Design Voice Podcast

Bianca Koutsakos is a Business Development Manager at Neoscape, a creative agency that specializes in branding and visual storytelling of the built environment. Bianca represents the agency’s San Francisco office, and spearheads the market growth, business development and marketing strategy for their West Coast market. 

Wanda Lau, LEED AP, is the editor of tech, practice, and products for ARCHITECT and Architectural Lighting. Her writing covers a wide range of topics including architecture, technology, business, sustainability, and energy performance. You can also hear her interviewing leaders in design and technology on ARCHITECTt's podcast, ArchitectChats.

Margaret Cavenagh is a Principal at Studio Gang and leads the firm’s interior architecture practice, working closely with Jeanne Gang on all interior, renovation, and architectural projects. Guided by expert observations of how people use space, Margaret consistently delivers award-winning interior designs while attaining some of the highest sustainability ratings.

Anthia Wong is a Team Lead and Project Manager with the interior and architecture firm FORGE, where she works on a wide range of commercial, interior, and tenant improvement projects. She focuses much of her time on relationship building and fostering the lines of communication externally with clients, as well as internally within the firm. Anthia is equally passionate about helping her clients and making sure her team members are fulfilled in their work and have the tools they need to succeed.

Angie Sommer, S.E. is an Associate at ZFA Structural Engineers in San Francisco. She’s currently a project manager and engineer for a wide variety of projects around the Bay Area and California, with a focus on the educational and senior living sectors. She is involved in a variety of industry organizations, including CREW SF and the SE3 Project. On top of all that, Angie is the co-founder of Vow Muse which helps people craft unique wedding toasts, speeches, and vows.

Pascale Sablan is a senior associate at S9 Architecture in New York City. She’s also a mentor, has lectured at colleges and universities across the US, is a 2018 AIA Young Architects Award recipient, a past president of the New York Coalition of Black Architects, and serves on the NOMA national board. Pascale seeks excellence and humanity in all of her projects while providing a resounding voice for the issues facing women architects and architects of color.

Julia Gamolina is the founder and editor of Madame Architect, an online platform celebrating women in architecture from different generations, countries, and corners of the industry. Her goal for Madame Architect is that readers will be able to find encouragement and guidance for their own pursuits, and empathy and understanding for the pursuits of others. Julia is also a Business Developer at FX Collaborative and has experience in both communications and design.

Sandra Vivanco is a Professor of Architecture and Diversity studies at California College of the Arts, co-director of the CCA BuildLab, as well as the founding principal of A+D, Architecture + Design, in San Francisco. Based on the premise that inclusiveness and design excellence can and should co-exist, the work of A+D is globally recognized and operates at multiple scales. The practice explores cultural identity representation as design inspiration for new and invigorated public spaces.

Jennifer Wolch is the William W. Wurster Dean and Professor of City and Regional Planning in the College of Environmental Design at University of California, Berkeley. She's a scholar of urban analysis and planning, and her past work focused on urban homelessness, urban environmental justice and political ecology, and the delivery of affordable housing and human services. We discuss her experiences in academia and as Dean, as well as the housing crisis and homelessness issue in LA and San Francisco

Angeles Garcia is a Project Executive at McCarthy Building Companies. She started out at McCarthy over 20 years ago by answering a newspaper ad for a Project Admin position. Since then she has slowly worked her way up to an executive role, breaking down barriers all along the way. In this episode, Angeles shares some great advice on how to inspire teams to do great work, how organizations can address unconscious bias, and how women should stop second guessing themselves and just go for it.

Anne Torney is a partner at Mithun | Solomon, and leads their San Francisco office. For more than 20 years, she has made affordable multi-family housing and transit-oriented urban infill the focus of her work. In this episode, Anne tells the story of her first community planning meeting, how Mithun has been able to successfully get affordable housing projects built in San Francisco, and shares why you should bring your values to your firm and push for change.

Mary Wurst is a lighting designer and electrical engineer DLR Group. A chance encounter with a cadaver arm ended up steering her toward getting an engineering degree, and she’s now a Senior Associate at DLR Group. We discuss the importance of exposing high school students to different careers, the challenges that mid-level professionals face, and why firms should be less focused on the rigidity of the 9-5.

Nishita Lakhani is a Senior Project Engineer at McCarthy Building Companies. Although she is relatively new to the profession, I loved hearing how passionate and positive she is about the construction industry. We talked about the differences between construction in India versus the U.S., how you don’t realize it when you’re in school but communication is the key to successful projects, and whether or not mentorship and diversity initiatives are actually effective.

Sandra Biddulph is a structural engineer, and a Principal at the firm DCI Engineers. She appreciates the art of structural design; watching a project come together, with a tangible finished product that becomes a part of our built environment. In this episode, we talk about what it was like transitioning from Project Engineer to Project Manager to Principal, why engineers should get out and promote their profession, and how she was able to balance her work life with her home life.

Irina Schneid is an architect, educator, and principal of the interdisciplinary design lab SCH+ARC Studio LLC. Aside from running her own design practice, she currently teaches undergraduate design and theory courses at Pratt Institute. In this episode, Irina shares with me how she got her foot in the door in the ultra competitive world of academia, how she balances teaching and running her own practice, and how motherhood has changed her notion of what constitutes a successful career.