Mentorship Winter Discussion: A DEI Conversation with Architects
<< All EventsMentorship Winter Discussion: A DEI Conversation with Architects
Registration for this session is open at the bottom of this page
About the Panelists
Julia Laue, AIA
Julia Laue is the Principal Architect and Bureau Manager for the Bureau of Architecture at San Francisco Public Works where her focus is excellence in Project Delivery and Design for the City’s great Civic Projects. She came to Public Works from the private sector in 2013 and oversees 68+ Architectural staff to deliver hundreds of Civic Projects for the City and County of San Francisco, including Rec Centers, Libraries, Community Centers, Fire Stations, Police Stations, Streetscapes, Transportation and Public Utility Facilities to name a few.
John Kouletsis, AIA
John Kouletsis, a prominent healthcare planning and design expert, was, prior to his retirement, the Vice President, Planning and Design, National Facilities Services at Kaiser Permanente. For 24 years John served as Kaiser Permanente’s “chief architect” and managed a staff of 30 healthcare planners, designers, operations experts, and clinicians. John was responsible for assuring that all Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical offices across the country were built and maintained with a consistent level of quality, innovation and affordability. In collaboration with hundreds of frontline health care professionals, planners, architects, and others, John created guidelines that established Kaiser Permanente as one of the earliest and foremost proponents of both evidence-based design and safety-by-design.
Michael E. Willis, FAIA, NOMA
Michael Willis founded MWA Architects Inc. in 1988 and served as President and a Principal until 2016 when he retired from MWA. He taught graduate studios in 2015, 2017, 2020, and the current 2021 Fall semesters at his alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. He is a registered architect currently in Missouri and California. His firm created master plans and designs for mixed income affordable housing projects and neighborhood revitalization projects in San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, and post-Katrina New Orleans Faubourg Lafitte in New Orleans; they have created urban infrastructure projects in municipal power and especially water, in communities from Washington state, Portland, to Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles; and transportation involving airports, and municipal subway transit stations.
About the Moderator
Roland Lau, AIA
Roland Lau is an Associate Principal at Perkins Eastman with extensive experience on significantly large projects like the recently completed New Stanford Hospital and the Kaiser Template hospital project for the design and construction of three new hospitals simultaneously, and for smaller projects like the adaptive reuse of a rundown south of Market building into transitional housing for the rehabilitation of men and women with drug, HIV and alcohol problems.
Roland is an AIASF Mentorship Committee and mentorship group member and also chairs the AIASF Architectural Licensing Committee that orchestrates year-round Architectural Registration Exam (ARE) preparatory classes taught pro-bono by licensed architects and engineers for anyone seeking architectural licensing.
Architect Registration Examination (ARE) Challenge Scholarship Program
The ARE Challenge Scholarship Program recognizes that the effort and expense of the architectural licensing process as a barrier to achieving this professional milestone and disproportionately affects candidates of historically underrepresented identities in the profession. In light of the extremely challenging and economically unstable conditions that we are collectively facing, AIASF Equity by Design has established financial assistance scholarships for licensure candidates who are eligible to take the ARE exams. Submissions are due by Friday, April 15, 2022.
Selected Recipients of the ARE Challenge Scholarship will be reimbursed for three (3) ARE Exams (Value $705 per recipient), regardless of pass or fail status. Recipients will also receive six (6) complimentary registrations to AIASF ARE prep classes.
We are also seeking AEC co-sponsorship of this program to fund additional ARE Challenge Scholarship recipients; contact sponsorship@aiasf.org to learn more.
Eligibility:
- Applicants must be currently eligible to take the ARE Exams for Architectural Licensure.
- Candidates must be currently authorized to work in the United States.
- Applicants are strongly encouraged to participate in AIASF’s equity programming.
Scholarship Partners
AIASF Architecture Licensing Committee | AIASF Mentorship Committee | AIASF Equity by Design Committee
Scholarship Sponsors
Silver Level
Sherwin Williams Coil Coatings Tipping Structural Engineers
Walker Warner Architects