| Alumni Profiles |
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LAEP alums enter UC Berkeley with diverse backgrounds, and LAEP ensures that, while at Berkeley, they are introduced to a multitude of professional and institutional possibilities. As a result, our graduates pursue a broad array of employment opportunities as evidenced by the profiles below.
BA in LA, UC Berkeley, 1982 Eran Ben Joseph's professional background, prior to entering the Ph.D. Program at Berkeley, was as a landscape architect and urban planner in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. He was the founding principal of BNBJ, a planning landscape architecture firm in Tel-Aviv, Israel. While attending Berkeley the program was in the forefront of a renewed interest in the redesigning and planning of suburbs. His research on suburban street standards and regulations led to the publishing of the book, Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities (co-authored with Professor Michael Southworth). He found that the LAEP program provided a great opportunity for multidisciplinary interactions and learning within CED and beyond. "The Bay Area is one of the best places to study and engage in the issues facing the landscape architecture profession in the 21st century." Currently he is a Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research and teaching interests include standards and regulations of urban design, site planning technologies, and urban simulation. He has led national and international multi-disciplinary projects in Singapore, Barcelona, China, and Washington, DC, among other places.
BA, Philosophy & Religion, Colgate University, 1990 Anita Bueno's background in traveling and gardening and her strong environmental ethic led her to study landscape architecture. Before she entered the MLA program, she had worked in a diverse range of job capacities, including as an estate gardener, retail nursery plant buyer, welder, bicycle mechanic, commercial fisherman, and custom wood furniture finisher. One highlight while in the MLA program was the opportunity for her to give a paper at the Council for Educators in Landscape Architecture, held in New Zealand. She was able to experience the New Zealand landscape and discuss the challenges of public land management, recreation vs. conservation, and cultural diversity in land use. She remained focused on that theme by taking the thesis/professional project option and working for a semester for the Inyo National Forest in Bishop, California. What she learned in conservation, re-vegetation, wildlife habitat, and stakeholder workshop facilitation she now uses daily on a residential scale with her clients. Since graduating she has obtained a state contractor's license and is running her own design/build firm creating ecologically sensitive gardens in Berkeley.
BS Biology, Industrial Design Minor Prior to attending UC Berkeley, Allegra Bukojemsky worked as a biologist and industrial design consultant, as well as back-country mule packer and horse trainer. Her work and research included environmental enrichment research and design for zoo and lab animals. She entered the MLA program with the intention of specializing in zoo exhibit design, with a strong interest and understanding of how exhibit design influences animal behavior and visitor understanding; ultimately conservation education. But all this changed when she took LD ARCH 201 on the San Leandro Creek and the LD ARCH 205 studio on Montana’s Highway 93. These courses broadened her interest to include natural habitats and people’s interactions within them. Meanwhile, Linda Jewell’s courses on materials created the greatest design perception shift, opening Allegra’s eyes to a new way of seeing and designing. Because of her passion for all aspects of sustainable design, Allegra also took an ARCH 201 studio on sustainable student housing for UC Merced. She gained her LEED accreditation immediately after graduation. Allegra is currently a landscape architect and the leader of the San Francisco Bay Bioregion office of Biohabitats, an ecological restoration, conservation planning and regenerative design firm. Prior to joining Biohabitats she worked with R. David Scheer (CED M.Arch) in Alaska as partner and co-founder of DnA Design; as a restoration designer for Wildlands, Inc. a mitigation banking company; and as an landscape designer at April Phillips Design Works, Inc., in Sausalito, California. Allegra has become an active participant in a number of organizations advocating for more sustainable design methods and is currently the co-chair of the ASLA Sustainable Design and Development Professional Practice Network.
BA, Princeton University, 1993 After she graduated from Princeton, Sharon Danks worked for a small environmental group in Washington, DC, assisting with research and documentation of sustainable community planning. She then moved to California and worked for three years for the UC San Diego Extension Division developing science-related continuing education programs for K-12 teachers and college faculty. At Berkeley, she was in the Environmental Planning MLA-MCP program and focused on ecological design. Her thesis on "ecological schoolyards" was influenced by faculty mentors who helped shape her research and challenged her to think critically and creatively. After graduating from UCB, she worked for EDAW, Inc., in San Francisco. As a recipient of the Scott Fellowship she was able to travel abroad to continue her research on "ecological schoolyards." She then used this gift of research time to further the efforts of the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance as an advisor and later as the director of their first two Green Schoolyard conferences. In 2001, she founded her own consulting practice to help schools initiate and design green schoolyard projects. In 2007, she joined forces with fellow LAEP alum Lisa Howard and their colleague Arden Bucklin-Sporer to found a new planning and landscape architecture firm called Bay Tree Design, Inc.
