APDPro Kickoff Event | TOGETHER: the joyful and unexpected

Laura Artman

HR Manager

Populous

Laura Artman is an HR manager for Populous, a global architecture and design firm based in Kansas City. As a K-State alum in Psychology and Apparel and Textiles, her background also includes fashion production, graphic design, various experiences across hospitality, and business operations/HR leadership in tech. Her varied experience in multi-disciplinary design and companies that prioritize collaborative work has shaped her authentic leadership style and ability to optimize employee experience and healthy workplace culture.

Blake Belanger

Associate Professor

K-State College of Architecture, Planning & Design

Blake Belanger is a licensed landscape architect and urban designer with over twenty-five years of combined experience in professional practice and academia. While in professional practice, Professor Belanger’s work centered on urban design, community planning, civic space and parks, and site planning at various scales. He joined Kansas State University in 2007, where he teaches design studios, theory and research seminars, foundational lecture courses, and serves on graduate student advisory committees. He is an engaged scholar specializing in place-inspired brownfield regeneration visioning and has led or co-led service-learning projects with communities in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, and Colorado.

Mirna Bonilla

Program Manager

K-State Office of External Engagement

Mirna Bonilla manages sponsored projects and relationships for the K-State Office of External Engagement – Engaged Scholarship, strengthening community partnerships, engaged scholarly projects, and engaged learning. Drawing on many years of service as a Family Studies and Human Services professional, she connects K-State faculty with the needs of Kansans across the state. Her previous role as a Cooperative Extension Agent with K-State Extension further shaped her collaborative approach, working with stakeholders to address local needs through evidence-based programming. Building on this experience, Mirna continues to advance engagement, collaboration, and meaningful connections between K-State and communities across Kansas and beyond.

Matthew Regier

Co-Founder

The School for Rural Culture and Creativity

Matthew Regier is an artist and printmaker who grew up on a corn farm in South Central Nebraska. A self-taught artist whose formal study is in philosophy and theology, Regier lives in Matfield Green, Kansas, a very small town in the heart of Flint Hills Tallgrass prairie. Regier’s prints attend to the prairie as an ecosystem of which the artist is a part. Matthew and his wife, Tia, are co-founders of The School for Rural Culture and Creativity in Matfield Green, a community space that seeks to integrate art, agriculture, and ecology into a vision for a place-based life on the land.