This year, Karen Keist founded Karen Keist Landscape Architects, specializing in sustainable design strategies, campus planning, urban and streetscape design, schools and play areas.

“People say I’m ‘gutsy’ to go out on my own in this economy, but you’ve got to be optimistic,” says Kiest. She has teamed up with Talley & Kolb landscape architects to assure adequate staffing needs for projects.

Keist continues as the landscape instructor in the city-sponsored Sustainable Building Professional Certificate Program, a nine-month program presenting strategies and tools for sustainable building. “Often the goals of sustainable site development are different from those of building. You can have the greenest building around, but if you build in the suburbs, you are destroying the very resource you are trying to preserve. I’m a strong supporter of making the urban environment more attractive, and protecting rural areas from development.”