Appointing Directors of Research, Technical Excellence, and Professional Practice
Expanded leadership roles strengthen design culture, build capacity to deliver complex projects, and advance research initiatives across the practice. Decarbonizing landscape architecture and evolving professional practice are unifying priorities.
The work we create reflects a design culture that has been curated and nourished over twenty-five years of Reed Hilderbrand. Today the firm’s partnership announces the appointment of three new directors responsible for advancing facets of that culture that merit greater visibility and strategic investment in the years ahead: Claire Fellman to Research Director; Geoff Fritz to Director of Practice; and Jeremy Martin to Technical Director. These promotions reflect years of leadership in their respective areas of focus, both within projects and broadly across the firm. Cross-sectional teams will support each director in their initiatives, and there are important overlaps and opportunities for cross-pollination. Together with the Director of Finance and Administration and Director of Marketing and Communications, these roles operationalize a vision for the firm’s future set by the partners, including our commitment to climate action agenda set by ASLA and IFLA.
“We are placing three great designers and charismatic leaders at the heart of our culture,” said managing principal John Kett, FASLA. “These roles reinforce our commitment to strong business operations as fundamental to a healthy design culture. We are excited to see them build tools and systems that will help move our practice and our field forward.”
Join us in celebrating associate principals Claire Fellman, Geoff Fritz, and Jeremy Martin as they assume their respective director roles in the following areas.
Claire Fellman, Research Director
A culture of curiosity and inquiry promotes innovation in design at Reed Hilderbrand. Now is the time to foster our research — rooted in practice and fieldwork, grounded in long-term relationships with the land — into a set of new initiatives. Claire will cultivate our networks for local and reclaimed materials; and will strengthen our partnerships with academic institutions, foundations, and industry to broaden the reach of our research. We will pursue performance assessments of our built landscapes, enabling us to fold these insights back into design. Together, these efforts will also support and accelerate the changes in practice necessary to meet our goal to reduce emissions 50% by 2030.
Geoff Fritz, Director of Practice
Our design culture embodies who we are and what we do — it communicates our values, demonstrates our professional expertise, and sustains our collective exploration. It also should be fun. This means cultivating and sharing our culture in ways that elevate joy, togetherness, and rigor in everything we do. Making our design process visible engages us all in the responsibility of the practice, while expanding our collective intelligence.
Jeremy Martin, Technical Director
We create meaningful landscapes in no small part because of the craft and care taken in their development and execution. Jeremy understands that a pursuit of innovation and durability begins at the earliest phases of design and continues through the last days of construction, so maintaining technical rigor in both how we work and the documents we produce is paramount to the success of our practice. We will meet our own ambitious standards across increasingly complex projects, including new commitments made to de-carbonize our work and way of working, by building our capacities to continue training new generations of designers.