5 minute read
Up Close with Lisa Reed
from June 2025
By Shirley Coyle, LC
Somewhere around the age of five, Lisa Reed was already laying down a path to her future, as she designed and built tunnels and structures in her sandbox with a neighborhood friend. Her playmate was more focused on watching any airplane going overhead.
“Fast forward fifteen years” Lisa laughed, “and we were both at The University of Kansas. I was studying architectural engineering, and he was studying aerospace engineering!”
It took some time to find lighting within architectural engineering. Fortunately, Lisa was told in a lighting course about the Besal Fund. She applied for, and became, a Besal scholar, and over the next two lighting courses, Lisa found her calling in lighting design.
“I was really lucky to be there at that time. The KU architectural engineering program was both in the School of Architecture and the School of Engineering.” There were three professors during Lisa’s time at KU— Ron Helms, Lou Michel and Clay Belcher who were very interested in lighting from a design perspective and helped crystallize Lisa’s interest in the field.
Moving to Florida for her husband Todd’s job after graduation, Lisa’s budding IES network connected her with Tom Brownlee, who sat her down in his office with a list of local IES member contacts to call to try to get a job. “It was a bad time in the economy, so I took a job at an MEP firm as a CAD tech. Early on, I asked the electrical guys, ‘Who does the lighting design around here?’ They said, ‘We just call the reps.’ And I said, ‘Not anymore!’”
After two years in Florida, Lisa and her husband moved to Wichita, Kansas, where Lisa went to work for another MEP firm. At the 1998 IES Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas, Lisa had a critical interaction.
“I met Tom Scott and was having the conversation with him that I had with everybody… ‘I’m an electrical engineer, but what I really love is lighting design.’ Everyone else had just let me say that. Tom said, ‘Wait, if you want to do lighting design, you should be doing lighting design. Everyone’s hiring—now is the time!’”
She continued, “It hadn’t occurred to me that you could go out and do just lighting design. Tom suggested a few names, including Chip Israel. I called my husband and asked, ‘What if I quit my job, and we sold our house and moved to California?’”
Soon, Lisa and her husband were off to Los Angeles for new adventures; it was a hectic time that included becoming parents.
By 2004, they moved their very young family back to the Midwest, settling in St. Louis, Missouri, with Lisa focusing on being a full-time mom. She continued to stay involved with IES, where she met Kevin Flynn.
Her IES connections led Lisa back to doing lighting design part-time, and for a year Lisa commuted into the city to HOK. She moved on to work from home part-time for a local lighting agent—a choice that helped Lisa balance home and career.
In 2011, with her kids now a little older, Lisa’s next move was a big one. She founded her own lighting design company, Envision Lighting Design, a business she ran and grew successfully for over ten years.
In 2022 Lisa merged her firm with Randy Burkett Lighting Design, creating the entity now named Reed Burkett Lighting Design (RBLD). And while that growth on its own is impressive, it expanded again this past year with Chicago-based Aurora Lighting Design joining as an RBLD Studio!
Lisa has frequently spoken on the challenges of managing a full-time lighting design career and family home life, especially for women with young children. “It was important and lifechanging for me. When I started my company, my first hires were women I knew who were working at a lighting design firm in town, had a baby, and they quit. I called to say, ‘Are you like me—do you love lighting design? If we can just figure out a way you could do it—not full time—and balance your family.’”
Reflecting on her success, Lisa recalled her parents’ influence. “My Dad was one of 10 kids and was told by his own father and teachers that he was stupid and probably shouldn’t go to college. But he was the first one in his family to go to college, and he became a teacher! Together with my mom, a nurse, my parents raised two daughters who have engineering degrees and believed they could do whatever they wanted. And there were all the mentors along the way—people telling me I could do something. And I believed them.”
Asked for her advice for newcomers to the lighting community, Lisa offered, “Lighting is an incredibly welcoming community. Anybody will talk to you, so if there is somebody you want to talk to, do it! There are so many opportunities for mentorships and friendships in lighting. At the same time, it’s a very small industry, so don’t burn any bridges, because you’re going to be seeing these people, maybe working alongside them. Speak up and volunteer—you can become whatever you want to be in lighting.”
What does Lisa do for fun and restoration when she isn’t designing lighting (or handling mergers and acquisitions)? “I read a lot…I have a book club that is just amazing. It’s more than the books at this point. We ladies have been together for almost thirteen years now, and we travel together. When you read, it helps you become who you are!”
Lisa Reed continues to become whatever she believes she can be, while helping others do the same for themselves.
