Deborah Berke

Deborah Berke is the Principal & Founder of TenBerke, an internationally recognized architecture studio and design firm, and Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, where she has been a professor since 1987.

One of the first women to enter the architecture industry, Berke previously taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, of which she was a fellow. She has been a juror in numerous architecture and design award programs and lectures throughout the US and Canada.

Berke is the first laureate of the Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize; was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and has received the AIA’s prestigious Topaz Award, the highest honor in architectural education. Forbes magazine has recognized her accomplishments by naming Berke to its "50 Over 50" list of 2023.

Berke is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a Trustee and Vice President of the Urban Design Forum, a James Howell Foundation Board Member, a member of the Yaddo Board of Directors, and a member of the Pritzker Prize jury. Over the past two decades, she has also served as trustee and vice president of desigNYC; founding trustee of New York City’s Design Trust for Public Space; trustee of the National Building Museum; Chair of the Board of Advisors for the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University; trustee of the Brearley School; and a vice president of the AIA New York Chapter.

She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (B.F.A. and B. Architecture), from which she was also later awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Art, and The City University of New York (M. Urban Planning in Urban Design).