the tech giant’s corporate headquarters in California, as well as many horticulture driven public parks and cultural landscapes. She has also worked on projects in India and in China where she has lectured on US horticultural practices to Chinese nursery growers. Judy leads EcoLab, a living systems design research and practice team that is part of OLIN LABS. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University.

Workshop - Time to Act: Draft Your Action Plan Now

Since joining SWA 2013, Jana Wehby, PLA, ASLA, APA, has completed award-winning planning and design projects for public and non-profit clients. Inspired by early work as a community organizer, Jana enjoys leading community engagement strategy and workshop facilitation to involve project stakeholders in the process and outcomes. Jana’s leadership approach prioritizes crafting solutions that are contextually responsive and beautiful, and that enhance the function of ecological and social systems. In 2023, Jana joined a cohort of SWA colleagues to draft the firm’s first Climate Action Plan, which was formally launched in January 2025. Jana has continued to advance SWA’s Climate Action Plan as a Studio Climate Champion, facilitating implementation of a more climate-responsive practice in SWA’s Los Angeles studio. 

Workshop - Landscape Architecture as Climate Translator

Claudia Wu is a landscape designer at SWA Group in Sausalito. Her work spans a diverse range of domestic and international projects, informed by a global perspective shaped by her upbringing in Macau, China — one of the most densely populated and rapidly urbanizing regions in the world. This background has shaped her strong interest in resilient urban design, with a focus on sea level rise, ecological restoration, and the integration of nature into cohesive, community-oriented environments. Claudia is passionate about developing thoughtful, sustainable design solutions that enhance environmental performance while enriching the human experience.

Workshop - Leveraging the Power of Food Systems, Food Cultures, and Activism

Malik Yakini was formerly the Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network and the Founding Chair of the Detroit Food Policy Council. He is an educator, entrepreneur, activist, musician, and artist who is committed to freedom and justice for humanity in general and African people in particular. He has helped to establish and lead important institutions and organizations in Detroit’s African American community. He seeks to continue contributing in meaningful ways to the establishment of social justice, food justice, and food sovereignty.

Workshop - Co-building a Design Activism Toolkit

Jean Yang, AICP, is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry, where she leads the Center for Microbial Landscapes. Her work develops participatory visual methods — including sticker-based landscape mapping — that make community knowledge legible across cultural and linguistic barriers. Jean's research examines environmental identity performance across Chinese American immigration cohorts, bridging traditional ecological knowledge and contemporary landscape practice through what she calls the Cultural-Microbial Interface framework. She teaches justice-oriented design studios and Material Witness Pedagogy, centering care as design intelligence and embodied ecological literacy. Jean is currently pursuing her PhD in anthropology at Syracuse University, focusing on transnational environmental identity and diaspora studies. She co-edited Activism in Design Education: Health, Justice, and Climate Action (Routledge) and has published on participatory methods, environmental justice, and community-engaged design pedagogy.

Keynote speakers will be announced by the end of March.