Celebrating Black Creatives

The 2021 Scholarship

SMBW is committed to the education of emerging design talent. Over the past 30 years, the firm has focused on connecting with the academic community to mentor, collaborate, and support student work through internships and externships, open studios, critiques, mentoring, teaching, and scholarship opportunities. With this annual scholarship, we hope to inspire and support the next generation of creative leaders and expand access to design educations.

For the 2021 scholarship, black designers answered the question: How does a designer, and the work they create, have the potential to create positive community impact?

Meet our winners below!

  • Deanne Humphrey

    Florida A+M University
    Architecture

    “I have a family mantra that my father taught me early on in life: Perspiration + Preparation + Prayer = Infinite Possibilities… I aspire to make a difference in people’s everyday lives, big and small. Being an architect gives me the opportunity to help people by designing homes and buildings that are ecofriendly by integrating design that help the environment and community. There is a lot I want to accomplish during my college years and beyond, but ultimately I want to be able to help people, change their lives for the better and create a sustainable world through my designs by pursuing a degree in architecture.”

  • Lisa Moon

    Virginia Commonwealth University
    Interior Design

    “Designers conceptually tackle difficult social issues of inequity, accessibility, poverty, trauma, and invisibility such that they prompt micro/macro change in physical structures, materiality, and functional design. Critical to the positive impact is expanding the literal concept of participatory design, such that the designer becomes immersed in the community, which reduces their anonymity, increases their level of sensitivity and empathy for the community being served while strengthening the trust, familiarity, and reception of the design by the community members.