Lita Talarico has spent her entire career in various enterprises involved with art, architecture and design. She has held leadership positions with three notable institutions of higher education whose primary focus are those fields – Cooper Union, Purchase College and the School of Visual Arts. She has played significant administrative and organizational roles in prestigious conferences, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, numerous publishing and competition ventures, and the selection of architects and designers for commissions. In 1997 she co-founded a masters program in design at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City.