BA, English, UC Los Angeles, 1999 Prior to attending Berkeley, Crystal Gaudio coordinated programs at an English language school affiliated with UCLA Extension. While at Berkeley she was a graduate student instructor for Chip Sullivan and Joe Slusky's ENV DES 1 drawing studio and for Judith Stilgenbauer's LD ARCH 101 introduction to landscape architecture studio. The experience of giving constant desk crits and structuring arguments for good design has been invaluable professionally. The opportunity to travel with classmates during summer and spring breaks to Scandinavia, France, and Germany to study public and post-industrial landscapes has continued to provide invaluable insight for design ideas. Peter Bosselmann's urban design studio helped her better understand how differently architects, urban planners, and landscape architects think. She is currently working at the Prospect Park Alliance in Brooklyn, New York, on a complex project integrating a new ice skating rink and visitor center into a historic reconstruction site. Before moving to New York, she worked for 2-1/2 years at CMG in San Francisco on projects ranging from a master plan for Treasure Island to construction documents for a Google preschool. She also taught a landscape architecture studio at UC Davis last year.
BSLA, UC Davis, 1994 Prior to attending Berkeley John Gibbs worked in private practice for 3 years on a range of projects, gaining valuable experience and his California LA license. However, he felt the a need to broaden his skills and intellectual understanding of design. His concentration was in urban design, with classes in city planning, urban design, and architecture. His thesis studio was a landscape exercise with Peter Walker. His prior degree in landscape architecture and professional experience gave him the flexibility to pursue multiple educational and teaching opportunities, including serving as a graduate student instructor for an advanced urban design studio. His most memorable experience was an urban design session in Provence, France, when he and student colleagues from all over the world engaged in an urban design session in a stunning landscape of medieval rues and lavender. Upon graduation, John joined the San Francisco office of Wallace Roberts & Todd to lead a series of public landscape design and planning projects, including a large scale brownfield redevelopment and a bridge design.
BA, Environmental Studies, UC Santa Cruz, 1996 Prior to attending Berkeley, Rosey Jencks was employed as a program associate at Moore, Iacofano and Goltsman (MIG), focusing on management and planning consultation. She then was hired as Program Director with the Neighborhood Parks Council, working with nonprofits that advocated for improved parks and open space planning. She then went on to work as Program Coordinator for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR). She was also a consultant to the SF Recreation and Park Department and the SF Department of Public Works. While in the MLA/EP program she focused on planning and urban stormwater management. Her research culminated in a thesis, Finding Room for Stormwater—A Review of Site and Design Opportunities in San Francisco. She was also a recipient of the Scott Traveling Fellowship. Currently she is the Urban Watershed and Stormwater Planner for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
BA, Social Studies, Harvard College, 1992 Before entering the master's program Sarah Kuehl worked as an assistant to a public artist, taught photography, and worked as a gardener in Tuscany. Her interest in landscape architecture arouse from these experiences and from her undergraduate thesis on graffiti writers and private property. Walter Hood's studio influenced Sarah to seek design solutions that are simultaneously beautiful, buildable, and critical. To further her design understandings from Hood’s studio, Sarah pursued a design thesis on an urban nature park in Los Angeles. Since graduation she has worked for Peter Walker and Partners (PWP), where she is now a partner. At PWP she has worked on a broad range of planning and design projects for universities, private residences, and museums.
BA, Religion, Carleton College, 2000 Before coming to UC Berkeley, Caitilin Pope-Daum worked on organic farms and did landscape maintenance. Her desire to be both a designer and environmentalist led her to take as many environmental science classes as possible while also focusing on design studios. After graduating she worked for six months in a local Berkeley firm and then left to travel for three months on the Scott Traveling Fellowship. With the support of the Scott, she investigated the relationships between the natural landscape, regional identity, and a sense of place in the cultural landscape. This travel opportunity provided her the building blocks to applying landscape architecture to the broader context of people + culture + environment. Upon returning she and several Harvard Graduate School of Design planning graduates took a three-month position as part of a land use consulting team on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena. Since St. Helena, she has been living in Portland, Oregon, and working for the landscape architecture firm Walker Macy.
BFA (Painting), Portland School of Art, 1989 Prior to attending Berkeley Lauri Twitchell taught printmaking, 2D design, and new media as a full-time professor at the Maine College of Art. While in the MLA program she chose to take a broad range of courses in landscape architecture and architecture. Working with Walter Hood and Randy Hester inspired her to merge the role of community participation with her fascination with gardens as a creative art form. To pursue these interests upon graduation, she took a position at the UC Botanical Garden Education Department where she worked with 20 underserved schools in the East Bay designing buildings and maintaining school gardens. In June 2007, she was hired to be the new garden manager at Blake Garden. Blake Garden is an eleven-acre estate garden that was given to LAEP to be used as an ongoing landscape laboratory for landscape architecture students and the public. |
Eran Ben Joseph
Anita Bueno
Allegra Bukojemsky, RLA, ASLA LEED AP
Sharon Danks
Crystal Gaudio
John Gibbs
Rosey Jencks
Sarah Kuehl
Caitilin Pope-Daum
Lauri Twitchell