When Julie Brinkerhoff-Jacobs talks about the landscape architecture firm her parents, Barbara and Don Brinkerhoff, began in their home in 1958, she brightens and leans in. Since joining her parents’ firm in 1982, Julie gradually assumed responsibility for Lifescapes International’s sales, marketing, financial management, and strategic planning and serves as President and Chief Financial Officer. Here, Brinkerhoff-Jacobs talks of her life before joining and outside of Lifescapes: her family; her youth; her charity, HomeAid; her leadership activities; and her personal interests. Her focus, though, is Lifescapes and the Las Vegas people and the iconic projects that not only altered the ways that visitors perceive Southern Nevada but also changed the business of Lifescapes. “Not just in Las Vegas, but around the world people hire us because of what we've done in Las Vegas.” For Julie, one of the greatest joys of working alongside her parents was discovering them as peers—learning to know them as two people who “chose to live an incredibly artistic life together.” Her mother passed in 2014, but Julie and her father continue to work with and learn from each other.

A view of Howard Hughes installing a radar safety system for passenger planes in Culver City, California.