The Iowa State University College of Design has announced that J. Jade Liska, the deputy director of the Kansas City Aviation Department's Planning and Engineering Division, is the winner of the 2019 Design Achievement Award.

According to ISU, the award recognizes outstanding creative and professional achievements of alumni in all of the college's disciplines, which include landscape architecture, art and design, community and regional planning, graphic design, industrial design, integrated studio arts, integrated visual arts, interdisciplinary design, interior design, sustainable environments and urban design.

 

Currently, Liska is the project manager for the $1.5 billion new passenger terminal at the Kansas City International Airport. He coordinates with the outside design and construction team and the Kansas City Aviation Department leadership team to keep the project on track for completion in 2023. Liska started as a senior planner and was promoted to division manager of the Citywide Planning Division in 2007; he was instrumental in implementing the area plans for the entire 317-square mile city.

In 2013, he joined the Aviation Department as the manager of airport planning and part of the leadership team advancing the new terminal program. In 2018, he became the deputy director of the Planning and Engineering Division.

Before joining the municipal government of Kansas City, Liska worked in Wichita, Kansas, where he was a project manager in multidisciplinary engineering, planning, surveying and construction firms for more than 12 years. He served as president of the American Society of Landscape Architects' Prairie Gateway Chapter in 2008, and from 2013-2016, he served as an ASLA trustee representing that chapter.

Liska was named Suburban Landscape Management's Employee of the Year in 2003 and received the Distinguished Service award from the Northland Regional Chamber of Commerce in 2012. He is a licensed professional landscape architect in Kansas and Missouri. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in landscape architecture from Iowa State in 1994.