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2026 AIA Baltimore candidate bios:
AIA Baltimore
Wadiah Akbar, AIA
Nominated for the AIA Baltimore Executive Committee
(2026 Secretary/2029 President)
Wadiah Akbar has been actively involved in the AIA Baltimore community from the beginning of her career. Since her involvement in Civic Lab in 2019, she has risen to become a co-chair of the Emerging Professionals committee, helping reignite participation post-pandemic. Her current role on the AIA Maryland board is allowing her to gain a deeper understanding of the civic responsibilities of architects. As an architect at Quinn Evans, she takes a leadership role in early career recruitment and mentoring, and she regularly engages with local university architecture programs as a guest critic. Wadiah is driven by a commitment to forging connections between various groups to amplify their collective impact and supporting the next generation of architects.
Ariana Parrish, AIA
Nominated for AIA Baltimore Director
Ariana Parrish is an architect and community advocate who has been active in Baltimore and Philadelphia’s design community since 2012. She is passionate about expanding access to architecture and design education for young people, with a particular focus on mentoring emerging Black and brown talent.
Ariana previously served as Community Outreach Chair for Baltimore NOMA and as a member of AIA Baltimore’s Future Architects Resources (FAR) Committee, where she helped bring design education into local classrooms. She continues to mentor students at Morgan State University and has led several initiatives advancing equity in the profession, including directing the 2024 NOMA National Conference Legacy Project and facilitating a session at the 2023 conference.
As the Founder and Executive Director of Nosreme Baltimore, Ariana leads arts-based community programs that connect local creatives, residents, and students through public art and cultural exchange. She brings to the AIA Baltimore Board a deep commitment to mentorship, representation, and building bridges between architecture, education, and community.
Joseph Taylor, AIA
Nominated for AIA Baltimore Director
Joe Taylor is a licensed architect in Maryland with ten years of professional experience. He spent seven years with TCA Architects before joining Moody Nolan, where he currently serves as a Project Architect. Throughout his career, Joe has demonstrated a strong commitment to advancing the architectural profession and supporting emerging designers.
He is completing his two-year term as the Young Architects Representative for the state of Maryland and currently serves as a Director on the AIA Maryland Board. Joe is also a past Co-Chair of the AIA Baltimore Emerging Professionals Committee and an active member of ULI Baltimore.
Passionate about fostering supportive professional environments, Joe recently introduced and helped successfully launch the AIA Maryland Early Professionals Friendly Firm Designation program, recognizing firms that champion the growth and development of early-career architects.
Dr. Samia Kirchner, International Associate AIA
Nominated for Associate Director (Second Term)
She is currently tenured Associate Professor of Architecture Urban Design at Morgan State University, where she led the Undergraduate Design Department and the Morgan Internationalization of Education Task Force. She has taught architecture, urban design, historic preservation and urban heritage management at the American University of Sharjah in the UAE, the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Dr. Kirchner’s research and practice focus on the (trans)formative role of water in City Design, Urban Regeneration and Redevelopment. She is the Middle East Area Editor for the forthcoming Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, Editorial Member of the Journal of Arabian Studies, and Desk Reviewer for ICOMOS on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture selected Dr. Kirchner as Area Coordinator for the Arabian Peninsula and she has chaired two cycles of the Kenneth F. Brown Culture and Architecture Design Award. She is Co-Chairing AIA Baltimore’s Equity Committee and has led the Leadership Committee of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) in 2019-2020. She is currently also serving as Board of Trustee Member and Chair of the Governance Committee of the Interfaith Partnership for the Chesapeake.
Matt Brazis
Nominated for Allied Member Director
Matthew Brazis is a seasoned construction Project Manager at The Whiting‑Turner Contracting Company. Matt has worked at WT for 13 years leading construction projects with a diverse range of clients and industry partners, including projects in healthcare, higher education, sports & entertainment and life sciences. Matt has cultivated great relationships with architects, engineers, contractors and consultants to ensure projects are successfully executed from start to finish. Matt especially appreciates the immense teamwork required to successfully complete complex construction projects.
Matt currently serves on the board of directors of the Public Works Experience, whose mission is to promote the value and importance of Public Works and inspire future generations to gain knowledge and get involved with Construction, Engineering and Public Works.
