CSS

Katie Swenson, Assoc. AIA
Senior Principal, MASS Design Group

Katie Swenson is a design leader, writer, educator, and strategist working at the intersection of architecture, storytelling, philanthropy, and social change. She is Senior Principal at MASS Design Group, where she leads Strategic Partnerships, helping mission-driven organizations transform ambitious ideas into investable projects through narrative, fundraising strategy, and cross-sector collaboration.

Her work spans memorials, cultural institutions, education, conservation, public health, and community development across the United States and internationally. Current initiatives include the Sugar Land 95 Memorial in Texas, the Moving Windmills Innovation Center in Malawi, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund's Institute for Conservation Studies in Rwanda, and the Iftin Peace Hub in Somalia.

Across this work, Katie has become increasingly interested in two enduring questions: how architecture helps communities remember, and how it creates opportunity for future generations. She believes architecture is fundamentally about relationships and that design can help communities heal, imagine, and build more just and abundant futures.

Before joining MASS in 2020, Katie served as Vice President of Design & Sustainability at Enterprise Community Partners, where she directed the nationally recognized Rose Fellowship after beginning her career as a Rose Fellow herself. She also founded the Charlottesville Community Design Center.

Katie is the author of Design with Love: At Home in America and In Bohemia: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Kindness, and co-author of *Growing Urban Habitats* She has taught at Parsons School of Design, Columbia GSAPP, and serves as a Gensler Visiting Critic at Cornell University.

Katie received the American Institute of Architects Award for Excellence in Public Architecture and was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Virginia.