2022 Mayoral Forum: Greiwe, Wilson, Varma

2022 Mayoral Forum: Craig Greiwe, Mel Wilson, and Ramit Varma

This is a FREE virtual event. Click to register below.

AIA Los Angeles is hosting series of candid discussions with the leading Mayoral Candidates for the City of Los Angeles. The series of forums will serve as an opportunity for the A+D community and general public to learn more about each candidate’s vision for the city.

At this forum, AIALA will be asking Craig Greiwe, Gina Viola, Mel Wilson, and Ramit Varma specific questions centered on their vision for a great city and their specific implementation strategies for how to most effectively address the ongoing challenges of housing, climate, and racial equality crisis.

Great cities serve all their people and require visionary institutions, beautiful streets and civic spaces, and robust political leadership.

Our next mayor must have great ambition matched with acute technical knowledge of how our city works in order govern Los Angeles as the world class city transform effectively. Who will our next mayor be?

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Candidates:

Craig Greiwe – Former Chief Strategy Officer of Rogers & Cowan/PMK
Former Chief Strategy Officer of Rogers & Cowan/PMK, Craig Greiwe, helped major Fortune 500 Companies throughout his career re-align their resources to reach major goals and design programs that helped thousands of people. Now he is running for Mayor of Los Angeles as a centrist. If elected, Greiwe pledges to apply the same mentality from his career to rebuild LA from the ground up with a series of ambitious programs, all without raising taxes, while simultaneously breaking the cycle of broken leadership in LA.

Greiwe’s plan to tackle the city’s problems—the only real, published plan of any candidate—includes results-oriented policies to prevent new homelessness and end the crisis on the streets of LA through comprehensive, proven solutions of both housing and care. Greiwe also calls for a more aggressive approach to immediate and transitional supportive housing, as well as real-time data, on top of reform to the years-long and delayed push for overpriced permanent supportive housing units. His approach to ending homelessness will also allow LAPD to focus on the recent increase in crime, putting 3,000 officers back on the street without needing new funding.

Before moving to LA, Greiwe grew up in poverty in rural Indiana, experiencing firsthand the struggles of food and housing insecurity. As a first-generation graduate from the University of Southern California and Columbia Law School, he climbed the ladder in the field of business strategy and marketing. Simultaneously, Greiwe has become a civic leader in LA due to his strong sense of giving back. He has sat on the board of several nonprofits, including Christopher Street West and the American Dance Movement, and recently launched the nonprofit, Rise Together LA, the fastest-growing grassroots movement in LA.

Greiwe is the most prominent political outsider in the crowded field for LA mayor, which separates him from the leading candidates, Karen Bass, Rick Caruso, and Kevin De Leon, who are longtime political insiders. If elected as the city’s mayor, he would be the first openly gay Mayor in LA history and the only outsider to hold the office in more than 80 years.

Mel Wilson – Business Leader & Housing Advocate
Mel Wilson moved with his mother, grandmother, and siblings from rural Alabama to Los Angeles when he was a young boy. His (single) mother cleaned houses for $12/day but still made sure she provided her children with the educational opportunities to excel and succeed. Mel quickly understood the value of hard work and education, graduating with a business degree from CSUN, where he was an All-American football player, and joining the NFL. He built a successful real estate business and has concentrated on helping first-time homebuyers to achieve the American Dream, creating jobs, and advocating for affordable housing and an end to redlining.

Civic respect for Mel Wilson multiplied. He became a trusted local leader with a reputation for having a level head and a strong focus on doing what’s right for every day, hard-working people. Over 30 years, three Los Angeles mayors from both sides of the aisle have tapped him to lead public commissions, including the Fire Commission and the Metro Board, among others, due to his integrity and public policy wisdom. As a city commissioner and community advocate, Mel Wilson focuses on results. He’s brought grocery stores into neighborhoods that were formerly food deserts and driven economic development and small business supports in historically left-behind areas. Mel Wilson’s contributions also include leading the recovery in the San Fernando Valley after the Northridge Earthquake and the recession, fighting for more public transit, and supporting equity and an expansion of paramedic services within the Los Angeles Fire Department. He is a frequent speaker and national Subject Matter Expert (SME) in several fields including residential and commercial real estate, transit community development, workforce housing, land use policies, and public policy equity. Mel is the father of three grown children and lives in Northridge with his wife of more than 48 years, Bessie.

Ramit Varma – Co-founder, Revolution Prep
As the son of immigrants, the value of opportunity was never lost on Ramit — just as his father came to the US to build a better life for himself and his family, Ramit came to Los Angeles to do the same. After receiving his MBA from UCLA, he co-founded Revolution Prep, an online tutoring platform dedicated to making tutoring more effective and higher education more attainable for America’s youth. He built a company from the ground up centered around giving kids and young adults more opportunities to succeed in life.

Ramit is running for Mayor of Los Angeles because he loves this city. He lives here with his wife and kids and knows first-hand its potential as the greatest city in the world. Like every other Angeleno, however, he has seen that potential become clouded by instability and lawlessness. Varma is running as an Independent and is not tied to any political party or any special interest. He believes the issues our city is facing are non partisan and we need a non partisan leader who will approach things with practicality, rationality, and empathy.