AIA|LA City Leaders Breakfast Reception w/ Los Angeles Tomorrow

AIA|LA City Leaders Breakfast Reception w/ Los Angeles Tomorrow

2025 City Leaders Breakfast Series Presented By: Gannett Fleming

The 2025 AIA|LA City Leaders Breakfast Series allows architects & designers and other community stakeholders to meet directly with key individuals transforming Los Angeles in a roundtable setting to discuss innovative ideas to ensure a healthy, sustainable, and economically competitive future.

Los Angeles Tomorrow: Co-creating a place-based legacy for LA County in advance of the 2028 Olympics & Paralympics and other mega-events. How can the design community plug in?

Forum Background:
With a series of mega-events coming to LA over the next decade, including the FIFA World Cup in 2026 and the Olympics & Paralympics in 2028, LA has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make radical improvements in our public realm that can have a lasting legacy for generations to come. The sad truth is that there is no clear organizing authority across LA County, and no comprehensive plan to realize the legacy public realm improvements we were hoping for. We have simply run out of time to wait around for the cavalry… We are the cavalry!

This is why Los Angeles Tomorrow was launched. Our mission is to facilitate and accelerate community-powered public space improvements and neighborhood activations across LA County in advance of the series of mega-events to ensure a legacy of prosperity for all Angelenos. This is a grassroots effort, working with local communities in historically underinvested neighborhoods to identify the projects that are already in the early stages of concept ideation and then connect them to the resources (funding, technical services, and agency partners) needed to realize these visions in an expedited way.

To do this work, we need all hands on deck!! We are building a big-tent coalition—including community partners, public partners, funding partners, and technical / design partners—to help facilitate a wide range of neighborhood-based quick-build, low-investment, and high-impact design interventions. We want to showcase the power of design and specifically the LA-based design community, which has the skills, creativity, and passion needed to help implement high-quality community-based projects.

Forum Objectives:
This forum will explore the many different partnership opportunities for everyone interested in this mission! We will first share a brief overview of our mission, process, and projects, and then we will dive into an interactive discussion about the specific ways that design professionals can collaborate with us and communities across LA County. We welcome all landscape architects, architects, planners, urban designers, engineers, GCs, and other allied professionals to join this discussion! No matter if you are a small firm or a global corporation, there are a wide range of ways everyone can plug in and help make meaningful place-based improvements for the communities of our county.

Katherine Perez – Co-Founder & Executive Director, Los Angeles Tomorrow

Until recently, Katherine was a Principal and LA Office Leader for Arup, an international engineering, design, and consulting firm. With over 300 professionals in the LA Office, she played a critical role in office management, project pursuits, and Arup’s role in external markets. She ran for California State Senate, District 25 in 2016, co-founded her own company and non-profit, and served as the Executive Director of the Urban Land Institute, Los Angeles District Council (ULI LA). She is a National Board member of Mercy Housing and a USC Adjunct Associate Professor.

Aaron Paley – Co-Founder & Strategic Director, Los Angeles Tomorrow

For over four decades, Aaron has focused on how Angelenos experience and use public space – through temporary and permanent interventions – and the nexus of event production, arts, community, culture, transportation, urban planning, and policy. He co-founded Community Arts Resources (CARS) with Katie Bergin to “create unique experiences where art, culture, community and civic life collide.” CARS incubated and co-developed CicLAvia where he served as its founding director from 2010 to 2015. CARS has produced many iconic programs including Chinatown Summer Nights, Go Little Tokyo, GLOW, the Getty Family Festivals, and the Santa Monica Festivals.

Ruth Siegel – Deputy Director, Los Angeles Tomorrow

Prior to joining Los Angeles Tomorrow, Ruth worked as a practicing landscape architect and urban designer. Having worked at RIOS, Studio-MLA, and Sasaki, she is a seasoned designer and project manager who has led both master plans and built-work projects. She has worked on many public and cultural projects, including parks, plazas, botanical gardens, playgrounds, green alleys, and schools. Ruth brings a holistic and inclusive approach to her work and is passionate about creating resilient places that reflect and benefit the communities they serve.

This Reception is Hosted By:

2025 AIA|LA City Leaders Breakfast Series Presented By: