Ma Ry Kim is an architect whose work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, architecture, and community health. She brings deep, community-based experience in applied brain science, with a particular focus on how the built-environment impacts how the brain adapts and relearns after adversity. She is also a mother to five incredible Neurodiverse people, a lived perspective that informs her work every day.

Ma Ry is Co-Founder and CEO of the Brain Health Applied Research Institute (B+HARI) and Founder of I-ON Group, where she advances evidence-based design strategies that integrate neuroscience, architecture, and social equity.

She is honored to sit on the Inaugural Advisory Council for the Global Brain Care Coalition, established by the McCance Center for Brain Health at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, advancing a global movement to translate decades of neuroscience into everyday practices that support lifelong brain health.

As an architect in neuroscience, her research interest focuses on how the brain orients the body in space and develops internal representations of the environment that are deeply connected to memory, cognition, and the preservation of brain function. She is particularly interested in how these systems can be engaged to support cognitive longevity and recovery from injury or trauma. Through B+HARI, her work explores how the body can serve as a direct pathway to neuroplasticity, using movement, sensory input, and environmental interaction to refine and adapt brain function.

Ma Ry is also currently an inaugural Scholar-in-Residence at the Honolulu Museum of Art, where she bridges art and science to expand public access to brain health. She is a former Principal and Regional Design Leader at Gensler, the world’s largest architecture firm, where she served as Regional Design Leader and Global Co-Head of Mixed-Use Developments, leading work across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She has also served as a Principal at Hawai‘i-based multidisciplinary firm G70.