Around the Table

One thing that still surprises some of the BAC’s peers is that the College is an independent private institution governed by its own fiduciary Board of Trustees, entrusted by society with responsibility for the BAC’s stewardship and future. Its 24 members carry legal and fiduciary responsibility for the College’s academic, financial, and institutional future. That makes who sits around the table consequential. Their different professions, experiences, and points of view help shape where the BAC goes next.

“The BAC is a very special place, and I don't know anything that's quite like it in the country,” said David Manfredi, Trustee, and CEO and Founding Principal, Elkus Manfredi Architects.

“In many ways, higher education is in crisis; you see small schools disappearing often. But the BAC keeps marching on and getting better every year.”

This never-ending work happens around the boardroom table but also in board members’ work in the design field, their philanthropy, and the moments they spend meeting current students, connecting with alumni, and sharing the BAC with the global community.

What the BAC Does Best

Board Secretary Elizabeth “Liz” Minnis B.Arch'89, an architect and planner, spent more than 25 years serving the public sector at the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM). Her decades-long career in the built environment did not initially feel within reach. Instead, after earning a first degree in Political Science at Boston University and spending time working on policy advocating for childcare access in Boston, she signed up for a continuing education drafting class at the BAC on a whim.

She ended up making the BAC a big part of her life forever, enrolling in the Bachelor of Architecture program soon after.

“I basically thought I could never be an architect, particularly because no one in my family had been one. That first studio drafting class was a rite of passage in a way–to know I could make it through that– and I ended up being the valedictorian of my class at the BAC,” Liz said.

With lived experience juggling work and earning her degree, Liz’s belief in the BAC stems from what she’s seen its students do best: “Connecting the work you’re doing while in school with the education you’re receiving. That integration of practice, combined with the excellence and accessibility, results in a judgment-building experience that’s very grounded and yet progressive.”

The connection that Liz applauds extends beyond the classroom-real-world connection and into the broader BAC network she became part of. Both jobs she worked during her time at the BAC– first at the Boston College Planning Department, and then at Boston-based firm CityDesign Collaborative– were thanks to BAC faculty at those firms who recruited her. As she transitioned from local firms to her position at DCAMM, Liz remained passionate about social justice initiatives, which naturally segued her into her roles first as Trustee and now as Secretary of the BAC board.

“I can really put my heart and soul into the BAC because it combines both my professional passion for urban design, with an aspect of social justice through its tenet of open enrollment, which brings people into the field that may have otherwise been shut out,” said Liz.

What Access Really Means

While Trustee Kishore Varanasi’s first introduction to the BAC came through his firm, CBT Architects, and its longstanding relationship with the College, it was his personal connection to the BAC’s commitment to open admission and access that drew him in.

“I came to this country as an immigrant, so I understand the importance of access and opportunity, and I also understand what it means for the BAC to attract people from a wide range of backgrounds,” said the Urban Design Principal.

It’s not just the access that sets the BAC apart, according to Kishore, but the level of resources that access provides, from the faculty who are practitioners of the industry, to the structures of student support, like the ability to work while earning their degree.“Open admission does not mean lowering expectations or academic rigor,” Kishore said. “It means the institution has to enable a broader range of individuals to succeed in architecture and the design professions.”

Kishore, who has given his time as a Trustee for nearly a decade, cross-applies vast experience in consequential urban transformations– from the NorthPoint neighborhood in Cambridge, MA, to master plans for Masdar City's Phase 2 neighborhood in Abu Dhabi–to initiatives like the new Master of Design Studies in Urban Design.

“BAC students aren’t your typical students. Many are working, studying, supporting families, and navigating very different paths into the profession, and that brings a perspective that is incredibly valuable to architecture and to our cities,” Kishore said. “Ensuring those voices are part of the profession helps broaden the perspectives represented in design and makes architecture more responsive to the communities and geographies it serves.”

An Active Experiment

When Trustee Samira Ahmadi walked past 320 Newbury for the first time in 2011, she was immediately drawn in to explore an exhibition of student work installed in the McCormick Gallery. Samira, Founding Principal of enviENERGY Studio LLC, recalls being fascinated by the showcase of projects and wishing that every school had the capability to demonstrate the work their students did in such an impactful way.

While she was drawn to the built environment as a child through her father’s work as a structural engineer, Samira’s path to the industry wasn’t straight and narrow. “I consider my own personal and professional life journey as unconventional. The way that the BAC commingles a professional practice with an education is also unconventional, and that resonated deeply with me,” she said.

During her Master’s degree in Architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio in the late 2000s, Samira became more interested in the technical side of things: how design impacts the built environment and the ways people engage with it. She discovered Carnegie Mellon University’s cutting-edge Master’s in Building Performance and Diagnostics, which focused intently on examining those questions further, and earned her second Master’s degree there.

Her Boston-based firm, enviENERGY Studio, specializes in energy performance analyses and sustainable solutions for new construction and existing buildings, and it recently celebrated its tenth anniversary.

What began as a fascination with student work grew into an adjunct teaching position at the BAC focused on energy modeling in the built environment, and in 2024, an appointment as a BAC Trustee. Samira’s expertise in building performance and sustainability has made her an integral member of the Board’s Facilities Committee, where she’s helping to spearhead the decarbonization of 320 Newbury by connecting the nearby underground geothermal wells to power a portion of the building’s energy system.

“Through this decarbonization work, we’re providing another example of how the BAC is a living laboratory for the architecture industry; giving students another touchpoint of participation while they’re pursuing their education,” Samira explained.

The kickoff to the project was celebrated on October 5th at the Light up the Wells event, and featured a special illumination installation to bring the story of the wells to light. The event began a month-long celebration of the rededication of 320 Newbury, and the start of the campaign to fund the completion of the geothermal well project.

What Comes Next

Over the recent years, it’s been the Board that has helped to guide the BAC through a magnificent transition to a top-ranked choice for design, through the appointment of Mahesh Daas, the school’s eighth president, its expansion from a greater-Boston area institution to a global design center with a student and alumni community reaching across all 50 states and 74 countries.

Trustees like David, who founded Elkus Manfredi in 1988 alongside the late Howard Elkus and has served on the board for over a decade, have worked to expand the network of like-minded advocates to join the BAC’s community and future.

President Mahesh Daas, who also serves as a trustee, sees the Board as one of the few places where the BAC can hear from many different worlds at once.

“Trustees are a unique treasure because they see the BAC from places I cannot,” Mahesh said. “Around one table, you have people shaped by different professions, communities, generations, and life experiences. That gives us something immeasurable: a range of advice that reflects the breadth of the society we ultimately serve.”

For Mahesh, that breadth is valuable precisely because the Board’s work is about the strategic future.

“The Board’s job is to ask what must be protected, what has to evolve, and what we owe the people who will inherit the BAC after us.”