Edwina von Gal

Founder / Chair

A leading voice in sustainable gardening and landscape design, Edwina von Gal founded the Perfect Earth Project in 2013 to promote nature-based, toxic-free land care for the health of people, their pets, and the planet. As principal of her eponymous landscape design firm since 1984, Edwina creates landscapes with a focus on simplicity and sustainability for private and public clients around the world. Her work has been published widely, including in The New York Times, Vogue, and Architectural Digest, and her book Fresh Cuts won the Quill and Trowel award for garden writing in 1998. She has served on boards and committees for a number of horticultural organizations, and is currently on the board of What Is Missing, Maya Lin’s multifaceted media artwork about the loss of biodiversity, and an honorary trustee of the Native Plant Trust. In 2022, she received the LongHouse Visionary Award from LongHouse Reserve. Her other awards include the New York School of Interior Design’s Green Design Award, the Isamu Noguchi Award, and Guild Hall's Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for the Visual Arts.

Brian Sawyer

Brian Sawyer is a principal at Sawyer|Berson, which he co-founded with John Berson in 1999. The firm works in a variety of styles and seeks to achieve unique designs in traditional and modern vocabularies. The firm’s work has received several awards and been featured in major publications and books.

Mr. Sawyer founded Brian Sawyer Design, Sawyer|Berson’s predecessor, in 1996 to pursue his interest in architectural design together with landscape architecture. Prior to that, Mr. Sawyer was an associate and head of the landscape architecture department at Robert A.M. Stern Architects where he participated on a wide range of projects in the United States, England, Canada and Japan. These included homes in Aspen, Dallas, Montecito, East Hampton, and Toronto, as well as commercial and institutional projects in Charlottesville and Aspen.

Mr. Sawyer has a Bachelor of Arts from Wabash College in Indiana, where he studied music and classical piano as well as biology, and received his Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia. Mr. Sawyer moved to Manhattan in 1988, where he joined The Central Park Conservancy and worked on various landscape architectural and architectural restoration projects.

David Maupin

David Maupin was born in California and studied art history at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania. He started his professional career abroad in Italy, where he met Rachel Lehmann. Together they opened the Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York’s SoHo neighborhood in 1996 and relocated to the present location at 540 West 26th Street in Chelsea in 2002. They opened a second gallery in 2007 at 201 Chrystie Street in the Lower East Side. Lehmann Maupin inaugurated its first international gallery space in the historic Pedder Building in Central, Hong Kong in March 2013. Lehmann Maupin has garnered a reputation for identifying and cultivating an international roster of visionary and historically significant artists working across disciplines with new and challenging forms of creative expression.

David serves on the board of Edible Schoolyard NYC, a non-profit organization which partners with public schools to build gardens and kitchen classrooms where children can engage in hand-on learning experiences, gaining the knowledge and skills necessary to make healthier choices for life. He is also a member of the selection committee for the international art fair Art Basel Hong Kong.

Anne Templeton

Vice Chair and Secretary

Anne Templeton is a principal at TPD Family Office, which focuses on the development of high-end residential real estate projects. After studying at New York University’s School of Arts and Sciences she worked in the entertainment industry as a senior executive in the acquisition, development and production of high quality cinema and television programing. During her career in the entertainment industry, Mrs. Templeton served as an executive at several prominent film production companies, including: The Samuel Goldwyn Company, Dino De Laurentiis Productions, Edward R. Pressman Films and Marlon Brando’s Franjipani Productions. Mrs. Templeton later formed her own production company (Templeton Productions) with a multi-year first look production deal at New Line Cinema and later served as principal consultant for Amnesty International’s celebrity outreach program.

Mrs. Templeton is also a board member at the Cancer Research and Treatment Foundation at Weil Cornell and supporter of  the Sag Harbor Partnership, Surfrider Foundation and Headstrong Foundation which provides comprehensive for veterans dealing with mental health issues such as PTSD and Military Sexual Trauma. She is a patron of the NY Film Society, Hamptons Film Festival and, formerly, of the Tribeca Film Institute.

