The built environment tells the story of who we are and who we choose to become.
BWAF invites you to the Bevy Leadership Awards at The Shed, an evening honoring women whose leadership is reshaping the systems, spaces, and decisions that define our world.
For nearly three decades, BWAF has worked to expand visibility, influence, and opportunity for women across the built environment. What began as an act of recognition has grown into a platform for collective action that challenges inherited structures and makes space for new voices, new futures, and new ways of leading.
The Bevy Leadership Awards are both a celebration and a convening. This gathering brings together architects, engineers, developers, designers, advocates, and cultural leaders who believe equity is a design principle. Together, we honor those shaping change and imagine what comes next.
As BWAF enters its next chapter, this year reflects an organization in evolution, grounded in legacy, energized by possibility, and focused on the future of the built environment.
Join us as we build what’s next, together.
Sharon Prince is the CEO and Founder of Grace Farms, a globally recognized cultural and humanitarian center in New Canaan, Connecticut. This boundary-defying public space advances good locally and globally through its initiatives of nature, arts, justice, community, and faith. Since opening in 2015, Grace Farms has garnered numerous prestigious awards for contributions to architecture, environmental sustainability, and social good, including the AIA National Honor Award and the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize.
Recognizing exploitation in the global building materials supply chain, Prince mobilized leaders in the built environment and created the Design for Freedom Working Group to address this issue. She launched Design for Freedom in 2020 with a groundbreaking report exposing forced labor embedded in construction. She has since released the Design for Freedom International Guidance & Toolkit, equipping professionals worldwide with ethical sourcing strategies and initialized Pilot Projects on three continents. Her leadership has earned recognition from Fast Company, which named her among the Most Creative People in Business for Cleaning up Construction and she also received the AIA NY and Center for Architecture’s NYC Visionary Award. Prince guest lectures at universities and industry associations worldwide, and has contributed to books, articles, reports, and media, sharing Grace Farms’ interdisciplinary approach to creating positive change and breaking down barriers between people and sectors.
David J. Cohen founded The I-Grace Company, Commissioned Private Residences, Inc., in 1988. Conceived as a firm with a deep commitment to artisan level craftsmanship and the best of modern management practices, I-Grace allowed David to re-envisage the traditional patron-builder relationship. Over the years, I-Grace has grown into a diversified national construction company, one of the leading purveyors of high-end residential services in the country.
Cohen’s introduction to the world of construction came at an early age, when his parents purchased a former boarding house in the Cobble Hill area of Brooklyn, New York in 1964, which they converted into a single-family house. The transformation of this brownstone and Cobble Hill’s nascent gentrification served as a backdrop for his lifelong passion for historic architecture, renovations and the changing fabric of the urban landscape. As CEO of The I-Grace Company, Cohen remains passionately committed to his founding vision: an uncompromising commitment to quality and service. While the company has grown over the years to include an array of diversified service offerings coast to coast, the primary objective of the firm remains unchanged: I-Grace strives to provide highly specialized advisory and construction services that span the lifecycle of a client relationship. David is committed to lifelong learning, retaining a youthful curiosity and giving back. He supports a wide range of philanthropic activities from the arts to education.
Erleen Hatfield, PE, FAIA, is the Managing Partner of Hatfield Group Engineering. She founded Hatfield Group Engineering in 2018; it is one of the few women owned structural engineering firms in the US. Her firm encourages women and all engineers to meet their full potential through opportunity, training and mentoring. Erleen is widely recognized as one of the industry’s leading structural engineers and has over thirty years of experience in the structural design of buildings including stadiums, arenas, towers, museums and more. She is licensed as both an engineer and architect and is a fellow of both.
Erleen has published and spoken widely on innovative structural design, sustainable structures, advanced computational design methods, and the intersection of engineering and architecture at A/E/C conferences worldwide. She has served on many committees and councils including the NYC Department of Buildings Code Update Committee and served on the Applied Technology Council, a non-profit that oversees engineering research for earthquake, flood, and wind mitigation; and the Beverly Willis Foundation, a national non-profit that promotes women in the AEC industry. Erleen has taught structures at Yale University, in the School of Architecture, for over 20 years.
