This year's Harlow Whittemore Lecture features Chelina Odbert, co-founder and executive director of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), and her colleague Joe Mulligan, and associate director of KDI.

Kounkey Design Initiative (KDI) is a non-profit design and community development organization that partners with underserved communities in the US, Africa, and Latin America to physically transform communities and in the process, improve environmental, economic, and social quality of life. KDI was started in 2006 and is composed of architects, engineers, planners, and the communities they work with to create productive public spaces and empower the people of those communities to address major physical, social, and economical issues they face.

Harlow O. Whittemore (1889-1986) was a nationally recognized leader in landscape architecture and community planning. After receiving his Masters degree in Landscape Design from U-M in 1914, Harlow joined the landscape architecture faculty the same year, where he served as a professor and the chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture and City Planning until his retirement in 1958.