Honoring Elizabeth Harris, FSDA, CDFO

2026 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner

More than two decades of leadership, innovation, mentorship, and service to SDA and the profession of design administration.

There are people in every organization who show up year after year — not because someone asked them to, and not because it advances their career — but because they genuinely believe in the mission and want to help make the organization stronger.

For more than two decades, Elizabeth “Liz” Harris has been one of those people for SDA.

At the 2026 SDA Annual Conference, Liz was honored with SDA's Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her sustained leadership, service, innovation, and lasting impact on both SDA and the profession of design administration.

But what truly distinguishes Liz’s contributions is not simply the number of roles she has held — it is the impact she has had within them.

“SDA gave me an identity and a tribe. It’s a place where it is recognized that we are not just support — we are structural.”

— Elizabeth Harris, FSDA, CDFO

Over the years, Liz has helped shape and strengthen SDA in ways that continue to influence the organization today. She participated in the 2014 Certification Revamp Task Force, helping transition SDA’s certification program from an experience-based model to a knowledge-based framework. She also introduced the concept for the CDFA-yoU study group, creating a supportive and scalable path for certification candidates that helped strengthen engagement and long-term success.

Her influence continued through SDA’s rebranding efforts, website initiatives, and the national Marketing & Communications Committee. As MarCom Co-Chair, Liz championed the use of tools and systems that improved communication planning, scheduling, and analytics while helping the committee adopt a more structured and strategic workflow.

In recent years, Liz has also worked closely with SDA Headquarters to improve organizational processes, streamline workflows, and implement thoughtful automation strategies designed to support a volunteer-driven organization. Her focus on building sustainable systems and documenting processes has helped create a stronger operational foundation for SDA’s future.

The jury noted that Liz’s record is defined not simply by participation, but by transformation.

In 2020, Liz was elevated to SDA’s College of Fellows — one of the organization’s highest honors — recognizing her exceptional contributions to SDA and excellence in design firm management. She later served as Chair of the Fellows Committee and continues to support mentorship and leadership development initiatives within the organization. She also holds SDA’s highest certification designation, the Certificate in Design Firm Operations (CDFO), reflecting her ongoing commitment to professional growth and advancing the profession.

Beyond SDA, Liz continues to share her expertise through presentations, podcasts, articles, and her Substack, The 2040 Studio, where she explores AI, process optimization, operational efficiency, and designing sustainable systems for long-term success. Through her thought leadership, she frequently highlights SDA and helps expand awareness of the organization within the broader A/E/C community.

In her acceptance remarks, Liz reflected on the role SDA has played throughout her career — not simply as a professional organization, but as a community that helped shape her identity, build lasting relationships, and elevate the role of design administrators within the industry.

What makes Liz especially deserving of this recognition is not only her legacy of service, but the fact that she continues to lean into the future of the profession. She remains deeply engaged in conversations about innovation, leadership, and the evolving role of design administration — while continuing to mentor, encourage, and support those coming up behind her.

As she shared during her remarks, “I see nothing but a bright future ahead for administrators.”

Her contributions have strengthened systems, supported members, elevated programs, and helped SDA evolve in meaningful and lasting ways.

Liz Harris’s legacy is remarkable — and we have every reason to believe it is far from finished.

Congratulations to Elizabeth Harris, FSDA, CDFO, recipient of the 2026 SDA Lifetime Achievement Award.

Meet the 2026–2027 SDA National Treasurer: Frances Carrillo

Three decades in operations. Two terms as a nonprofit treasurer. One clear conviction: SDA’s books and SDA’s membership are the same conversation.

We’re continuing our series introducing SDA’s 2026–2027 National Executive Committee with a leader who sees the Treasurer role as more than a ledger: Frances Carrillo, Project Accountant and Senior Project Administrator at MIG, Inc. in San Diego, and SDA’s incoming Treasurer.

Fran came to SDA through the Southern California chapter and has built her national presence through the Marketing & Communications committee, where her work on membership outreach has been hands-on rather than theoretical. She’s a two-time GEM Leadership Award recipient and a familiar face at EDSymposium, with recent attendance in Lexington, Rapid City, and Spokane. Inside MIG—a 260-person, 16-office firm doing more than $63 million in annual revenue—she runs the financial operations of the San Diego office, partners directly with project managers on project health, and contributes firmwide through the Proposal Review Team and large-project accounting. Before MIG, she spent 15 years as Associate Business Manager at M.W. Steele Group, where she was the operational backbone of a small architectural practice.