Lisa Phillips

Treasurer

The Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City, Lisa initiated the expansion project that has resulted in the construction of a new building in Manhattan’s downtown that is heralded as one of the best new pieces of architecture in the city. Drawing on her long curatorial experience at New York’s Whitney Museum, Lisa has inaugurated shows and programs at the New Museum that consistently challenge the perception and role of art in modern life, making it a vital force in the downtown scene with connections throughout the world supporting new art and new ideas. Lisa has lectured extensively, served as panelist and Jurist for the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Public Art Commission, Fulbright Fellowship Review Committee (among many others) and has served on numerous boards such as The Andy Warhol Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Penny McCall Foundation, etc. Lisa graduated with honors from Middlebury College, attended Doctoral Program of Art History at CUNY, and was a Senior Fellow of Art History and Museum Studies and Helena Rubinstein Fellow at the Whitney.

Laura Lehmann

Laura Lehmann grew up in Geneva, Switzerland and in New York City. She holds a B.A. in Urban Studies from Brown University.

Laura first worked at Warner Brothers in the DVD department in London. More recently she helped setup Kolltan Pharmaceuticals, a biotech based in New Haven and focused on cancer drugs. Laura has raised funds for multiple cancer nonprofits including Gabrielle's Angel Foundation, Livestrong and the Lymphoma & Leukemia Society.

Laura is the founder of Pangee, inc. a media company based in New York, focused on advertising technology and video content.

Tony Piazza

In 1998 Tony Piazza founded Piazza Horticultural, a landscape design/build firm based in Southampton NY. The firm specializes in environmentally conscious landscape projects and ongoing property care using organic maintenance methods. Mr. Piazza believes that linking his client's lives and properties to their natural surroundings is integral to the success of a landscape. Having grown up in the rural settings of upstate New York in the foot hills of the Adirondack Mountains, he is innately informed by nature and natural settings. Tony has a bachelor's degree in Horticulture from Cornell University and sits on the Parrish Art Museums and Longhouse Reserve landscape committees. He also serves as a planning board member for Southampton Village as well as other community based boards and committees related to water quality issues.

Grace Fuller Marroquin

Grace Fuller Marroquin, is a New York-based landscape designer. She was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and in Rome, Italy. Her love for horticulture and garden design started as a child in the shadows of her mother, an artist, who works with photography and nature and is also an active gardener. She graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in Sociology and Photojournalism. Her career began as a fashion editor at Vogue, later becoming the jewelry editor at W Magazine. While at W, Fuller Marroquin launched CINQUE, a highly crafted robe-coat fashion line. Leveraging her experience in the creative and visual fields, in 2018 Fuller Marroquin decided to pursue a long-held interest in landscapes and gardening, and completed a degree in Landscape Design at the New York Botanical Garden’s School of Horticulture where she received her Landscape Design Certification. Fuller Marroquin established Grace Fuller Design in 2019. Her romantic and wild approach to landscape design is driven by a responsible stewardship for her client’s land. She serves on the Global Council of the American Ballet Theatre.

Sorat Tungkasiri

Sorat Tungkasiri was born in Bangkok, Thailand. He is a passionate life long learner, an educator, and a serial entrepreneur. He has over 20 years in the educational industry, and is currently the associate director at Princeton University’s McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. He oversees a state-of-the-art multimedia Lab that supports innovative, interdisciplinary classes and projects that specializes in audio production, video production, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), and machine learning (ML). Sorat Also teaches workshops on media production. He has a background in 3D animation from the Rhode Island School of Design and holds an advance degree in education from Columbia University.

Sorat also serves on the board of Princeton Academy of the Arts, a small non-profit organization which partners with various schools in the surrounding areas to educate, train, and prepare students interested in the world of fine art.