Laura Kessel Receives LEAP Pipeline Award
The Des Moines Downtown Chamber鈥檚 Leadership Advancement Education Pipeline (LEAP) program, recognizes women for their leadership in advancing and empowering women.
黄瓜社区; Design Landscape Architect and Planner, Laura Kessel, PLA, AICP is the recipient of the 2019 LEAP Pipeline Award. Conferred by the (LEAP) program, the Pipeline Award specifically recognizes an emerging female professional who demonstrates a clear momentum to initiate change and is part of LEAP鈥檚 larger awards program that recognizes women for their leadership in advancing and empowering women.
As an early member of , Kessel led efforts to develop a , a document that offers recommendations for policies to address work-life balance and career development challenges to enhance recruitment, retention and engagement of design firm employees at all career stages. Kessel helped plan events to study work-life balance and lead the task force that developed action-oriented, research-based recommendations included in the manual. In addition, she presented these best practices in Iowa and other states.
Kessel is an experienced project manager and facilitator with deep insight into the issues affecting today鈥檚 workforce. She has presented for the and others on 鈥淏uilding for the Future: Infrastructure for the Next Generation鈥� to provide insights on how virtual, physical and cultural infrastructure impacts both the workplace and broader communities. An active member of both and the , Kessel has a strong focus on sustainable design.