Studio
HEIDI THOMAS, PLA, ASLA
PRINCIPAL, CREATIVE DIRECTOR + WORKER-OWNER
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Heidi Thomas is a Professional Landscape Architect with 23 years of experience as a lead designer and project manager. Her work is grounded in visioning and placemaking projects spanning a wide variety of sectors and site scales and all phases of project development - from planning and design through documentation and construction administration. In addition to partnering with architects and engineers as a landscape architectural consultant, Heidi has led multi-disciplinary teams of professionals as a prime consultant. Over the course of her career she has worked directly with municipalities, county and state governments, real estate developers, institutional clients, and non-profit organizations.
Heidi’s graduate studies in Cultural Sustainability focused on the co-creation of environment, culture, and community in urban agricultural contexts - a theme which continues to serve as the cornerstone of her engagement and design approach across the breadth of her professional work. She aspires to enhance the visibility of and increase access to the field of landscape architecture, particularly among women, minorities, and under-served communities. Her experiences as an adjunct instructor, a community advocate, and a neighborhood organizer for environmental projects in Baltimore have furthered this aim, while also helping to illuminate with others the correlation between social equity and access to nature.
CHERISSE OTIS, PLA, LEED AP, CBLP
ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL, STUDIO DIRECTOR + WORKER-OWNER
Cherisse Otis joined EnviroCollab in 2019, sharing her passion for ecological and community-driven design. She comes to the EC team with 17 years of experience engaging communities, generating concepts, and seeing through the construction of public parks, plazas, and streetscapes, institutional landscapes, and retail developments. She has honed skills and knowledge in native-centered planting design and stormwater/green infrastructure design and has a heart for urban vacant lot renewal and agriculture. Cherisse is honored to collaborate with EnviroCollab and the firm’s recent, current, and prospective partners.
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Cherisse is a Professional Landscape Architect in the state of MD, LEED Accredited Professional, Certified Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional, and Baltimore City TreeKeeper & Weed Warrior. She is also an avid home, church, and community gardener, a wife, and mother to a tiny future master gardener, two fur babies, and many plants.
AMY SAMETSHAW, MLA
SENIOR ASSOCIATE, OPERATIONS DIRECTOR + WORKER-OWNER
Amy Sametshaw is a landscape designer with experience in community engagement and design, transportation design, public health policy and planning, and environmental assessments. She is certified in public interest design by the Social Economic Environmental Design (SEED) Network.
While earning her Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Maryland, she specialized in designing urban agricultural landscapes and GIS analysis for urban planning. Her interests in the planning and design of food systems has led to her return to the University of Maryland as an instructor in the Plant Sciences & Landscape Architecture Department.
Amy is excited about the opportunity to work with EnviroCollab on environmentally sustainable, community-driven design projects. She lives in Baltimore with her daughter, husband, and cat, and enjoys gardening, cooking, and hiking.
TA'KESIHIA BARNES
ARCHITECTURAL/URBAN DESIGNER
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Ta'Kesihia Barnes is an architectural designer and creative with 3 years of experience. She received her Bachelor or Science in Architecture & Environmental Design from Morgan State University in 2019. She will be returning to pursue a graduate degree in landscape architecture in Sprint 2025. She has a passion for architecture, urban design, placemaking, and art. She hopes to fuse her skills in architecture with landscape to create equitable spaces that reinforce social, community, and environmental wellness.
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During her free time, Ta'Kesihia enjoys attending vintage markets, making art, urban sketching, being in nature, traveling and spending time with loved ones. She believes in the power of individuality, and most importantly, uplifting community.
PURVA BORKAR
URBAN DESIGNER/PLANNER
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Purva Borkar is an Architect and Urban Designer who graduated with a Master's degree in Sustainable Urban Design from the University of Illinois Urbana-Campaign in 2024. She has professional experience working with architecture and planning firms in India, as well as internship in the United States. Her interests lie in urban design, micro-mobility planning, community engagement, and placemaking.
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Purva is passionate about creating sustainable, community-centered spaces that foster meaningful connections. In her leisure time, she enjoys watching informative videos, painting, exploring outdoor activities, traveling, and spending time with friends and family. She believes in the power of building relationships, both personally and through design, to transform communities.
LISA WALKER DOUGHTY, MLA
LANDSCAPE DESIGNER
Elisabeth Doughty is a transplant from the Black Forest in Germany where she fell in love with plants and vegetable gardening at an early age. Before she moved to the US she became a certified perennial gardener and earned her Bachelor of Landscape Architecture at the Technical University of Munich. During her Masters of Landscape Architecture at the University of Maryland she discovered her passion for community-driven design. She specialized in socio-cultural sustainable design approaches and added a Masters of Community Planning to better comprehend the political aspects of community grounded placemaking.
