President, Pratt Institute
Frances Bronet is president of Pratt Institute in New York City. A leader at the forefront of interdisciplinary learning, Bronet previously served as senior VP and provost at Illinois Institute of Technology; acting provost and dean of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts of the University of Oregon; and held numerous roles at RPI. Her extensively funded work on multidisciplinary design curricula—from architecture and engineering to dance and fine arts—has been highly recognized. Bronet received architecture and engineering professional degrees from McGill University and her graduate degree from Columbia University. She has practiced architecture in multiple award-winning offices.
Design Leadership Is Not an Accidental Practice
Frances Bronet’s academic career trajectory looks linear, from assistant professor to President. Her professional life began deep in architecture and design practice. A lifetime of experiments in unfamiliar communities of employment, friends, cities and colleagues created a set of unpredictable ecosystems. Student leadership to community engagement, engineering to dance, architecture to disability studies—these overlaps were strategically planned to allow for both the serendipitous and the likely. Bronet will talk about crafting a malleable trajectory for a design career, using specific examples from both her career and her personal life.
