Elise Woodward AIA, LEED AP (2007)
Transforming Design—Advancing the Profession—Elevating Civil Discourse
Back to WID Award of Excellence recipients.
Biography
Elise Woodward AIA, LEED AP is a former Principal at Shepley Bulfinch, where she was a senior member of the firm’s education and healthcare practices. Her recent clients included Children’s Hospital of Michigan, George Mason University, Austin College, and the University of Houston. She served for nine years on the firm’s board of directors, including four terms as board chair.
Full Biography
Elise Woodward AIA, LEED AP
Architect , Shepley Bulfinch
Women in Design Award of Excellence, 2007 winner
As a professional architect, Elise focused on the design of complex buildings for college, university and healthcare clients. Gardens, a part of each design, served as outdoor rooms extending and amplifying the indoor spaces. Hospital gardens, in particular, offer patients and families opportunities for reflective and healing time apart from the essential technical procedure spaces.
Her ability to embrace complexity and contradiction in the design processes, together with the trust that she forged with her clients, provided clear, certain leadership for her clients to use changes in physical space as catalysts for institutional transformation.
Elise draws deep respect from her peers across the design community for her judgment, her guidance, and her commitment to advancing the profession including guiding young architects to develop their skills as the next generation of leaders. She is the current chair of the National Ethics Council of the American Institute of Architects, member of the Massachusetts Designer Selection Board, and Past-President of AIA Massachusetts and former BSA Board member.
In her own community, she served as an elected member and chair of the Select Board applying her design process leadership skills locally: articulating civil discourse as a goal, she has worked to forge strategies for community agreement on future courses of action in ways that do not disenfranchise dissenting voices. Her work on the Envision Concord 2030 comprehensive long-range plan set a framework for decision-making, giving Concord a powerful tool in advancing the choices it has made for its future, particularly in its effort to be a highly sustainable community.
