Board of Directors
Brian Wakelin (photo by Solomon Chiniquay)
Brian Wakelin (Board Chair) is an architect and co-founder of design firm Public Architecture, based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
A thought leader and natural collaborator, Brian has worked in the architectural field for nearly thirty years and holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of British Columbia. His design work is widely recognized and has received six AIBC awards and three awards from SCUP/AIA. Brian has presented his work at several national conferences and his writings have appeared in Design Quarterly, Academic Matters Journal, and SAB Magazine. He has a track record for achieving consensus with diverse and complex educational, First Nation and other government clients.
Will Fu
Will Fu (Board Secretary) is a Chinese Canadian designer currently based in Vancouver, Canada. He holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University in the United States and a Bachelor of Architectural Studies from the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
Will is interested in the capacity for rituals, media technologies, and spaces to tell old and new stories alike.
Jana Tyner
Jana Tyner is an art and architectural writer and arts administrator in Vancouver, BC. Her abiding research interest looks to Vancouver’s art and architecture from the 1940s to 1970s, with a particular focus on the generative intersection between the two disciplines, landscape, urbanism and what we can understand and bring forward from this moment of cultural and civic change. She holds an MA in Architectural History from UBC School of Architecture and a BA in Art History and French Literature from UBC. In her role at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia, Jana oversees the publications and communications, including as editor for the catalogues Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts (forthcoming), Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists (2024), Beginning with the Seventies (2020), Tom Burrows (2018),Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (2013) and Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and Their Contemporaries (2011). Outside the Belkin, Jana contributes periodically to architectural writing, including The West Coast Modern House (2014), Cabin, Cottage and Camp (2006) and Building the West (2003).
Laura Hart Newlon
Laura Hart Newlon is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator whose recent research explores materiality, labor, and conditions of visibility related to the body and image-making. Newlon has exhibited her work at various museums, galleries and artist-run spaces internationally, with recent exhibitions and screenings at the Anatolia International Film Festival (Istanbul), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha), Frye Art Museum (Seattle), Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans), Specialist (Seattle), and the Bellevue Art Museum (Bellevue). Her work is included in collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection and Photographic Center Northwest. Newlon holds an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2013) and an MA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Washington (2010). She lives in Vancouver where she is an Associate Professor of Art at Emily Carr University, and parents two young kids who love MadLibs and digging holes.
Robert Wood
Robert Wood is a Venture Partner of RenewableTech Ventures. He previously was a consultant to EPIC Ventures (formerly known as Wasatch Venture Fund). Robert has consulted for several venture funds in Utah and has taken management and board positions in venture fund portfolio companies including Crystal Canyon, Industrial Training Corporation, eTagz, IntelliSchematic, First Choice Solutions and CopperKey.
Prior to his 21-year consulting career, Robert cofounded and served as CFO for 10 years and as CEO for a short period of time for a publicly traded independent power company that developed and financed renewable energy power projects with capacity of over 300 MW and financing lines of over $400 million. Robert also previously served as the CFO for a real estate development and consulting company, a tax specialist at a major CPA firm and a senior researcher for a university based economic and business research bureau.
Robert's current non-profit activities include serving as Immediate Past President of the Board of Directors for the Utah Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he has served as President, Treasurer and has been a board member for 12 years. He also teaches as an Adjunct Professor in the Global Program at Sofia University (formerly known as the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology). He has served on the Boards of Trustees for Rowland Hall St. Marks Schools and the Legal Aid Society.
Robert holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, and a Master of Science degree both in Economics from the University of Utah and a Master of Business Administration degree and a Juris Doctor degree both also from the University of Utah. Additionally, Robert has a Ph.D. in Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and a Master of Arts in Transpersonal Psychology from Naropa University.
Thank you also to our previous Board members:
Marc Christensen, Heidi Westfall, Gary Vlasic, Andrea Beecher, Jesse Walker, Casey Crawford, Cody Derrick, Debra Andersen, Amie Tullius, Colby Brewer, Kate Crews Linsley, Kay Cummings, Scott Hinton, Tatiana Subbotin, Mary Dickson, Jeffrey Berke, Elpitha Tsoutsounakis.
