Elisabete Erlandson
The same year Elisabete graduated from the School of Architecture at USC, she became a USA citizen and considered it a good year. Just before high school, she had moved from Brazil to the USA and learned as quickly as possible another language, English (she knows eight languages). Since she was 11, her goal was to study architecture out of love for the arts, the sciences and world architectural history.
From before the time she graduated from USC until her retirement, she worked non-stop in the architectural field. She believes that no job is too small to learn from since these become a good foundation for the knowledge and confidence required to work in a leadership position on huge projects and to make them succeed.
In the process of becoming a well-rounded professional, her journey was not always a straight line. After graduation, she went to work at Walt Disney Enterprises (which later became Walt Disney Imagineering) as an architectural and show designer, learning in leaps and bounds the art of thematic design from the old guard. At that time, the firm where you worked had to be owned by an architect for the work to be recognized by the architectural licensing board. That has changed since then, but back then she had a hard decision to make. Her designs of themed facades and show sets were being recognized by her superiors as being unusually good for someone with so little experience; they were asking her to stay but she decided to leave. Getting a license was a step she could not Ignore.
Elisabete left Disney and continued getting a lot of experience in small architectural firms and she passed her architectural licensing exams. With that in hand, she eventually agreed to return to Walt Disney Imagineering when they called her to work on thematic building designs for Eurodisneyland (which later became Disneyland Paris). Since that project she has worked in numerous other projects around the world, travelling on business to different continents, including Africa and being relocated overseas many times. She worked on Disneyland Paris, Walt Disney Studios Paris (which later also included the Ratatouille land), Tokyo Disneyland, Hong Kong Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland, Animal Kingdom in Florida and other Walt Disney World projects. In 2014 she retired from Walt Disney Imagineering as Concept Architect Principal to pursue her love of painting, writing, and other interests, such as mentoring young professionals. Not even a month after retirement, she was asked and agreed to work as a consultant, continuing on the Shanghai Disneyland project until 2016.
Elisabete is married to Edward Erlandson, also an architect. They have one son, who is married and has children of his own. Being female, a wife, a mother and a full time architect when there were few women in the field created interesting challenges and will be in a book of its own.