Monica is a landscape architect and urban designer whose focus is on merging ecology and innovation to create meaningful and multi-purpose landscapes. She has eight years of experience in work ranging from residential gardens to masterplans and waterfront parks. Prior to joining SWA/Balsley, she was with the urban design studio in CallisonRTKL’s New York office, leading its landscape architecture practice in activating the open space of mixed-use projects. As an affiliate of ARCADIS, she also worked on combining remediation and resiliency strategies for brownfield redevelopments. Monica was a key participant on the team behind Blue Current DC, an award-winning vision for proactive flood mitigation for the National Mall in Washington DC. At DC-based landscape architecture firms, she built a portfolio of international work for US embassies and in the mid-Atlantic region, creating playgrounds, public parks, and urban plazas. She earned her MLA in 2011 from Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center (WAAC), an extension of Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies.