Wendy Hillis Appointed Campus Architect

July 1, 2019

Dear Campus Community,

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Wendy Hillis, AIA, as UC Berkeley’s next Assistant Vice Chancellor and Campus Architect. She joins Capital Strategies starting today, July 1, 2019, and will lead our Physical and Environmental Planning team.

Wendy joins our campus at an exciting time as we advance the chancellor’s commitment to build student housing and address critical replacement or renovation of aging facilities and infrastructure. As Campus Architect she will provide strategic and long range planning for the programming, design, and development of campus properties, including buildings, infrastructure, and landscape projects. Wendy will also lead UC Berkeley’s architectural design review and work closely with external agencies on city and regional planning and development issues and initiatives.

Wendy comes to our campus from New Orleans where she most recently served as Tulane’s University Architect since 2016. At Tulane, Wendy helped steward campus planning and design to accommodate a 12 percent growth in undergraduate enrollment and provided strategic analysis for reinvestment in Tulane’s graduate school footprint in downtown New Orleans.

Prior to Tulane, Wendy served as the Campus Historic Preservation Architect at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, worked as a historic resources consultant to FEMA following Hurricane Katrina, and held positions in San Francisco and North Carolina focused on historic preservation.

In 2007 Wendy was honored as the recipient of the Richard Morris Hunt Fellowship, a biannual award given to one American historic preservation architect to spend 6 months working in France with preservation architects and authorities. Additionally, her leadership, teaching, and service to the profession roles include:

  • Tulane School of Architecture, Adjunct Lecturer (2017-2019)
  • AIA Gold Medal Jury (2018)
  • Society for College & University Planning (SCUP) Honor Awards Jury (2018)
  • AIA National Historic Resources Advisory Group (2014-2018)

Wendy attained an MBA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Virginia, and a Bachelor’s degree from UC Davis.

Wendy will be a valuable addition to UC Berkeley, leveraging her architectural and historic preservation experience to help us address a wide range of design challenges to meet the continually evolving needs of the nation’s top public research university. Wendy’s appointment also marks the culmination of a long search process and I would like to express my sincerest thanks to the entire search committee for their diligent work.

Please join me in welcoming Wendy Hillis to UC Berkeley.

Sincerely,

John Arvin
Associate Vice Chancellor for Capital Strategies