Crutcher Ross, AIA, was our instructor for my final semester (and also designed the Myrtle Beach Hilton).” My final studio project was to design the Myrtle Beach Hilton. “We had quite a few visiting renowned architect instructors. Her experiences at UNC Charlotte launched Leilani into a varied career. As CoA+A graduates, we were sitting in the first row, and she was talking directly to us with her encouraging message about the future of women in the workplace.” “Barbara Walters gave the keynote address at the ceremony held at the Charlotte Coliseum. Leilani graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture on May 6, 1978. Lois Langhorst, the Architectural History professor, used to have impromptu happy hours for us working women.” Carl Hauser, Linda Searl, and Michael Gallis were our first year instructors. The instructors were fantastic and excitingly different.

“My experience as one of the few women in the program was great,” she says. Five additional women were students in the architecture program at that time: Nancy Beal, Lucy Adams, Lynn Stiles, Rashmi Pandey, and Brenda Poole Torri (pictured with Leilani, below). Leilani was accepted to the architecture program in the summer of 1976. manager to apply to the College of Architecture at UNC Charlotte.” I was encouraged by my Aetna Insurance Accounting Dept. It was there, seeing the construction from the ground up in person, that sparked my interest in architecture. “I worked weekends professionally hanging wallpaper in apartment complexes. “I moved to Charlotte and began working in the accounting field at Aetna Casualty and Insurance, while taking surveying and commercial art classes at Central Piedmont Community College,” she says. When she came to UNC Charlotte several years later to study architecture, she was still a trailblazer, as one of just a handful of female students.īefore coming to UNC Charlotte, Leilani graduated with an Associate in Science degree, Pre-engineering major, from Enterprise State Junior College in Alabama in 1971. So she enrolled in the engineering drawing class in her high school in Aurora, Colorado - the only girl in the class. Army pilot, discovered her affinity for both math and drawing, he encouraged her to study engineering. When Leilani O'Brien Taylor’s father, a U.S. Associate in Science, Pre-engineering major, Enterprise State Junior College, Alabama (1971)īachelor of Arts in Architecture, UNC Charlotte (1978)

Drawing on affinity photo