Grounded and Growing: Alum leads in landscape with intentional design
Friday, December 19, 2025
Media Contact: Sophia Fahleson | Digital Communications Specialist | 405-744-7063 | sophia.fahleson@okstate.edu
Mike Albert remembered being a 14-year-old growing up in the Oklahoma Panhandle looking for ways to earn money.
“I started bugging my parents for an allowance, and instead of giving it to me, they gave me a lawnmower,” said Albert, Design Workshop principal in Aspen, Colorado, and an Oklahoma State University alumnus.
The following summer, Albert’s mother helped him mow lawns all around his town.
Albert was raised on a third-generation ranch, surrounded by the family’s cattle operation. Both sides of his family had farms and ranches since the early 1920s.
“I was the kid growing up who would run to the post office and see when the Architectural Digest was being released,” Albert said. “I was so excited in my small town to see what the world was.”
By the end of the summer, Albert said, he and his mother raised $3,000 mowing lawns. He invested the money in his own plant business, which became his supervised agricultural experience FFA project, Albert added.
What started as selling house plants turned into seasonal flowers, such as poinsettias and bedding plants, which quickly gained an attraction in his community, Albert said.
After graduating from Beaver High School, Albert enrolled at OSU majoring in landscape architecture with a minor in international business.
“OSU had always been my plan,” Albert said.
At OSU, Albert was mentored by the late John Ritter, former landscape architecture professor, who encouraged him to try many internships.
Albert took his advice and completed internships globally with projects in Beijing, China, and Warsaw, Poland, he said.
“Landscape architecture is a calling, not a profession,” Albert said. “It is a career that allows so much creativity, and the ability to shape the world around us.”
Upon graduation, Albert was hired at Design Workshop — a firm he always admired, he said.
“When we hired Mike, he came with a lot of presence,” said Richard Shaw, former Design Workshop principal who also served as a mentor. “It was obvious he was very destined to be a great employee.”
Design Workshop started in Colorado and now includes seven studios throughout the U.S., Albert said.
The company’s growth allows the team to work on landscape architecture and planning projects worldwide, he added.
Albert said he remembered landing in Aspen, Colorado, in January 2006 to begin his position at Design Workshop.
Snow was falling, lights were on all around town and people were watching the Olympics on restaurant TVs, cheering on their hometown athletes, he recalled.
“Growing up in a town of 1,000 people, a big city didn’t feel right, so Aspen with 6,500 was absolutely perfect,” Albert said.
From the beginning, Albert noticed an office culture that centered around intentional work.
“There was a fierce attention to doing great work that would impact the world,” Albert said. “I fell in love with client relationships, and it was almost the same thing I had back in high school.”
He said he continued in the role for five years before earning a master’s degree in landscape architecture at Harvard University. When he returned to Design Workshop, he was promoted to be a principal in the firm, he said.
Most individuals become a principal in their 40s, but Albert earned the promotion at 32.
“Most projects take about five years to finish, making experience a lengthy process to prove,” Albert said.
Following his success, Albert turned to his alma mater for a way to give back and support students.
Albert endowed the OSU Mike Albert Leadership Scholarship in 2021. He also created the OSU Landscape Architecture Excellence Fund.
“I just want to see OSU and our students succeed,” Albert said. “That was important to me.”
This scholarship is awarded annually to students who showcase leadership and also display academic excellence, Albert said.
“It allowed me to craft a vision for myself and begin to really define my own narrative,”said Jacob Krafft, a recipient of the Mike Albert Leadership Scholarship.
Krafft, a 2020 graduate of the landscape architecture program, worked as an intern for the Los Angeles Design Workshop studio before his senior year in 2019.
Krafft and Albert now work together at the Aspen studio.
“I truly view Mike as not just a colleague, but a friend,” Krafft said. “It’s been an honor to learn under him and develop more as an emerging professional with him as a person to go to.”
Ogheneruno Okotie, a 2024 landscape architecture graduate, benefited from the Landscape Architecture Excellence Fund, which funded her travel to the American Society of Landscape Architects’ national conference in Minnesota in 2023.
“That was a tremendous help for myself and helped reduce the financial strain,” said Okotie, who worked as a Design Workshop intern and is now employed at the firm.
Since 2006, Albert has won more than 70 American Society of Landscape Architects awards, and he was inducted into the ASLA Council of Fellows in 2022.
The Fellowship is one of the ASLA’s highest honors and recognizes individuals whose professional achievements and contributions have advanced society and landscape architecture, according to the ASLA.
“Typically, people get the Fellowship award 20 or 30 years into their career,” Okotie said.
The award honors excellence in work, leadership, management, knowledge and service over time, according to the ASLA.
“A lot of the awards and recognitions are well deserved because Mike reached a national level with those abilities quickly,” Shaw said.
Albert credited both his Design Workshop colleagues and his collaborators for the award-winning projects.
“The best designs are from the collective minds of many people,” Albert said.
Cristof Eigelberger, Eigelberger Architecture and Design principal, has collaborated with Albert on more than a dozen projects.
“He has a very rich history of living on land and knows what it is to have a ranch and cattle,” Eigelberger said. “I think that is really special about him.”
The two started working together on designs in 2008.
“He is always the first landscape architect I call on every single project,” Eigelberger said.
“We work with many landscape architects that are really good at one thing,” he added. “But Mike is able to see the entire vision blended together.”
Throughout Albert’s life, he has been taught and inspired by the work around him, Albert said.
“Across history you have artists over time that have been inspired by the places they live, and, in turn, try to communicate their value and their importance in the art with what they create to inspire the next generation,” Albert said. “Our work seeks to have the same impact.”
Story by: Hannah Phelps | Cowboy Journal