Grace Kim is a principal at Schemata Workshop, an architectural collaborative in Seattle. Thework spans a wide spectrum of public and private project types such as mixed use, single family, civic structures, institutional, and hospitality.

Prior to co-founding Schemata Workshop, she was a principal at Place Architects and project manager for Bumgardner Architects, both in Seattle. She started out her architectural career at SOM in Chicago where she was also an active member of the Young Architects Committee of AIA Chicago. Her successive position with the International Masonry Institute allowed her to work closely with architectural interns as well as the AIAS, at both the national and chapter levels.

Grace has been actively involved nationally with intern issues since attending the Summit on Architectural Internship in 1999. She served on the Collateral Internship Task Force and the AIA Mentorship Task Group that produced the website Mentorship: A Journey in Collaborative Learning. She facilitates a mentor group in Seattle called the Laddership, which meets monthly to discuss practice and design issues that are of interest to the group. This group of five interns represent a wide range of experience levels to nurture the spirit of laddered mentoring, where each individual serves as a mentor to the others based on their immediate experiences.

Grace received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from Washington State University and is working towards a post-professional Master of Architecture from the University of Washington. She is NCARB certified and a registered architect in Washington, and Oregon. Grace served as a Washington State IDP Coordinator for two years and in 2004, she was the first to be awarded the Emerging Professionals Mentorship Award by the NAC/YAF. Grace is also the author of forthcoming book, A Survival Guide for Architectural Interns and Career Development (John Wiley Inc., 2006).

This past fall, Grace received a grant from the University of Washington Valle Program which allowed her to take a two-month sabbatical in Denmark to research cohousing. In addition, she has traveled extensively
to countries such as Great Britain, Russia, Greece, Italy, Finland, and the Baltics as well as more than half of the fifty United States.

Grace enjoys downhill skiing, traditional Korean dancing and drumming, swimming, cycling, cooking, and traveling.