Architect Thomas J. Schoeman was born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York, and was the first of his four siblings to graduate high school and attend college. Schoeman attended Nassau Community College and then transferred to the University of New Mexico in the early 1970s, from which he graduated in 1974. After spending his first five years out of college working as an architect in New Mexico, Schoeman received a job offer from Jack Miller and Associates (later, JMA Studio) and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1979. He stayed with JMA for many years, eventually becoming partner, president, and Chief Executive Officer. While at JMA, Schoeman designed, among many other iconic Las Vegas buildings, the original UNLV Dickinson Library, the Nevada Power building, One Queensridge Place, and World Market Center as well as expansions to McCarran International Airport and the Las Vegas Convention Center. Before he retired at age 62, Schoeman negotiated the sale of JMA to Baker International, an engineering and architectural firm, for which he worked for a short time as architectural director of. He also arranged for Baker International to agree to donate many early JMA records to Special Collections at UNLV Libraries. In his retirement he designs multifamily dwellings and other buildings that will help create community and revitalize Downtown Las Vegas.

Atmospherium at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Unidentified parking area in Las Vegas, Nevada

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.

Jonathan “Jon” Sparer of Las Vegas, Nevada, is a retired architect who is active in the local Jewish and LGBTQ communities. He grew up on Long Island, New York, in the hamlet of Woodmere, where his father was an importer. After graduating in Architecture from Ohio State University in 1977 Jon moved to Los Angeles, California, where he worked first with architect Jack Chernoff, then with architect Bob Barnett until 1981, when he accompanied his future wife and college classmate who worked for Martin Stern to Las Vegas. Stern sent her to open a field office to supervise the reconstruction of the MGM Grand after it burned in November 1980. Once in Las Vegas, Jon began working for architect Homer Rissman on Steve Wynn’s future project, The Mirage. Although Jon switched firms, he continued working on The Mirage and other Wynn projects with Marnell Corrao, where he would stay until 2001. Ironically, Jon’s original supervisor at Marnell Corrao was his future husband, architect John R. Klai II; Klai’s subordinate in turn was Jon’s Spring Valley neighbor. After Jon left Marnell in 2001, he became a founding principal architect at YWS Design & Architecture. Although he has retired from full-time architecture, Jon has since designed the Temple for Congregation Ner Tamid (pictured above) and The Center (Las Vegas's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer community center). Jon remains active in the AIA Las Vegas Chapter as the incoming president as well as serving as a board member for Jewish Family Services Agency and The Center.