Joy Kuebler’s landscape architecture office, located behind her home near Buffalo, looks like a garage. Inside, however, there are no cars or tools, but instead a modern design studio: vaulted ceilings, Italian lighting, bamboo floors. The studio’s roof, covered in grasses and other plants, was the first “green” roof in western New York.

Here, Joy and her staff plan projects contributing to Buffalo’s schools, its downtown, and area universities, such as Niagara University, for which the firm designed a roof covered by grasses, perennials, and succulents.

“I am enjoying expanding my role in Buffalo’s redevelopment,” she says.

Joy, the mother of two children, returns to Cornell regularly as a guest presenter in landscape architecture and applied economics. Her landscape architecture class recently raised money and built a healing garden for one member who has cancer.

To honor survivors of domestic violence, Joy recently built a tribute garden in her community.