KT Announces Co-Managing Directors

KieranTimberlake’s Board of Directors is proud to announce the next chapter in the firm’s leadership. The six-person Management Group is now co-led by Managing Directors Marilia Rodrigues and Jon McCandlish. The Group also includes Business Strategy and Communications Director Huwayda Fakhry, Principal Richard Maimon, Principal Jason E. Smith, and Research Director Ryan Welch.

Following the firm’s transition to an ESOP in January 2025, KieranTimberlake has taken a deliberate and thoughtful approach to reimagining its leadership structure, one that reflects the full breadth of the practice, from operations to design.

Marilia and Jon bring exactly the vision, energy, and clarity of purpose this moment calls for. As co-Managing Directors, they will set the strategic direction of the firm, driving operational excellence in service of exceptional design.

Their leadership will advance a firm culture rooted in shared responsibility and collective ownership, deepening the alignment between how KieranTimberlake is organized, how it makes decisions, and what it stands for as a design practice. 

Marilia Rodrigues, AIA brings more than two decades of expertise to her role as Managing Director, combining a deep commitment to design excellence with an instinct for solutions that are both inventive and enduring. In this elevated capacity, she not only continues to lead the practice’s most significant projects but also shapes the standards for operational excellence that define how the practice works at every level.

Her portfolio spans the full breadth of public, cultural, and academic life. Among her landmark civic contributions is Dilworth Park, a four-acre park and transit hub anchoring Philadelphia’s City Hall, alongside the Edgar N. Putman Event Pavilion at the James A. Michener Art Museum and the Master Plan for the Central Delaware Waterfront in Philadelphia. Marilia has also made her mark on some of the country’s most celebrated university campuses, with work at Cornell University, Wellesley College, and Yale University.

As Principal-in-Charge of the East End Transformation at Washington University in St. Louis, she guided the creation of a sweeping new campus gateway—a landscape that integrates LEED Platinum buildings including an addition to the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, an expansion of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, two new multi-use buildings, and an underground parking facility. She is currently serving as Principal-in-Charge on the Sackett Building Renovation and Additions at Penn State.

Jon McCandlish, AIA steps into his role as Managing Director bringing a record of realized, research-driven work that pushes the boundaries of what architecture can accomplish for institutions, cities, and the people who inhabit them. Alongside his continued leadership of complex projects, Jon applies that same rigor to guiding the firm’s design direction, cultivating the next generation of architects, and advancing data-informed approaches across the practice.

His project experience ranges from diplomatic infrastructure to cultural landmarks to cutting-edge research facilities. Notable works include New York University’s John A. Paulson Center, a new life sciences hub at 2300 Market Street in Philadelphia, and the new net-zero, mass timber pavilion at Penn’s Landing Park. Previously, Jon worked on the U.S. Embassy in London, the award-winning Pound Ridge House, and UC Santa Barbara’s Henley Hall or The Institute for Energy Efficiency. His planning work is equally wide-reaching, with transformational master plans completed for Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, the Philadelphia Zoo, The Rosenbach Museum & Library, and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Jon also plays a central role in KieranTimberlake’s long-running partnership with the U.S. Department of State, including the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center (FASTC) and multiple projects for the Bureau of Overseas Buildings and Operations—work that demands both precision and an acute sensitivity to context at a global scale.