Alicia Ponce

Alicia Ponce is the Founder and Principal of APMonarch, a Chicago-based, female and Latina-owned architecture firm. 

Under Alicia’s direction, the firm provides architectural services, community engagement and sustainability consulting for projects throughout the Midwest and Mexico. Her expertise and passion to design healthy buildings and equitable communities support many clients in creating architecture that is ambitious, thoughtful and healthy. APMonarch provides these services to a diverse group of sectors that includes commercial, higher education, civic, healthcare, and nonprofits.

Alicia refers to APMonarch as the pollinator of the built environment, designing healthy environments that look good, feel good and perform great. The firm’s promise is to build zero carbon architecture. Demonstrating that promise is Alicia’s recent architecture commission to design Centro Amazing, a civic youth center located in Aguascalientes, Mexico which is to be constructed from rammed earth. 

A registered architect in Illinois and Wisconsin, Alicia has more than 20 years of architecture and sustainability experience. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and studied at the Ecole d’Architecture in Versailles, France. 

Alicia currently serves on the Chicago Landmarks Commission and the United Way Metro Chicago Executive Board. Creator of the award winning book Latinas in Architecture – raising the 1% one Latina at a time, she is the founder and chair of Arquitina, a national nonprofit organization with a mission to raise the number of licensed Latina architects in the U.S.