TORCH Mentorship Program - Advancing Your Career

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

Our careers are a series of choices we make over a lifetime. They shape —and are shaped by—our life experiences and the opportunities we are exposed to. Join us for the third event in our 2020 TORCH Mentorship curriculum, "Advancing Your Career," as we build upon the ideas shared in the preceding webinar to explore how emerging professionals can pursue specific goals to develop their careers. Our panel of AIA Fellows will speak to their experiences, discussing how they built upon decisions made earlier in their journeys, how they navigated opportunities and challenges, and how various soft and hard skills they acquired along the way helped them get to where they are today, before joining the audience for smaller group conversations.

Attendees are strongly encouraged to take the opportunity to ask questions and engage with the panelists as much as possible, particularly during the smaller group conversations in the second half of the event, in order to get the best possible benefits of the TORCH program. 

Speakers: 
Claire Weisz, FAIA, Founding Partner, WXY 
Stephen Cassell, FAIA, Founding Principal, Architecture Research Office (ARO)
Vivian Lee, FAIA, New York Studio Executive Director, Woods Bagot
Sandra McKee, FAIA, Principal, Yoshihara McKee Architects
Alexandra Barker, FAIA, Principal, Barker Associates Architecture Office (BAAO)

About the TORCH program: 
The TORCH Mentorship program partners emerging professionals and AIA Fellows over the course of the year to share personal strategies and paths to success in the architecture profession. TORCH includes public panel discussions plus one-to-one mentor matching for a longer term discussion. The One-to-One Mentor match application deadline has been extended to July 8, 2020. Please download the application here.

About the speakers:
Claire Weisz, FAIA, is a founding partner of WXY, known for their innovative approach to community, public space, structures, and cities. Weisz was awarded the Medal of Honor from AIANY in 2018 and was honored with the Women in Architecture Award by Architectural Record in 2019. WXY is globally recognized for its place-based approach to architecture, urban design, and planning, and has played a vital role in design thinking around resiliency. In 2019 Fast Company named WXY one of the World’s Most Innovative Architecture Firms. 

Stephen Cassell, FAIA, is a founding Principal of Architecture Research Office (ARO), a New York City firm dedicated to an architecture that unites strategy and intelligence with beauty and form. ARO’s diverse body of work—spanning strategic planning, architecture and urban design— has earned the firm over a hundred design awards including the 2020 AIA National Architecture Firm Award, AIA New York State Firm of the Year Award, and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award. He is Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University, has twice served as the Shure Professor at the University of Virginia and as the Friedman Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and has also taught at Harvard University, Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Rhode Island School of Design. He has lectured widely throughout the United States and abroad. Stephen is the former Chair of the Board of the Van Alen Institute.

Vivian Lee, FAIA, is the New York Studio Executive Director at Woods Bagot. Prior to her current role, Lee was a principal at Richard Meier & Partners, where she led award-winning projects in Europe, Asia, and the US, and was featured in prestigious publications. In her 30-year professional tenure, she has worked on mixed-use, hotel, retail, airport, education, residential, and interiors projects at Polshek Partnership (presently, Ennead Architects), EYP, Peter Marino Architect, Gensler, SOM, and Claudio Nardi Architetto. She is the Co-Chair of the AIANY Women in Architecture Committee, where she mentors young architects and promotes women in leadership and design roles, while championing equitable practice and advocating for diversity and inclusion in the architectural community. A frequent speaker, panelist, and juror, she has given talks at many universities and conferences around the world.  

Sandra McKee, FAIA, is a principal of Yoshihara McKee Architects, which she founded with her partner in 2005. With offices in Tokyo and New York, her projects range in type and size from small residential works to large-scale urban interventions. Prior to starting the firm, McKee was a project director at Rafael Viñoly Architects, where she relocated to Japan for four years to work on the Tokyo International Forum. She has been an adjunct professor at City College, Fordham and Columbia Universities, and has lectured, published, and exhibited internationally. She is an active bicycling advocate and is a member of Manhattan Community Board 6 serving as chair of the Transportation Committee. She is also an Advisory Board Member at d3 where she often serves as a jury member and organized the Close the Gap competition, an ideas competition to complete the East River Greenway. 

Alexandra Barker, FAIA, is the principal of Barker Associates Architecture Office (BAAO), an award-winning practice based in New York with a focus on spatial and material strategies that adapt to the evolving relationships between inhabitants and the built environment. BAAO’s project portfolio includes residences, interiors, and educational and retail spaces in the New York area, regionally, and internationally. She is also the assistant chair and founding member of the nationally-ranked Graduate Architecture and Urban Design Program and Associate Professor with CCE at Pratt Institute.