The 2023 winners join a cohort of more than 50 design leaders who have been recognized since the program’s launch.

Anne Marie Duvall Decker. Photo courtesy Duvall Decker

Duvall Decker, who co-founded Jackson, Mississippi–based firm Duvall Decker in 1998 with partner Roy Decker, leads a place-centered, community-based practice steeped in the belief that all architecture is public work. With its focus on promoting social and environmental health, the firm has received numerous accolades and been selected for design excellence programs established by the GSA and Walton Family Foundation. Beyond the studio, Duvall Decker has served as a lecturer, visiting professor, and design juror and is a board member and past president of AIA Mississippi.

Rosalie Genevro. Photo © Erica Lanser

Genevro is an architectural historian and urbanist who, until stepping down earlier this year, led The Architectural League of New York as executive director, a role she had held since 1985. Over her transformative tenure at the 142-year-old nonprofit, Genevro inaugurated new programs including the online publication Urban Omnibus along with many projects such as American Roundtable and Ten Shades of Green. Genevro also directed projects on housing and a series of design studies that included Vacant Lots, New Schools for New York, The Productive Park, and Housing on the Edge.

Andrea Leers and Jane Weinzapfel | Principals, Leers Weinzapfel Associates 

Andrea Leers (left) and Jane Weinzapfel. Photo courtesy Leers Weinzapfel Associates

Established in 1982, Leers and Weinzapfel’s eponymous Boston-based practice has garnered more than 200 international, national, and regional design awards, including the 2007 AIA Firm Award—the first women-owned firm to receive the honor. Together heralded as leaders in campus and urban design, Leers is a pioneer in the use of mass timber in academic settings while Weinzapfel is recognized for her expertise in infrastructure and transportation design. Leers and Weinzapfel are also dedicated educators and have taught at institutions in the Boston area and beyond.

Julie Snow. Photo © Jennifer Simonson

Minneapolis practice Snow Kreilich Architects was founded in 1995 by Snow as one of the first woman-led architecture firms in Minnesota. Bestowed with the AIA Firm Award in 2018 and nationally recognized for projects including the U.S. Land Port of Entry in Van Buren, Maine, and CHS Field in St. Paul, the firm describes itself as producing architecture that performs against multiple measures of design success. In addition to her practice, Snow is a noted academic, having taught at the University of Minnesota College of Design and other schools.

Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton. Photo courtesy Sharon Egretta Sutton

A musician, fine artist, and practicing architect, Dr. Sutton is currently distinguished visiting professor at Parsons School of Design. Dr. Sutton’s career is one of multiple touchstones as the first African American to receive both the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award and the AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education. She is the twelfth African American woman in the U.S. to be licensed to practice architecture, as well as the first to be promoted to full professor of architecture and the second to be elected a fellow of the AIA. The author of numerous books, including Pedagogy of a Beloved Community: Pursuing Democracy’s Promise through Place-Based Activism (Fordham University Press, 2023), Dr. Sutton is 2011 recipient of the AIA Whitney M. Young Jr. Award and has been awarded the Medal of Honor from its New York and Seattle chapters.