Liza Gilbert
Liza鈥檚 career weaves together public urban space, design and landscape history. She is Co-Chair of the Board of the Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy, a public-private partnership with the National Park Service to save the 27-acre wild garden, Dumbarton Oaks Park, part of Beatrix Farrand鈥檚 masterwork in Washington, D.C. She also sits on the board of the Prospect Park Alliance, working to preserve Olmsted and Vaux鈥檚 526 acre urban oasis in Brooklyn, NY. Liza had the honor to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts during the Obama presidency from 2014 to 2019.
Her design experience includes work at the New York firms of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and Judith Heintz Landscape Architecture, as well as Douglas Reed Landscape Architecture in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her passion for landscape architecture began in Italy with her first job. The pivotal experience of working in Rome for Giannini/Vagnetti Architetti opened her imagination to the deep history, meaning, and possibility of the profession and its impact on shaping how we see and inhabit our worlds. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College and a Master鈥檚 degree in landscape architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.