Asian American Career Ceilings: Achieving Success in Architecture

We are pleased to invite you to attend the next Committee of 100 Asian American Career Ceilings Initiative webcast, which will feature a discussion entitled “Asian American Career Ceilings: Achieving Success in Architecture” featuring two leading Asian American architects, Mark Lee, Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a principal and founding partner of the architecture firm Johnston Marklee, and Calvin Tsao, Partner and Founder of the architecture firm of Tsao & McKown and a Committee of 100 member. The webinar will include a panel, Q&A, and a networking session at the end. The panelists will discuss the obstacles they had to overcome in their careers, their perspectives about the career ceiling environment now and in the future, and their advice about how Asian Americans can achieve success in architecture.

Peter Young, Chair of the Initiative and a Committee of 100 Member, will be the moderator. After the conclusion of the fireside chat, there will be a Q&A session during which members of the audience may ask questions. The webinar will be held on March 27, 2023 from 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm Eastern Time. A virtual networking session will follow for 30 to 45 minutes after the panel. There is no fee for the webcast.

Speakers:

Mark Lee

Mark Lee is the Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard GSD and a principal and founding partner of the Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee. Lee has also taught at Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the Technical University of Berlin, and ETH Zurich. He has held the Cullinan Chair at Rice University and the Frank Gehry International Chair at the University of Toronto.

Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized internationally with over 50 major honors and awards. Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning fourteen countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent projects include the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas; a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the new UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California; and the design of the new Dropbox global headquarters in San Francisco. Current projects include a renovation and expansion of the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University in Orange, CA; the renovation of the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center; and the renovation of the Hauptbau at the Kunstmuseum Basel, in collaboration with Christ & Gantenbein.

Publications on Johnston Marklee include House Is a House Is a House Is a House Is a House (Birkhauser, 2016), 2G N. 67 (2014), El Croquis N. 198 (2019), and A+U N. 614 (2021). Johnston Marklee’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Architecture Museum of TU Munich. Together with partner Sharon Johnston, Mark was the Artistic Director of the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Calvin Tsao

Graduating from UC Berkeley before receiving his Master of Architecture from Harvard University, Tsao forged his own path by founding Tsao & McKown in 1985 with his partner and fellow classmate, Zack McKown. Calvin has orchestrated the building of environments across a variety of scales and locales with current projects including the reconfiguration of the National Palace Museum of Taiwan – plus additions, and in Atlanta, working with a university and their private partner to develop a community of 3,000 residences, half of which are designated to be affordable.

Other significant works include the Sunbrella Headquarters in Burlington, NC; Sangha, At One Hotel in Suzhou, China; the renovation of the Jewish Museum permanent collection in New York, Brower Park Library in Brooklyn, Jianfu Palace Museum in The Forbidden City, Beijing, Suntec City in Singapore, as well as product design: a lipstick case for Shu Uemura.

Tsao envisions his role as that of a cultural mediator striving to harness global experience and technology in order to express the essence of local cultures and contexts. He has taught at the Harvard GSD, Cooper Union, Syracuse University and Parsons School of Design. He serves as the current board Chair of The American Academy in Rome, the former Vice President for Design Excellence at AIA New York | Center for Architecture, the President Emeritus and board member of The Architectural League of New York and, is a current member of Committee 100. Along with his partner, Zack McKown, Tsao received the 2022 AIANY Medal of Honor and in 2012 was a recipient of the National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, as well as the Legacy Award from the Museum of the Chinese in America, to name a few.

▦  Moderator and Chair of the Committee of 100 Asian American Career Ceiling Initiative: 

Peter Young, CEO and President, Young & Partners, Committee of 100 Member

Peter Young is CEO and President of Young & Partners, a boutique investment banking firm focused on the life science and chemical industries. He manages the firm and is actively involved in client transactions and financings. Under his leadership, Young & Partners has established and maintained its position as a highly regarded firm serving the corporate strategy, M&A, restructuring and financing needs of clients worldwide. He was previously head of industry groups at Salomon Brothers, Schroders and Lehman Brothers, a senior private equity executive with J.H. Whitney & Co. and a senior member of Bain & Co., the corporate strategy firm.

Mr. Young received a BA in Economics from Yale, an MS in Accounting from NYU, and MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated as a Baker Scholar. He is a CPA and a Chartered Global Management Accountant. He serves on a number of boards of directors, both corporate and non-profit and is a board member of Société de Chimie Industrielle, a leading life science and chemical industry non-profit organization and on the Editorial Advisory Board of Pharmaceutical Executive.