Gina Bocra
Bocra, vice president with the Built Ecology team at WSP, has been a champion for high-performance, safe, and resilient buildings that contribute to the health and wellbeing of their occupants throughout her 30-year career. Prior to her role at WSP, she helmed the New York City Department of Building’s team tasked with implementing and enforcing the city’s sustainability laws and codes, including Local Law 97, the city’s landmark carbon emissions regulations. Bocra also served as director of Sustainable Design at two architecture firms and has volunteered with organizations including the AIA, U.S. Green Building Council, and the International Code Council.

Emily McGlohn
A registered architect in Virginia and Alabama, McGlohn is an associate professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture at Auburn University. Dedicated to supporting architectural practice through design education excellence, she teaches third-year design studio at Auburn’s Rural Studio in Newbern, Alabama, and serves as the program’s third-year curriculum coordinator. According to McGlohn, teaching at Rural Studio and working with students to construct homes for the local community has helped her intimately understand, and therefore critique, contemporary building enclosures, residential design, and client engagement. Developing methods to encourage empathy and observation is another focus. She is currently working with engineers from the University of Alabama and University of South Alabama to address an urgent wastewater problem in rural areas of the South with a decentralized treatment approach. Rural Studio will be the pilot location for the first system.

Chandra Robinson
Robinson, a past Women in Architecture Awards juror, is a principal at Portland, Oregon–based Lever Architecture. With the firm, Robinson completed Meyer Memorial Trust’s LEED Platinum headquarters as part of an all-women design-and-development team, and is working with communities on transformative designs for affordable housing and libraries. A member of the Portland Design Commission, a founding board member and treasurer of the National Organization for Minority Architects (NOMA) Portland chapter, and an advisory board member of Hip Hop Architecture Camp, Robinson describes herself as passionate about creating beautiful spaces that are accessible to all and enjoys working with clients to create designs that express their values.

Roberta Washington
Washington established her Harlem–based architectural practice in 1983 after several years spent designing health facilities and schools in Maputo, Mozambique. Her firm’s projects include the interpretive center at the African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan and public schools in Brooklyn and Mount Vernon, New York, and New Haven. Washington has also researched, written, and lectured about the history of New York State’s earliest African American architects and the nation’s first black women architects. Washington has served on the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission and as president of both the New York AIA Foundation and NOMA. She is currently on the boards of the NOMA Foundation and historic preservation group Save Harlem Now!

Cynthia Weese
Last profiled following her 2023 AIA Chicago Lifetime Achievement Award win, Weese is a founding partner of Weese Langley Weese, established in 1977 alongside husband Ben Weese. Her projects at the firm include Chicago’s Chestnut Place Apartments, the Kraft General Foods Education Center at the Art Institute of Chicago, and recent work at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. Outside of Chicago, Weese has close ties to her alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, where she served as professor and dean of the School of Architecture from 1993–2005. She was the first woman to be named dean of any school at the university. Weese is a past president of AIA Chicago and founding member of Chicago Women in Architecture and the Chicago Architectural Club, serving as president of the latter.