LAF Announces its 2026 Olmsted Scholars

Meet the Landscape Architecture Foundation's newest scholars.

The Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) has announced the 97 exceptional student leaders honored as 2026 LAF Olmsted Scholars, including the two national winners and six finalists.

Miriam Hernandez Medina, a master's student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, was selected as the graduate 2026 National Olmsted Scholar and recipient of the $25,000 prize. Trained at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and shaped by her work at Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Miriam engages in territories where power, politics, and ecology collide. Her practice and scholarship centers contested borders and the waterways that define them, treating them as social and ecological systems rather than fixed lines. With this award, Miriam plans to continue building on a cross-border initiative that reimagines the Rio Grande/Bravo River as a shared landscape that links communities through repair and design. Through a collaborative research project and deep field engagement, Miriam aims to develop an unprecedented digital atlas and framework for designing connective waterways across borders and landscapes.

Henry Ley, a student at Cornell University, was selected as the undergraduate 2025 National Olmsted Scholar and recipient of the $15,000 prize. Henry's upbringing in Asheville, North Carolina, and connection to the natural world drew him to landscape architecture and the opportunity to design spaces that foster connection to the built world. He has developed a strong interest in resiliency design, and his senior thesis addresses river flooding in Western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene. With the support of the Olmsted scholarship, Henry hopes to expand on his thesis research and provide landscape practice solutions for how communities can adapt to climate risk, economic transition, and growing inequity. Through organized workshops of stakeholders- including local officials, community members, ecologists, and design professionals- Henry will facilitate informed conversations and discussions surrounding the potential that landscape architecture can have on the future of resilient cities.

Also honored are six National Olmsted Scholar Finalists. The graduate finalists, who each receive a $5,000 award, are:

• Alejandro Bechtle, University of Oregon
• Kevin Enriquez, Louisiana State University
• Josh Kover, Rutgers University

The undergraduate finalists, who each receive a $3,000 award, are:

• Ahmaud Carroll-Tubbs, Ball State University
• Eveleen Jiang, University of Connecticut
• Dhruv Lokhande, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Two independent juries selected the winners and finalists from a group of 56 master's and 41 bachelor's students who were nominated by their faculty for their exceptional leadership potential. These students each earn the designation of 2026 LAF Olmsted Scholar and join a community of 1,351 LAF Olmsted Scholars named since the program's inception.

The 2026 Olmsted Scholars will be recognized at LAF's 41st Annual Benefit on Wednesday, September 16, in Los Angeles, held in conjunction with the ASLA 2026 Conference on Landscape Architecture.

Now in its 19th year, the LAF Olmsted Scholars Program is the premier leadership recognition program for landscape architecture students. It is made possible with support from: Design Workshop, EDSA, Field Operations, Hart Howerton, HOK, IRONSMITH, LandDesign, OJB, OLIN, Sasaki, Stantec, SWA, Steven G. King, FASLA, and Bill and Kathy Main, Hon. ASLA.

See the entire group of 2026 Olmsted Scholars here.