A global thinker, Mani Ardalan Farhadi is a creative thought leader as Senior Facilities Planner at Stanford University. In her new role, she will be meeting with Stanford Faculty and Facilities in the School of Medicine to help determine optimum layouts for their offices, laboratories, research and collaborative space. She brings three decades of experience in the architecture profession, forging long-term relationships and contributing thoughtful solutions. Mani worked 1 year at Taylor Design (San Francisco), 16 years at Steinberg Hart (San Jose) and 14 years at Sasaki Associates (Boston). She is integral to campus projects for public and private educational clients throughout the US, from early inception to the very end. Described as ‘the client in the room,’ Mani brings a keen ability to listen and build consensus within a user group setting. Leveraging her expertise in strategic planning and programming, she enjoys leading workshops, stakeholder presentations, and conferences nationwide.
Furthermore, her analytical strengths lead to research, benchmarking and post occupancy evaluation, as well as collaborating on future strategies for clients. Mani’s leadership extends into volunteer duties: former Board of Trustee member for Los Gatos Union School District, and Chair of the Bond Oversight Committee, for which she received a ‘Citizen Architect’ award. Mani is a graduate of Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA), obtaining a B.A. in Architecture, with design studios taken at MIT (Cambridge, MA) followed by a B.Arch. from Boston Architectural College (Boston, MA). A lifelong learner, she continued her training with CSBA Management in Governance courses (Sacramento, CA), SCUP Planning Institute Level III, Leadership Los Gatos (Los Gatos, CA) and LEED AP (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).
In her free time, she reads articles about education trends, volunteers for Women in Architecture, as well as Iranian-American cultural groups and is an avid advocate for many causes. She and her husband of 30 years are proud of their two sons; one is an actor (23, UCLA grad) who lives in LA, and one is an engineering major who finished freshman year (18, UW Seattle).