Applications are open for WxLA’s new scholarship that supports emerging women leaders in landscape architecture.
The momentum is building behind the WxLA campaign to create a broader pipeline for women from all backgrounds to excel and thrive as landscape architects. Last month, the cohort behind “The Bigger Time” and the Women’s Landscape Equality (re)Solution (Cinda Gilliland, ASLA; Jamie Maslyn Larson, ASLA; Steven Spears, FASLA; Rebecca Leonard, ASLA; and Gina Ford, FASLA) launched a crowdsourced scholarship to send six emerging leaders to the 2019 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture in San Diego November 15–18, 2019. With ASLA contributing the cost of registration for all six recipients, the funding goal was quickly met, and applications are being accepted for the scholarship until September 1.
The group is eager to get the word out and secure a wide range of applicants. Ford, one of the cofounders of this effort, explains the thinking behind the launch: “The conference is an expansive and powerful forum—one that is a luxury for many and that we would love to make available to emerging leaders where cost might be the limiting factor. As we think about the barriers that prevent women from achieving at the highest level, inability to pay for the conference should not be one.”
WxLA’s partner, the Vela Project, founded by Samantha Solano, Associate ASLA, and TJ Marston, ASLA, has produced a series of infographics that illustrates some of the startling research done on gender equity in the profession, and it’s a good way to get across why this effort is so vital now.
The scholarship is open to emerging professionals, defined as postgraduate but with fewer than 10 years of professional experience. In formulating the scholarship, the intention, states WxLA, is “to promote gender justice and help level the playing field for women in the profession. As such, preference will be given to female candidates (including non-binary and transgendered female candidates).”
Requirements for applicants, including a short bio and essay, can be found here. Applicants and nominators can submit materials by September 1 to Gina Ford, with the subject line WxLA Scholarship Applicant.
You can learn more about WxLA’s activities by following their Instagram @w_x_la.
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