Michaele Pride
*Michaele Pride was born on this date in 1956. She is a Black architect and educator.
She was born in Granada Hills, CA, the daughter of Wallace and Leatrice Pride. The oldest of three children, she has two younger brothers, Dodd and Regan. As a young girl, Pride considered becoming a judge or a scientist but found a way to connect her strong aptitudes with mathematics, problem-solving, and art using her humanitarian spirit in her current architectural profession. Her father was both an artist and an architect, and her mother was an entrepreneur, administrator, and community activist.
She graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills in 1974 and received her Bachelor of Architecture from Arizona State University in 1981. Pride started the first woman-owned and operated architecture firm in California. At about the same time, Pride married and had a son, Bryant. She was commissioned along with others to redesign the community areas of Los Angeles ruined by the Rodney King Riots in 1992.
After seven years as principal of her firm in Los Angeles, Pride-Wells moved to Kentucky in 1996 as director of the University of Kentucky’s community design center in downtown Lexington; she became the first African American woman to head an architecture program in a majority institution. As the inaugural director of the Downtown Design Center in the UK, she developed operational policies and created the Lexington Research Roundtable. She directed many projects addressing critical housing and urban design issues throughout Kentucky.
2001 while at the Center, she achieved her Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Pride joined the University of Cincinnati faculty in September 2003 as Associate Professor and Director of the School of Architecture and Interior Design. Her research focuses on the social and political implications of urban design and the dynamics of neighborhood change. Translating theory to practice, she advises neighborhoods and local governments across the United States. She remains sensitive to educating the pursuit of Environmental Justice through architecture.
Professor Pride has taught at UCLA, Woodbury University, and the University of Southern California. She has received design, planning, and community advocacy awards from the LA Cultural Affairs Commission, the National Organization of Minority Architects, the American Planning Association, and the American Institute of Architects.
A loving mother and sensitive parent, Pride had more than 20 local middle school students participate in an architectural summer CAMP (Cincinnati Architecture Mentoring Program) offered at the University of Cincinnati's nationally ranked College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. Pride stated that the goal of the event (and of future efforts from CAMP) is to foster greater awareness among younger students, minority students in particular, regarding the possibilities for and requirements of a design career.
Pride is currently a professor at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture.
