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Alumni on the Go FROM INTERN TO CEO Wendy Rogers (’88, architecture) was named the chief executive at LPA, Inc., becoming the firm’s second CEO in its 50-year history and one of a handful of women at the helm of a national architecture firm. She takes on the leadership role during a period of expansion for the firm, which offers architecture, interior design and engineering services, and specializes in sustainable corporate, educational and municipal projects. The firm’s current projects include Mazda Motor Corp.’s Irvine headquarters, the TIDE Academy STEM school in Silicon Valley, and the LEED-certified Silver Monarch Center at Los Angeles City College. Rogers will lead day-to-day operations with LPA President Dan Heinfield. Her initial priorities as CEO include increasing the role of the firm’s proprietary research unit, LPAred. Rogers’ elevation to CEO had been planned for years, according to her predecessor, Robert Kupper. “Wendy has shown her ability as a design professional and leader,” he said in an official statement. “She is a collaborator.” The story of her rise from LPA intern to CEO was highlighted in an August 2017 feature in the Los Angeles Times, in which she spoke about discovering architecture at the age of 5 through a family friend designing a home in Sherman Oaks. Rogers landed an internship with the firm in 1987, and was immediately hired a er graduation. “Architecture is something where you learn the cra in school, but it’s really something where you are mentored and take what you can learn from others in the industry,” she told The Times. “[It’s] a problem-solving process.”
ON BOARD The Board of Directors of the Loyola University System in March added to their ranks Juan Gabriel Moreno, who was enrolled in the ENV and CSU Florence architecture programs. The board governs a highly specialized care system that includes the 61-acre Loyola University \ 16 \ Fall
Medical campus, Go lieb Memorial Hospital and centers in Cook, Will and DuPage counties in western Illinois. Moreno is the president and founder of Chicago-based JGMA (Juan Gabriel Moreno Architects), with a portfolio of public and private projects ranging from education and government, to research and commercial, and urban planning and product design. He has been recognized in the U.S. and abroad for his dedication to social justice, and by the president of Colombia as one of “100 Colombianos” for 2013. In 2015 he was appointed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the Commission of Public Landmarks, and Crain’s Business named JGMA as one of the architecture firms “Reshaping Chicago” in 2014.
PROFESSIONAL IMAGINEER Ryan Keenan (’17, architecture; minor in regenerative studies) transitioned from intern to associate facility designer at Walt Disney Imagineering last summer. While he was a student at the Department of Architecture, he was a 2015–16 President’s Council Scholar for the College of Environmental Design. He was recognized for his leadership and involvement in the American Society of Engineers and Architects, the Cal Poly Pomona chapter of the American Institute of Architecture Students and its community service program, Freedom by Design. Keenan was also the recipient of the prestigious Jean Roth Driskel Scholarship Award, conferred by the PasadenaFoothill chapter of the American Institute of Architects; and the SOPREMA Scholarship Program, a national program that awards scholarships to the nation’s top undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of architecture, engineering and construction management. In 2015, he was selected for the Keck Institute for Space Studies. For one week, he and Noel Vazquez (’17, architecture)—a fellow Jean Roth Driskel Scholarship Award honoree— were paired with Caltech and USC counterparts in a NASA workshop titled “3D Additive Construction for Space using In-Situ Resources.”
Keenan also displayed an entrepreneurial streak during his time as a student, operating his own 3D printing business and binding services. He started these ventures because he felt compelled to offer customers, especially fellow students, higher-quality printing products compared to the competition. “I’m not in the business to make money, but to get things done properly,” he said in a 2016 interview.
INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP Claire Latané (’06, master’s in landscape architecture), a senior associate with Los Angeles-based Mia Lehrer + Associates, was selected as one of six fellows in the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s inaugural LAF Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership. The 2017–18 fellows each received a $25,000 award to fund projects aimed at making contributions toward environmental and social equity and investment in the future of the landscape architecture profession. The results of their research will be presented at a final symposium in the spring. Latané’s research, “Advocating for Landscape Policy Progress at LAUSD Schools,” examines the benefits and obstacles of implementing multi-purpose landscapes on the campuses of the nation’s second-largest school district. Her advocacy background will help to develop a communications initiative to change policy and practices to elevate and reassess the value of landscape in schools, with a growing body of research supporting the academic benefits of green views and multi-purpose landscapes.
GOOD DESIGN NUVIS Landscape Architecture, founded by Robert Cardoza (’64, landscape architecture), is a recipient of a 2017 ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects) Honor Award in the General Design Category for Owens Lake Land Art in Inyo County, a project for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