Her financial leadership experience also extends well beyond AEC. Fran currently serves as Treasurer for the League of Women Voters of California, a role she’s held since 2020, and previously served as Treasurer for the LWV San Diego board from 2018 to 2023. That’s six-plus consecutive years of nonprofit fiduciary oversight at the board level—exactly the kind of governance experience the SDA Treasurer role demands.

What makes Fran’s candidacy distinctive is the angle she brings to the role. She doesn’t think of finance and membership as separate problems. With years on the MarCom committee and active membership work, she sees revenue and visibility as two ends of the same lever—and she’s come to the Treasurer chair determined to pull on both.

“We have tools and programs but not the members or revenue to strengthen our position in the AEC industry. With my continued work on MarCom and on the membership committee, I hope to marry the objectives of the two and work with ExCom in tackling this ongoing issue.”

— Frances Carrillo, Incoming SDA National Treasurer

That’s the kind of clarity SDA needs in the Treasurer seat right now. Membership trends aren’t just a marketing concern—they show up directly in the financial statements—and Fran is one of the few candidates whose career has straddled both sides of that line long enough to speak to them as one issue.

Expect her term to be marked by collaborative, practical work: the kind of cross-committee coordination that turns strategy decks into actual outcomes. Her CliftonStrengths—Arranger, Relator, Maximizer, Individualization, Strategic—read like a job description for the role she’s about to take on.

Please join us in welcoming Fran to her role as SDA National Treasurer. Drop her a note in the SDA Discussion Hub, look for her at chapter and national events, and consider how your own committee work might connect to the membership and revenue conversation she’s ready to lead. It’s going to be a great year to build, grow, and lead together.

Meet the 2026–2027 SDA National Vice President: Jennifer M. Greene

Three decades in AEC marketing. A New York chapter built on showing up. One clear plan for getting more members certified.

We’re continuing our series introducing SDA’s 2026–2027 National Executive Committee with a leader who has spent her career convincing principals, clients, and prospects that the work behind the scenes is what makes firms succeed: Jennifer M. Greene, CDFA, Assoc. AIA, Director of Marketing at Ronnette Riley Architect in New York, and SDA’s incoming Vice President.

Jenn’s path through SDA has been a steady climb at both the chapter and national levels. She has served the New York Chapter as President, Vice President, Past President, Treasurer, Advisor to the Board, and on the Finance, Marketing, Programs, and Lunchtime Roundtable Committees, among others. She has edited the chapter’s SkyLines Journal and earned New York’s Award for Outstanding Service as well as the National SDA Lifetime Achievement Award. At the national level, she has just completed two years as Secretary, and has attended five consecutive National Conventions — Lexington, Colorado Springs, Tampa, Rapid City, and the virtual 2021 convention.

Professionally, she is a marketing and communications executive with more than thirty years inside AEC firms — Ronnette Riley Architect, The Durst Organization, Ammann & Whitney, Dattner Architects, and Kliment Halsband Architects, where she built the marketing department from the ground up. That career gives her something the Vice President role can use: a working understanding of how firms make decisions, how principals weigh investments in their people, and how to make a case that actually lands.

Her focus for the term is membership, with certification as the through-line. She is direct about the strategy. SDA needs to keep articulating the tangible value of membership, and the CDFO credential is the clearest signal of operational expertise the profession has. Her plan is to personally reach out to high-potential members already serving on national committees — people who have already shown they want to be involved — and invite them into the certification path. She has also drafted a one-pager aimed at firm principals making the business case for supporting certification: retention, project performance, leadership pipeline, and the message it sends to clients about operational rigor.

“Have you considered certification? I see you as exactly the type of professional SDA is elevating.”

— Jennifer M. Greene, CDFA, Assoc. AIA

That is the line she plans to use, and it tells you something about how she leads. She is not waiting for members to opt in on their own. She is going to tap them on the shoulder, name what she sees in them, and walk alongside them through the process — study groups, study buddies, Deborah Gill’s sessions, the whole support system SDA has built. For members who hesitate because they are afraid of failing, she is open about her own road to the credential and the simple message that goes with it: keep trying.

What Jenn brings to the Executive Committee is the discipline of a marketer applied to the work of membership. She thinks about audiences, messages, and what moves people to act. She is organized, communicative, and known for follow-through — the qualities her chapter colleagues have relied on for years. Expect a VP year focused on visibility for certified members, a clear pitch to firm leadership, and steady, person-by-person recruitment into the credential.

Please join us in welcoming Jenn to the Vice President role. Connect with her on the SDA Discussion Hub, consider joining the Membership Committee’s work this year, or reach out directly if you have ideas about how SDA can better support members on the path to certification. It’s going to be a great year to build, recruit, and elevate together.