Meet Your Speaker
2022
Graduation Speaker to be announced.
2021
Mia Lehrer is president and founder of Studio-MLA, a landscape architecture, urban design, and planning practice dedicated to advocacy by design with a vision to improve quality of life through landscape.
Ms. Lehrer was appointed to the Board of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power by Mayor Eric Garcetti and confirmed by the City Council on October 21, 2020. She has served as an advisor to numerous public agencies, including the United States Fine Arts Commission under President Barack Obama, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission, and the Los Angeles Zoning Advisory Committee.
The scope of her concerns is vast—from the master planning of cities to the design of intimate plazas and gardens—with a particular emphasis on progressive landscape design, resilient and people-friendly public places, urban waterways, and catalyzing work for a climate-appropriate future. Ms. Lehrer was a member of the team that delivered the Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan and the 2020 Upper Los Angeles River and Tributaries Master Plan.
She also serves on the board for the Southern California Development Forum and in 2010 she was elevated to Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Ms. Lehrer holds a Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University and Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
2020
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2019
Iris Yamashita
Academy Award-nominated screenwriter
2018
Frank Pearce
Blizzard Entertainment
2017
Stan Lee
Chairman Emeritus, Marvel Entertainment