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She is a landscape designer and community planner with experience in garden design, community engagement and design, stormwater management, residential and institutional planning and design, edible landscapes and GIS analysis for community planning. She loves all things plants and working with the community to empower people through interactive design processes to take pride in their personal or public places.
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Outside of work Elisabeth loves spending time with her husband, two little daughters, and dog Freyja exploring her hometown Greenbelt, parks and hiking trails. And when she can find some extra time she is growing food year round or testing out plant combinations in her garden.
Collaborators
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CANDACE CHANCE, FOUNDER + CEO, THE VPI FIRM
ENGAGEMENT + EQUITY PARTNER
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Candace, in her role as Founder and CEO of The VPI Firm, is redefining what's possible in community development initiatives.
The firm pushes beyond building "buy-in" and the traditional "doing just enough" effort to get stakeholders to say yes to something. Instead, they support mission-aligned real estate developers, entrepreneurs, and social impact leaders in the equitable transformation and healing of disinvested communities. The firm is working towards a world where previously distressed communities are thriving, regenerative ecosystems creating and supplying what they need to flourish.
They integrate the following principles, approaches, and frameworks:
1) Human-centered design to ensure that those who will be impacted are included in the design process.
2) Trauma-informed and healing-centered care to acknowledge systemic impacts and prevent retraumatization in communities.
3) Equity-centered framework to push the boundaries on community and stakeholder ownership, influence, and agency.
GRAHAM COREIL-ALLEN, MFA
PUBLIC ARTIST + PLACEMAKER, FOUNDER OF GRAHAM PROJECTS
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Graham Coreil-Allen (he/him) is a Baltimore-based public artist making places more inclusive and livable through public art, placemaking, and civic engagement. Coreil-Allen collaborates with neighbors to interpret and activate public spaces through public art for pedestrian safety and play, interactive mapping, radical walking tours, and neighborhood advocacy. From artistic crosswalks and creative wayfinding to immersive sculptures and participatory light art, Coreil-Allen infuses public space with play and intrigue.
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Coreil-Allen was born in Galveston, Texas, grew up in Tampa, Florida, studied at Tulane School of Architecture, completed his BA at New College of Florida and received his MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art.
Since founding Graham Projects in 2005, Coreil-Allen has created public projects and programs for numerous organizations, places, and events both nationally and abroad, including the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, The Deitch/Creative Time Art Parade, Eyebeam, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Washington Project for the Arts, Arlington Art Center, Artscape, Transmodern Festival, VisArts, Current Space, ICA Baltimore, and Light City.
SABA HAMIDI
GRAPHIC DESIGNER + MURALIST
An experienced designer for over ten years in the creative industry – from landscape architecture to graphic design – Saba leverages her strong visual communication skills and a lifelong commitment to the creative arts to effectively share ideas. With a human-centered approach, her focus lies in driving an idea from conceptualization to implementation through storytelling, installations, exhibits, digital graphics, and print collateral. Saba is skilled in design strategy, conceptualization, and visual storytelling, with expertise in digital renderings, illustration, and medium to large scale mural installation.
As a ‘Visual Storyteller,’ Saba gravitates toward media and subject matter that can be used as tools to heal, unit, inspire and bridge divides. For her, the most important works are those that, through collaboration and listening, generate dialogue, enhance a sense of community, and tell stories that need to be heard (and seen).
JUSTIN WILSON, PLA, CPSI
PRESIDENT + DESIGN LEAD OF PLAYSPACE CREATIVE
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Justin Wilson has over 10 years of design and project management experience in outdoor play environments. He is a passionate advocate for inclusive, multi-generational, and community-based play spaces that provide positive developmental benefits for all users. His ability to effectively engage communities and partner with other professionals allows him to create play spaces that users love and are invested in.
MEGAN OLIVER, AICP
URBAN PLANNER + GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Megan Oliver is an AICP-certified planner and urban designer rooted in Baltimore—her hometown and the city where she earned both a BFA in Environmental Design at Maryland Institute College of Art and her Master’s of City and Regional Planning from Morgan State University.
Megan is an urbanist and happiness enthusiast with an acute awareness of the influence environments have on driving choices, behaviors, and feelings. Recognizing the power of places to either nourish or discourage us, Megan focuses her work on improving well-being through urban design and planning. Over the past 12 years, she has utilized a holistic and person-centric approach to help more than one hundred communities share their stories, celebrate identity, shape public spaces, and craft visions of the future. Megan formed her own research-based design practice, Hello Happy Design, to apply the science of human experience and perception to environmental design strategies. Through storytelling, public art, placemaking, livability planning, and responsive spatial design, she fosters strong communities and cultivates happier spaces and places.