ASLA CoLA 2023: Redefining Mentorship

What does mentorship mean? For the 2023 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture, our panel will take on this important topic to the stage. Jessica Pilon, PLA, ASLA from Smithgroup, Alex Fenech, PLA, ASLA from Hitchcock Design Group, and I - Magdalena Aravena, Founder and Principal of Studio Siembra - plan to brake down the paradigm of traditional mentorship and discuss the many ways to navigate your path to individual and collaborative professional growth. In this educational session, we identify and chat about some of the ways you can seek empowerment, self-awareness, and confidence to maximize your potential in the profession and in life.

As a take-home tool, we also created a worksheet (see link below) that can be downloaded, printed, and shared to help yourself and your peers self-reflect and create a framework for your career going forward, which can then be more succinctly shared with those you’ve identified in your “ships”. At the end of this worksheet, we also provide a list of questions that may help you in starting a wider conversation about mentorship with your team.

Come back after the conference to see some additional thoughts and lessons I learned at the ASLA CoLA in Minneapolis!