Hello. I'm excited to be the scholarship winner for this year's AIA AAJ conference. As part of the Justice studio at Wakefield Beasley and Associates, I’ve had opportunities to work under licensed Architect, Karen Sicner. As a leading designer in the Southeast region of the United States for detention facilities, she’s taken me under her wing and led me through the interdisciplinary world of Justice Design and the involved programmatic requirements of this architectural genre.
Our projects over the last few years have included RYDCs for the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, commissaries and classrooms for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and innovative concepts through the Georgia Department of Corrections’ transition facility. I’m now managing two of my own projects and am passionate about the project’s completion, to not only the client’s needs, but to the community. I have two girls and I want to be a female role model and prove to them you can be a mom and a professional, caring about both the impact you have in work and family.
For me, the AAJ conference is a stepping stone to a much larger career in Justice Design and a way to share my knowledge of the field with others, and to learn from the those that have experience in the industry.