Beth Kapusta is a Toronto-based design excellence consultant. She advises government and institutional clients on achieving design excellence on major architectural and capital commissions, specializing in complex transit projects. Beth also works with architecture firms on design strategy and project pursuits.

As a principal at Brook McIlroy Inc. and as an independent consultant, she has provided guidance documents and process for some of Toronto’s most significant transit initiatives, including the Relief Line South, the Scarborough Subway Extension, and Regional Express Rail.

From 2013 to 2016, she headed up Metrolinx’s Design Excellence program, earning the provincial agency a reputation for leading with design on major transit projects. With a mandate to elevate quality and customer focus across capital projects, she shaped design of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT and the vision for the Davenport Diamond guideway and greenway. Her team spearheaded a region-wide transit wayfinding harmonization initiative, an integrated art program and a design review panel for Metrolinx projects.

Prior to joining Metrolinx, Beth worked to influence the urban realm as a strategic collaborator on numerous competition- and award-winning designs, including June Callwood Park, Sugar Beach, HTO park and Ivey School of Business.

During her 20-year career as an architecture critic, she wrote on architecture, sustainability and design for publications from the Huffington Post to The Globe and Mail. She began her writing career at Canadian Architect, overseeing its award-winning re-design, later becoming a contributing editor for Azure magazine. She co-authored Yolles: A Canadian Engineering Legacy, and taught at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, where she received her B.Arch in 1991.

Outside work, Beth founded Toronto’s first urban vegetable garden tour. Mother of a 21-year-old daughter, she is an accomplished rock climber and avid cyclist.