Joined by partner Eric Bunge, Hoang cofounded the Brooklyn-based nARCHITECTS in 1999 with a belief in architecture as an agent of positive change that can connect people and environments in unexpected ways. Born in Vietnam and trained in Amster­­dam and New York, Hoang brings a global outlook—and an “obsession with greenery”—to the firm’s design culture. In addition to winning the 2023 National Design Award in Architecture, nARCHITECTS’ work has been recognized by the Architectural League, the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters, and the AIA. Hoang is an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Griffin is founder of urban American city (urbanAC), a planning and design practice working with public, private, and nonprofit partners to reimagine, reshape, and rebuild more just cities and communities. Griffin also serves as professor of practice in urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and is founding director of the school’s Just City Lab. A former appointee of the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, she has also acted as strategic advisor to several philanthropic organizations, including The Heinz Endowments and Bloomberg Philan­thropies. Griffin’s current practice is built on her early expertise and experience as a licensed architect and associate partner at SOM and later that of serving as a public official directing planning and community development in Washington, D.C., and Newark, working to shape equitable growth and design excellence.

Jones is the founder of Seattle-based ­atelierjones. Devoted to disrupting 20th-century design and construction methodologies, her award-winning, all-woman-owned and -led firm drives new lower-carbon pathways within architecture and construction at scale. Advancing prefabricated mass-timber systems for over a decade, atelierjones has completed over a dozen mass-timber projects and has designed many more, from institutional buildings and large-scale urban housing to single-family homes. She was a key figure in the multi-year effort to develop the tall-wood provisions of the International Building Code. An affiliate associate professor of Architecture at the University of Washington, Jones was awarded the AIA Seattle Gold Medal in 2023.

Also based in Seattle, Simonen is founding director of the Carbon Leadership Forum and a professor of architecture at the University of Washington. Licensed as an architect and structural engineer, she connects professional experience in high-performance building design and technical expertise in life-cycle assessment to spur collective action toward bringing net embodied carbon to zero through cutting-edge research, cross-sector collaboration, and the incubation of new approaches. Under her management, the Carbon Leadership Forum has grown, becoming globally recognized for advancing embodied-carbon data, methods, and policy, as well as for inspiring and empowering collective action to achieve those ends.