Janet Pogue McLaurin, FAIA, FIIDA, LEED AP | Principal, Global Director Workplace Research

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Lecture title: “Designing for the Human Experience”

Janet Pogue McLaurin is a global leader of Gensler’s Work Sector practices and research initiatives. As the firm’s Global Director Workplace Research, which is one of the six centers of the Gensler Research Institute, she has been instrumental in leading Gensler’s global Workplace Surveys and Workplace Performance Index® (WPI) client tool, which measures space effectiveness and workplace experience on projects. She is active in developing workplace strategy and designing innovative workplace environments for a wide variety of clients, including Vanguard, GSA, Capital One, Gallup and The Coca-Cola Company. Janet has spent nearly four decades in Gensler’s Denver and Washington, D.C. offices. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a registered architect, who has served on the Gensler’s Board of Directors for the past two years and currently serves on Gensler’s Practice Area Management Committee.

September 25 | 4:30pm | Regnier Forum | Liz Butler | Real Estate, Zoning & Land Use | Partner at Taft Law

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Liz Butler concentrates her practice in the areas of land use, zoning, entitlements, urban planning, public incentives, historic preservation, and economic development, as well as general real estate transactions. She advises owners and developers of institutional, residential, commercial, and industrial property in acquisitions, dispositions, zoning entitlements, and economic development incentives. Liz counsels private sector clients in their interactions with the City of Chicago and suburban municipalities, working to build consensus between neighboring property owners, government representatives, and community stakeholders.

Through trusted relationships with municipal officials and staff and with knowledge of local land use and zoning codes, Liz achieves results for clients navigating complex entitlement processes. Liz has extensive experience in obtaining approvals for planned developments, zoning amendments, special uses, variations, subdivisions, right-of-way vacations, dedications, site plan approvals, and various municipal licenses. Liz has negotiated and implemented economic development and historic preservation incentives, performed general property evaluations and zoning due diligence, and structured and closed numerous real estate acquisitions and dispositions.

Prior to practicing law, Liz served as a municipal city planner in the Dallas metro area where she was responsible for coordinating the city’s development review process and acted as a liaison between the private development community and the city’s public boards and commissions. With her educational and professional background in urban planning, Liz brings a thoughtful, strategic, and holistic perspective to challenging development issues.

Liz is a member of the American Planning Association and is a certified member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. She is an active member of the Urban Land Institute.

October 4 | 4:30pm | Regnier Forum | Steven Ehrlich FAIA, RIBA | Founding Partner | Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects
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Lecture title: “The Path Forward?”

Future architects face enormous challenges and opportunities to shape the mid-twentieth-century world.

Climate change’s extreme weather is causing rapid political, economic and societal shifts. Solutions demand innovation and expertise: designers, engineers, and scientists must collaborate with a common humanist intention. And importantly: what constitutes teamwork in the digital age when we all desperately need to connect?

Steven Ehrlich, the firm's Founding Partner, learned early on the significance of how architecture responds to the culture and the environment - a self-proclaimed "architectural anthropologist". Upon graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Architecture, Ehrlich spent six years living and working in Africa, serving for two years with the Peace Corps as their first architect in Marrakech, Morocco. He later traveled across the Sahara and taught architecture at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria. The lessons of indigenous building were instrumental in forming Ehrlich's approach to design and continue to influence the firm's work today.

In addition to the Firm Award, Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects counts eight national AIA design awards to its credit, and Steven Ehrlich is a recipient of the AIA California’s prestigious Maybeck Award and the 2015 AIA Los Angeles Gold Medal for outstanding lifelong achievement in architectural design. He has lectured and taught as a visiting professor both nationally and abroad, currently as a visiting professor at the University of Southern California.