Matt is an active member of multiple industry organizations and previously served as the Chair of the Young Member Committee of the Construction Managers Association (CMAA)- Baltimore chapter from 2020 to 2023.
Marian Glebes
Nominated for Allied Member Director
Marian April Glebes is an artist, researcher, and preservation planner based in the historic Jones Falls River Valley of Baltimore, MD. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2004, her MFA from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in 2009, and her MCP in City and Regional Planning and MSHP in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design in 2024. For her research at UPenn, Glebes was the inaugural recipient of the Aaron Wunch Award for Public History of the Built Environment (2025) and contributed to Yonderlands with Billy Flemming at the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology (2021-2022). She was the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the Baltimore Museum of Art Joseph Center for Education (2015-2016), and a three-time National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Creative Placemaking awardee for her collaborative work in the public realm (2011, 2016, 2018). In the last decade, Glebes has taught part-time at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s General Fine Arts Department, provided technical assistance and policy solutions to artists, architects, and property owners on artist run spaces through her work at the Baltimore Arts Realty Corporation and the Neighborhood Design Center, and contributed to research and design for heritage preservation projects as part of the Preservation Planning team at Quinn Evans, AIA’s 2024 Firm of the Year. She is currently working as a cultural and preservation planning consultant, serving as Chair of the Lower Jones Falls River and Inner Harbour Team for the Jones Falls River Valley watershed’s 2025-2027 Strategic Planning initative, and stewarding The Mobile Community Brick Factory & Monument – a public art process that supports social and spatial change in order to build a new kind of community-driven monumental public space using personalized, hand-made bricks. Glebes is the 2025-2026 Rubys Alumni Grant awardee from the Robert W Deutsch Foundation for this project, which also received a 2025 Public Art Across Maryland grant from the Maryland State Arts Council. Cultural landscapes and place-based inquiry underpin her interdisciplinary practice – she asks how we make a place, and how a place makes us.
AIA Maryland Candidates
Martina Reilly, AIA
Nominated for AIA Maryland Board Director – First Term
Martina Reilly is a Vice President at Moseley Architects. She has served on the board of AIA Baltimore for nine years, including serving as 2023 AIA Baltimore President. She has previously co-chaired AIA Baltimore’s Committee on Environment and Resiliency. The chapter credits her for helping to secure a National AIA Disaster Response grant to establish the AIA Baltimore Disaster Assistance Committee and train Maryland architects in disaster assessment. She has also served on AIA National’s Resilient Education Working Group, helping to develop AIAU coursework for the Resilience and Adaptation certification program. In 2014, the AIA Baltimore honored Martina with the Community Architect of the Year award for her work with the AIA, resilient design and disaster assistance.
In addition to her contributions to the AIA, Martina has worked for more than 10 years with the Neighborhood Design Center (NDC) of Maryland, an organization that offers pro bono design services to community groups. She is a member of the NDC Hall of Fame for her work in projects across Baltimore City and Prince George’s County.
Martina earned a Bachelor of Science in architecture from the University of Maryland. During her career at Moseley Architects, she has been integral to the success of a wide range of projects, including adaptive reuse, community master planning, sustainable design, multifamily residential new construction, and renovations.
Renata Southard, AIA
Nominated for AIA Maryland Board Director – Second Term
Renata Southard, AIA, NCARB, is an urban designer, artist, educator, planner, and architect licensed in Maryland. In her primary role, she leads an interdisciplinary team of designers and planners for Baltimore City Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). Ren and her team provide community design services and technical assistance, coordinating development to strategically align investment. Prior to her position with DHCD, she was Principal of Urban Design for the Baltimore City Planning Department. Before joining the city, Ren worked in private practice, where she was head of the Baltimore office for Autotroph Design, a full-service architecture firm focused on adaptive reuse, historic preservation, mixed-use development, and master planning.
Ren has worked as a designer and project manager in Minneapolis, Detroit, and Nashville. After settling in Maryland in 2012, Ren completed her Master of Architecture, with a Certificate of Urban Design from the University of Maryland School of Architecture. While at UMD, Ren was awarded the Outstanding Graduate Assistant award for her teaching work. Ren continues to teach and lecture regularly in the region and is engaged with the Schools of Architecture at Virginia Tech, University of Maryland, Morgan State University, and M|I|C/A.
