Biography

Kelli Cunningham, AIA, ASLA, PLA is a Principal and Operations Director at Waggonner & Ball and a leader in the firm’s resilience practice. She works across disciplines and scales, bridging architecture, landscape architecture, and urban systems to advance nature-based strategies that help coastal communities adapt to changing conditions.

Kelli brings an interdisciplinary perspective shaped by master’s degrees in architecture and landscape architecture from Louisiana State University. Since joining the firm in 2016, she has helped lead complex resilience initiatives from stakeholder engagement through implementation, with a focus on long-term performance and community value.

Her work includes nationally significant resilience projects such as the Resilient Bridgeport program in Connecticut, which integrates flood risk reduction measures into a historic Olmsted Park, stormwater pump stations, and a new neighborhood stormwater park. In New Orleans, she is helping realize the Mirabeau Water Garden as part of the Gentilly Resilience District, advancing innovative nature-based infrastructure that creates space for water while creating multi-benefit infrastructure.

As Operations Director, Kelli builds collaborative partnerships and guides multidisciplinary teams to align stakeholder needs with forward-looking, place-specific design strategies that respond to environmental risk and cultural context. She is active in the broader design and resilience community, having served on the ASLA Climate Action Committee and now as a delegate to the Network for Engineering with Nature (N-EWN).

Kelli brings an integrated perspective to design, connecting disciplines, scales, and communities to help shape adaptive coastal environments.