ABSTRACT
In a profession dominated by men wearing black, she wears white—when gateways of opportunity were closed, she pried them open. Throughout her career of over seventy years, and her portfolio of over eight hundred projects, Beverly Willis forged new paths as an architect, designer, planner, artist, author, filmmaker, and philanthropist. Beverly Willis received her architectural license in 1966, and within a decade she was running the thirty-five-person Willis and Associates, Inc. Architects. While just in her mid-thirties, she was the only woman in San Francisco with her own architectural firm. By the time her practice reached its peak, she led one of the few architectural firms in the US headed by a woman, she had built an estate for herself in the Napa Valley, and she had several large-scale civic projects underway. Her many wide-ranging contributions leave a lasting legacy. Her pioneering career in multiple arenas has earned her a place as one of the most influential women in American architecture of the twentieth and twenty-first century.
