As the daughter of Sy Shemitz, lighting designer and founder of Elliptipar and Tambient, Walker grew up with lighting. Although she went into banking, lighting was never far from her thoughts or her discussions with her father. “He approached me on many different occasions to enter into the business, but the timing never was right,” she says. That changed in 2007 with her father’s unexpected death. Walker took up the mantle as company CEO and chairwoman, and has continued to build on her father’s rich legacy of technical innovation and design. In 2010, the company rebranded itself with the name the Lighting Quotient, a physics term that means “answer” and that Walker believes best continues her father’s greatest passion: educating people about light.
Click here for the 2002 Hall of Fame interview with Walker’s father Sylvan R. Shemitz.
Elizabeth Donoff is Editor-at-Large of Architectural Lighting (AL). She served as Editor-in-Chief from 2006 to 2017. She joined the editorial team in 2003 and is a leading voice in the lighting community speaking at industry events such as Lightfair and the International Association of Lighting Designers Annual Enlighten Conference, and has twice served as a judge for the Illuminating Engineering Society New York City Section’s (IESNYC) Lumen Award program. In 2009, she received the Brilliance Award from the IESNYC for dedicated service and contribution to the New York City lighting community. Over the past 11 years, under her editorial direction, Architectural Lighting has received a number of prestigious B2B journalism awards. In 2017, Architectural Lighting was a Top Ten Finalist for Magazine of the Year from the American Society of Business Publication Editors' AZBEE Awards. In 2016, Donoff received the Jesse H. Neal Award for her Editor’s Comments in the category of Best Commentary/Blog, and in 2015, AL received a Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Media Brand (Overall Editorial Excellence).Prior to her entry into design journalism, Donoff worked in New York City architectural offices including FXFowle where she was part of the project teams for the Reuters Building at Three Times Square and the New York Times Headquarters. She is a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Me., and she earned her Master of Architecture degree from the School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis.
