WEBINAR – TORCH Mentorship Program: Disruption

*This event is occurring as a live webinar. Registrants will be emailed a link to access the program; please continue to register.*

The outbreak of COVID-19 exposed how interconnected our public health system is to our economic and civic society. But this is just one of several disruptions that have hit the field of architecture in the past twenty years: 9/11, Superstorm Sandy, and the 2008 economic downturn are other examples. Each has required adaptation by practitioners and clients.  

In its first offering for 2020, TORCH, a mentoring program developed by the AIANY Emerging New York Architects Committee, will digitally convene distinguished AIA Fellows who will share their extraordinary career paths and reflect on how architecture is impacted by, and can impact, social and economic disruptions. 

Moderator
Brynnemarie Lanciotti, AIA, Project Architect, Stantec; Vice-Moderator, AIA Strategic Council 

Panelists
Carole C. Wedge, FAIA, LEED AP, CEO, Shepley Bulfinch 
Barbara Spandorf, FAIA, Assistant Director, Department of Design, Construction, & Management, City University of New York
Susannah C. Drake, FASLA, FAIA, Associate Professor, University of Colorado Boulder 
Peter Exley, FAIA, RIBA, Co-Founder, Architecture Is Fun; President-Elect, AIA
Frances Halsband, FAIA, Principal, Kliment Halsband Architects

About the speakers:

Brynnemarie Lanciotti, AIA, is a project architect with Stantec Architecture in New York City, and a New York Regional Representative to the Strategic Council who has dedicated her career to professional and leadership development. As a Project Lead at Stantec, Lanciotti is responsible for a wide range of project types, varying in scale and complexity, diverse in clients and parameters, while managing teams of equal variousness, focused on high-level project execution.  In 2017, she co-founded the AIANY’s Civic Leadership Program (CLP), a leadership training program directed at Emerging Professionals with the focus on advocacy and developing tools for citizen architects, continues now in its fourth year. In 2018, Lanciotti along with (ENYA) launched the TORCH Mentorship Program at the New York Chapter. Now in her third year on the Strategic Council, Lanciotti serves as 2020 Vice-Moderator. 

Carole Wedge, FAIA, LEED AP, is CEO of Shepley Bulfinch, a national design firm with offices in Boston, Hartford, Houston, and Phoenix. Since 2014, she has led the firm’s evolution and growth into an innovative organization with an open and diverse culture. Throughout her career in architecture and advocacy in the wider community, Carole has sought to challenge conventions and motive organizations to become more transparent and diverse. Her dynamic and collaborative leadership has powerfully impacted cornerstone institutions—from higher education and civic organizations to the architectural industry. In 2009, Wedge was selected as one of seven women from the Boston Women Principals Group to pilot the AIA Women’s Leadership Summit, which is now in its 10th year. In 2012, she won the Boston Society of Architects’ Women in Design Award. Since 2017, she has served as the chair of AIA’s Large Firm Round Table, a committee of the 60 largest firms in the country. Among her many leadership positions, Wedge is a member of Boston’s Green Ribbon Commission, a member of the board of trustees for Boston Architectural College and a board member of Wentworth Institute of Technology. She is the recipient of 2020 Edward C. Kemper Award, an honor granted to a member for continued and significant service to the AIA. 

Barbara Spandorf, FAIA LEEP AP, is an Assistant Director with the City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university system in the US, responsible for managing design projects at five campuses located in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. Prior to CUNY, Spandorf headed the units responsible for capital projects for the NYPD and public library systems for the NYC Department of Design & Construction (DDC). Before entering the public sector in 2010, Spandorf worked in the private sector. As an Associate with Fisher Dachs Associates (FDA), a theater design and planning firm, she was responsible for design and management of award-winning performance facilities.  Earlier employment was at Beyer Blinder Belle and Prentice & Chan, Ohlhausen Architects. Spandorf has been an active member of AIA New York serving on the Board, as the Oculus Committee chair from 2014 – 2017, and the AIA NY Cultural Facilities Committee Co-Chair from 2004 – 2013.  Barbara received her B.A. from Oberlin College and her M.Arch from UCLA. 

Susannah C. Drake , FASLA FAIA, is the founding principal of DLANDstudio Architecture + Landscape Architecture pllc. The firm has received city, state, and national AIA and ASLA awards. Drake was awarded the AIA Young Architects Award, Fellowship in the AIA, Fellowship in the ASLA, and was recognized as an Architectural League Emerging Voice. She specializes in complex projects that require a synthesized, analytical, and research-based approach. Her large-scale planning work engages diverse systems to create ecologically and socially progressive projects that are equally well-crafted and beautiful.  Drake’s research has been at the forefront of innovation on urban ecological infrastructure. Her campus landscape design and large-scale urban infrastructure work received grant funding from the Graham Foundation, EPA, NEIWPCC, NYSDEC, and NYSCA. She lectures globally about resilient urban infrastructure, and has taught at Cooper Union, Harvard, Syracuse, Washington University, FIU, CCNY, and IIT. She is currently Associate Professor at CH Boulder ENVD. Her chapter entitled “WPA 2.0: Beauty, Economics, and Politics in the Creation of Public Infrastructure” published the Lincoln Land Institute book Nature and Cities. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Drake received a BA from Dartmouth College and MArch and MLA degrees from the Harvard University GSD.  

Peter Exley, FAIA, RIBA, has established an internationally recognized practice of architecture for children, families, and communities, elevating the standards of design for learning and play environments. He is the co-founder of Architecture Is Fun, a Chicago-based architecture, design, and consulting firm, recipient of the 2017 AIA Chicago Firm of the Year. Dedicated to helping the next generation of  architects, Exley has also been an adjunct professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) for more than 25 years. He has served the AIA in several roles, including president of AIA Chicago, Illinois regional representative to the Strategic Council, chair of the Public Outreach Committee, and as a liaison to the Young Architects Forum. He was recently elected as the 2020 First Vice President/2021 President-elect of the AIA. 

Frances Halsband, FAIA, is a founding partner of Kliment Halsband Architects, a leading design firm whose work has been recognized with over 150 awards for design excellence and is the recipient of the AIA Firm Award and the AIA New York Medal of Honor. Halsband was the first woman president of the AIA New York Chapter and The Architectural League of New York. She served as Dean of the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute, and has been visiting professor of design at Columbia, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, University of California Berkeley, University of Maryland, University of Virginia, Ball State and North Carolina State University. She is a former Commissioner of the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission and has served as an architectural advisor to Brown, Harvard, Smith College, the U.S. Department of State, and the Federal Reserve Bank. Last year Halsband circulated a petition and brought to the AIA Conference the Resolution prohibiting abuse and harassment within the professional community.