Natalie Ramírez, AIA, is a licensed architect and the founder of Natalie Ramirez Architecture + Impact Collaborative, a mission-driven practice based in Iowa City. She earned her Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, with a field of study in Architectural Design, from Stanford University. She is registered in California, Washington DC, Florida, Nebraska, New York, and Iowa, and holds LEED Accredited Professional (BD+C) and SEED Professional certifications. Over more than sixteen years of practice, she has led civic, cultural, and community projects across the country, including the Bechtel Family Center for Ocean Education and Leadership at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (LEED Gold, AIA Monterey Honor Award), new U.S. embassy campuses with the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, and new memory care residential care facilities throughout Iowa. Earlier in her career she worked with Pritzker Prize laureate Alejandro Aravena at ELEMENTAL in Santiago, Chile.

Across projects as varied as an aquarium education center and a memory care home, one conviction has stayed constant in Natalie's work: the built environment is never neutral. People spend the majority of their lives inside buildings, and those spaces shape how they feel, behave, and connect, whether or not they were designed to. She thinks critically about conventions that treat buildings and interiors as passive objects. To her, design is an active force that can make a space feel safe and welcoming, support the people who use it every day, and serve as a catalyst for change in a community. For Natalie, every project is a chance to prove that thoughtful design and real impact belong together.