 I'm Mia Lehrer, the president and founder of Studio MLA. We live in practice by core values. We think holistically. We do so through working collaboratively with nature, transforming places to perform multiple purposes at once, and designing them to adapt with the ability for future generations. We believe in the transformative power of landscape architecture, urban design, and planning. Our projects realized over the last 25 years as a firm together include designs that have redefined their genres and gratefully led to more work. This is about the rethinking of urban edges and leftover spaces that can make a real difference to communities. We are incredibly inspired by our team of amazing people and our clients and collaborators whose courage has allowed us to build catalytic projects that epitomize the way we use design for advocacy and advocacy to inform design for the future. We're beginning to really understand what we do well, and one of the things that I would hail as a calling to Mia and the work that she's put in is somebody that is a social connector. It is about bringing together a sense of common understanding to all walks of life, to really understand a place as diverse as Los Angeles is, and bring that together into a fold where we can really call upon what is design as an advocacy effort. We believe in the transformative power of parks and public spaces and streets and plazas and little intimate gardens and nooks and crannies to heal and to teach and to empower people. Collaboration is really important in our office because we really are a diverse team. That's one of the reasons I was drawn to Studio Emily in the first place. There is a great range of experience levels in this office, diversity of where people came from, their educational backgrounds, and also their interests. We are very fortunate to be working with a very talented and diverse team. I think we are just extremely supportive of each other. We encourage each other, and oftentimes if we have to, we challenge each other to make sure we are always putting our best foot forward. Landscape architecture has the means to remake our cities to be more just, beautiful, and resilient. In the face of climate change and social and racial inequity. We are excited to use this incredible international platform to inspire more solutions to the pressing contemporary issues of our time.