The SOM Foundation recognizes three undergraduate students as winners of the 2022 Robert L. Wesley Award

The SOM Foundation has announced three winners of the 2022 Robert L. Wesley Award recognizing BIPOC undergraduate design, architecture, and engineering students across the United States. 

The award was established in 2020 in honor of Robert L. Wesley, SOM's first Black partner. The awards program comes with a $10,000 cash prize and a yearlong mentorship with a BIPOC practitioner or academic for further career guidance.

“It was an absolute pleasure to work with and learn from the first ten Robert L. Wesley Award fellows. The goals, work, and ambitions that they have shared during our mentorship sessions have been an inspiration to all of us,” Iker Gil, the Executive Director of the SOM Foundation, said of this year’s winners. “As we enter the third cycle of the award, we are looking forward to supporting Bria, Gabriela, and Kai and learning about their ongoing contributions in their universities and communities.”

Bria Miller — Howard University

Bio: "[Bria] is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Howard University pursuing a Master of Architecture. Her first experience with architecture — although she didn’t know at the time — was as a young child. Growing up between the Bahamas and the United States, she enjoyed reimagining household items, turning cardboard boxes into play spaces, and building forts out of blankets. Years later, she took a chance on architecture school and ended up falling in love with architecture and design. Alongside her academic endeavors, Miller is a self-taught graphic designer for the Howard Black Liberation Coalition, a collective of student-led radical organizations seeking to support each other in the struggle toward Black liberation by serving the needs of the diaspora in her school community and beyond." Read more here.

Kai Benjamin Parel-Sewell — California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo

Bio: "[Kai] is a fourth-year Bachelor of Architecture student at California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. Raised by an architect and a photographer, Parel-Sewell’s passion for the visual arts began early. He served as the AIAS chapter Academic Events Coordinator and served as a Second Year Studio Teaching Assistant. Parel-Sewell worked as a Graphic Design Intern at the Cal Poly Corporation. At One World Architecture, he worked for a few years as an intern-architect. Currently, Parel-Sewell is enjoying a fantastic experience as an architectural designer at Carrier Johnson + Culture in San Diego." Read more here.

Gabriela Robles-Muñoz — Iowa State University

Bio: "[Gabriela] is a fifth-year Bachelor of Architecture student at Iowa State University, pursuing minors in both Sustainability and Critical Studies. At Iowa State, she has been awarded for exceptional project development, most notably with respect to how her designs aim to reconcile pragmatic concerns within critical conceptual frameworks. Outside of her schoolwork, she is a research assistant under the 3DAIT Housing Project, works with the Department of Architecture as an undergraduate assistant, and is the co-leader of DATUM Student Journal of a/Architecture, a student-run publication focused on critical academic discourse surrounding architecture and related topics." Read more here.

Learn more about the awards program and past winners here. Applications for the 2023 awards program will begin in September.