Jeremy Klemic is an Associate Principal at SWA Los Angeles with over 20 years of experience as a landscape architect. At SWA, Mr. Klemic led the City of Thousand Oaks Urban Forestry Master Plan project, updating the City’s design standards for street trees, roadway medians, and planting palettes towards today’s climate conditions and sustainability standards. Jeremy has been engaged to speak on the topics of Urban Forestry and Wildfire Resilience at a variety of professional venues. His construction experience, attention to detail and scheduling expertise help to ensure that complex public projects are thoughtfully planned and brought to fruition.

Natalie van Doorn is a Research Urban Ecologist at the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station. She is interested in what drives change in urban and wildland forests and improving resiliency. Her research utilizes and builds on long-term data sets tracking populations and individual trees; measuring forest structure and dynamics. She is also a co-PI on the Climate-ready Trees study – a data-driven approach to evaluate the ability of promising underused species to tolerate stressors of future climates. Natalie earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from UC Berkeley in Environmental Science, Policy and Management, focused in forest ecology.

Carla Short is the Interim Director of San Francisco Public Works. She has been with the Department since Nov. 2004. Before being appointed by the Mayor, Carla was Superintendent of the Bureau of Urban Forestry. The Bureau of Urban Forestry maintains street trees and landscaped medians and open spaces throughout the city. We also build new landscapes and green infrastructure, repair sidewalks, build curb-ramps and maintain facilities. She holds a Master’s degree from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and has spent 20 years working on tree and forest conservation both domestically and internationally.

Anna has dedicated her career to weaving nature, culture and history into urban landscapes. At every scale, she is committed to engaging communities and strives to create designs that reflect the communities’ needs. Anna leads complex built projects and master plans across the world. Her most notable projects include Bonnet Springs Park in Lakeland, FL, which is transforming an abandoned railyard into Florida’s own Central Park; the implementation of University Lakes in Baton Rouge, LA, an ambitious project to set the six lake system on a more ecologically sustainable and recreationally rich future; and Hellinkon Metropolitan Park in Athens, Greece.

Shannon Nichol is a founding principal of GGN. Her designs are widely recognized for being deeply embedded in their neighborhoods and natural contexts. Shannon’s work incorporates complex functions into simple frameworks and refined landforms.
GGN is the recipient of the 2017 ASLA National Landscape Architecture Firm Award and in 2011, Shannon and her partners received the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Architecture. Her work has received multiple Design Excellence and Honor Awards from ASLA and AIA. Shannon lectures internationally, frequently juries for design awards, and serves on advisory committees for universities and non-profits.

Nate’s interest in landscape design as a form of storytelling drew him to Los Angeles seven years ago after two decades of practice in Seattle and a Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard. Today, Nate helps lead a team of over 60 landscape architects working across diverse typologies and regions. He is passionate about civic and cultural spaces as well as restorative environments for health and hospitality. Current work includes major commissions in Tulsa, Denver, Phoenix, and Miami. Nate’s north star is an immersive beauty founded on formal curiosity, local materials, and co-creation.

Courtney is the Founding Principal of Goode Landscape Studio and has a background in landscape architecture, visual media, and industrial design. She believes in the power of landscapes to to create healthy, diverse, and sustainable communities. She serves on the faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design, and her work is published and exhibited widely. She holds an MLA I from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a BFA in Design from the University of Texas.

Kate Kennen is founder of Offshoots, Inc., a Boston, MA landscape architecture and horticultural installation practice focused on productive planting techniques and phytotechnology consulting. She grew up on her family’s garden center Pleasant View Nursery, which she now helps operate, and has degrees from Cornell University and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design with distinction in Landscape Architecture. Kate’s book, co-authored with Niall Kirkwood, PHYTO: Principles and Resources for Site Remediation and Landscape Design, received national awards. Kate is also a fulltime faculty member at Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media and Design teaching landscape technologies and planting design.

Dr. Jennifer Bhatnagar is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Boston University studying the ecology, chemistry, and biology of microorganisms in the environment with the goal of uncovering the biochemical mechanisms that microbes use to drive carbon and nutrient cycling through ecosystems. Dr. Bhatnagar focuses on Fungi, because they are directly responsible for moving energy and elements between the biosphere and the atmosphere and have a long and interesting history in human society. Her current research includes the secretomes of plant-fungal interactions, and resistance and resilience of microbial guilds and biogeochemical functions to climate change.