Julia Gamolina is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Madame Architect, a digital magazine focused on the extraordinary women transforming our world. Since starting Madame Architect in 2018, she has grown it into a globally recognized award-winning publication with readers in more than one hundred countries. In professional practice, Gamolina has focused on the strategic development of architecture practices for the past eight years, Currently as an Associate Principal at Ennead Architects, she spearheads business development, communications, and strategic initiatives. Previously, she worked on all phases of design for mixed-use, retail, residential, and commercial office projects in New York City and Los Angeles, and on retail, higher education, and museum projects in Korea, Brazil, and Austria.
Gamolina frequently speaks about how she developed Madame Architect — and topics like architecture, career development, entrepreneurship, and brand building — across college campuses, international conferences, and at local events. Her writing has been featured in A Women’s Thing, Fast Company, Metropolis Magazine, and the Architect’s Newspaper, and she writes a Substack, “Both, And.” She has taught graduate-level professional practice and media seminars at Pratt Institute, and is a frequent juror for design competitions and various fellowships. Gamolina earned her Bachelor of Architecture at Cornell University, graduating with the Charles Goodwin Sands Medal for exceptional thesis. She was born in Novosibirsk, later immigrated to Toronto and then to Colorado Springs, and is based in New York City, having also lived and worked in Austria, Italy, France and Brazil.
Amale Andraos, AIA, HFRAIC, is a principal of WORKac, which she co-founded with her partner Dan Wood in 2003. An award-winning architecture and design practice, WORKac is committed to creating architecture that engages environmental and social concerns, with a particular emphasis on public, cultural, and civic projects. WORKac was the recipient of the 2023 Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, was named the #1 design firm in the US by Architect Magazine and was selected as an AIA New York State “Firm of the Year.” The practice has achieved international acclaim for projects such as the RISD Student Success Center, the Miami Museum Garage, Pilares in Mexico City, Marea in Batroun, Lebanon, and the North Boulder Public Library in Colorado. Current projects include the Sibley Dome Renovation at Cornell University, The People’s Theatre: Centro Cultural Inmigrante in New York City, a Library Renovation and Addition at Vassar College, and the Beirut Museum of Art.
Andraos serves as a Professor and Dean Emeritus at Columbia University, where she recently served as Special Advisor for the Climate School. As the first woman dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (2014-2021), Andraos strived to empower the next generation of architects to engage with urgent issues such as climate change, social equity, and the impact of data and technology on the built environment. During her tenure, the school also made meaningful strides towards increased diversity among faculty and students. She was named one of the “25 Most Admired Educators for 2016” by DesignIntelligence, which described her as integrating “real-world problems into the curriculum with a bold vision and strong leadership.” Andraos’ publications include 49 Cities; Above the Pavement-the Farm; The Arab City: Architecture and Representation, co-edited with Nora Akawi; We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge; and most recently, Buildings for People and Plants, in collaboration with Dan Wood.
Tess McNamara is an architect and sustainability leader advancing decarbonization and climate action across the built environment. She currently serves as the Sustainable Buildings and Infrastructure Lead at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where she develops decarbonization strategies for complex buildings and infrastructure systems. Previously, McNamara worked as a Senior Consultant at Arup, advising public and private clients on climate-responsive design, adaptive reuse, and retrofit of existing buildings.
McNamara’s research and writing explore the intersection of architecture, policy, urbanism, and climate, with a particular focus on reuse as a pathway to decarbonization. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Architectural Digest. McNamara holds a Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture, a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment, and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Princeton University. Tess sits on the faculty at the Yale School of Architecture, where she teaches the course “Bad Buildings: Decarbonization through Reuse, Retrofit, and Proposition.”
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Every Emerging Leader Scholarship is $1,000. Your support helps us increase access for early to mid-career women to build networks of allies and support for each other as they lead in industries traditionally dominated by men.
Every new Pioneering Women of American Architecture entry costs $500 in research and new scholarship. Help support the production of more entries, documenting the lives and work of women who have made important contributions to American architecture.