Landscape Architecture Spring 2026 Lecture Series: Cultivating Careers in LA Panel

Join us in 175 Warren Hall for a panel discussion with Jackie Martinez, Jeff Caster, Steve Lefton, and Ujijji Davis Williams. This panel will be discussing cultivating careers in landscape architecture.

Jackie Martinez is a landscape architect and Senior Project Leader at Snøhetta, where she has worked for the past decade, beginning her career there as an intern and growing into a leadership role. Her work operates at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and ecological systems, shaping relationships between culture, environment, and public life. With dual degrees in architecture and landscape architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, she approaches design as an evolving process—less about composing static scenes and more about creating conditions for life, change, and public experience. based thinking into spaces that invite occupation and social life. Her work includes major public and cultural projects such as 550 Madison in New York City, and the Museum of Environmental Sciences in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Jeff Caster is best known for his 20+ years as Florida’s State Transportation Landscape Architect. Trusted and challenged to direct a $50+ million annual investment in transportation landscape architecture; Jeff crafted proposed legislation, rules, policies, procedures, standard plans, standard specifications, research reports, manuals, and training to improve the quality and efficiency of planning, design, construction, and maintenance of 217,341 acres of public land, highway right-of-way, his state’s most visible and visited landscape. Areas of specialization included highway beautification, scenic byways, outdoor advertising, wildflowers, urban forestry, greenways and trails, ponds, and aesthetics. For notable contributions to the management and conservancy of natural resources and public
landscapes, the ASLA awarded Jeff the 2024 Lagasse Medal.

Steve Lefton is an accomplished executive with more than 30 years of experience, showcasing a progressive career from a staff landscape architect to Executive Chair of one of the nation's most respected transportation, infrastructure, landscape architecture, urban design, and planning firms. After stepping into the President and CEO position in 2018, Kimley-Horn experienced phenomenal growth, expanding from an $800 million to a more than $2 billion company, recognized as Engineering News-Record’s (ENR) fourth largest pure design firm and landing at number eight on ENR’s Top 500 AEC Design Firms. Steve has received numerous accolades for his work from ASLA, APA and EPA. He speaks regularly about design, leadership, and workplace culture. In 2022 he was recognized as CEO of the Year by EFCG.

Ujijji Davis Williams is a practicing landscape architect, urban planner, and researcher based in Detroit. She is the Founding Principal of JIMA (jee-mah) Studio, where she leads culturally grounded landscape architecture and urban design projects, including cultural centers, neighborhood plans, greenways, and other public space projects across the country. She has been recognized as a Notable Alumna by Cornell University’s Department of Landscape Architecture and as the 2023 Outstanding Recent Alumna by the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. In 2020, she received the Michigan ASLA Emerging Professionals Award. Ujijji has taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Detroit Mercy.