Mark Mahaney
| Allison Shemitz Walker |
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.