Director of the Mayor’s Office on Disability for San Francisco, Carla Johnson was known as a champion for disability rights in the City. Her final project, the Bayview Opera House, embodies the values that she advocated, expressed by her mantra: “disability rights are civil rights, and separate but equal is never equal.”

Steven H. Oliver is President of the award-winning construction and development firm Oliver & Company based in Richmond, California which has built over a thousand buildings in the Bay Area. A well-known arts philanthropist, advocate, and civic leader in the Bay Area, Mr. Oliver is the former Chairman of the Board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and currently serves as Chairman of the Board for the United States Artists, Chairman of the Board for Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST), Board Trustee for the California College of the Arts, and has formerly served on numerous Arts boards such as the National Endowment for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California and the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Catherine is an educator, curator, and writer. She has worked with design firms such as Atelier Ten and Studio Maven and arts organizations such as Intersection for the Arts and Lincoln Center. She has written for Droste Effect and Art Practical. She received her MA from Trinity Laban Conservatoire and BA from Wellesley College.

Associated Lighting Representatives (ALR) opened for business in 1961 as a two person agency representing several small lighting manufacturers. In the 50-plus years since, ALR has grown to be one of the dominant sales agencies in the country, with over 100 employees, four offices and an enviable list of manufacturers. The company was founded upon the simple premise of providing the best possible service to its customers while conducting its business activities with the utmost integrity. This philosophy has been with ALR throughout its years and remains the cornerstone of the employee-owned company's culture today.

Gregor Stewart has worked in the electrical industry for over 25 years. He has worked as an installer on both the high voltage and low voltage sides of the business, as well as in sales for a wholesale electrical distributor. 17 years ago Gregor accepted a position with ALR (Associated Lighting Representatives) to become part of an expanding team that focuses solely on advanced lighting controls and the requirements of both national and state energy codes. Today, Gregor’s role within ALR has him managing a team of lighting controls specialists whose customer base includes Architects, Electrical Consulting Engineers, Electrical Contractors, Facility Managers as well as Building Owners. He currently resides in the Bay Area and can be reached at gregorstewart@alrinc.com

Part of Healthcare Leadership at Ratcliff, with 30+ years’ experience, John has managed complex projects for California systems - Stanford Health Care, Sutter Health, and NorthBay HealthCare. His strengths lie in organizing teams, managing expectations and facilitating decision-making. John is dedicated to creating healthcare environments that positively impact patient outcomes.

Roseanne Clark McNulty was an active member of the AIA, having served on the AIA California Council Board of Directors, AIASF Board of Directors, and AIASF Board Nominating Committee. Rose spent the majority of her career at the non-profit Asian Neighborhood Design providing services for affordable housing and other facilities for the under-privileged.

Archibald Woo, AIA is a licensed architect and has been practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1990. His work has been focused mainly on complex projects for various Bay Area school districts, different campuses of the University of California system as well as for major healthcare and medical research organizations. Archibald has been active in the teaching and mentoring of architectural students and younger professionals. He has taught this seminar since 2013. He has also co-chaired the AIASF mentorship and architects licensing committees and has been awarded the chapter's Presidential Commendation in 2006 and again in 2011.

Lily is an emerging leader at WRNS Studio, with projects for Airbnb, Google and UC Berkeley. She was named the 2016 Chair of BAYA and has presented on workplace trends at AIACC. She earned her BA in Architecture from UC Berkeley and held positions at John Wilkins, Knoll and UNIQLO.

KIDmob believes unlocking the creative capacity in every person is key to solving today's real and relevant challenges. With our “mob” of professional designers, we show up, we ask questions, we challenge ideas, and then we step back and watch as creative solutions rise from the community.

Siegel & Strain Architects, an award-winning design firm based in Emeryville, California, has been recognized for innovative, beautiful architecture, sustainable design, historic preservation and research. Places that support and build community, respond to site and climate, and achieve high levels of environmental stewardship are at the center of their practice.

image: Yountville Community Center, photo credit: David Wakely

The Community Design Center is a non-profit architectural and planning firm established to provide architectural, planning and development assistance to low-income and minority groups in California. The Community Design Center was established on the principle that low-income communities should have equal access to the technical information and skills necessary to participate effectively in the planning and development of their neighborhood.

The Community Design Center’s professional practice is based on a strong client oriented design that combines community participation, technical expertise with practical understanding of our Client’s priorities, needs and budget.

Diana Sokolove is a Senior Planner with the San Francisco Planning Department. Ms. Sokolove leads the Planning Department’s resiliency program and co-chairs the Mayor’s Sea Level Rise Coordinating Committee. Ms. Sokolove has a Master’s degree in City Planning from the UNC Chapel Hill and a BA in Political Science and Environmental Studies from the University of Rochester. Ms. Sokolove is also certified as a public engagement specialist by the International Association of Public Participation.

Doris Anna Guerrero is an architect and Interiors Design Director at Gensler San Francisco and the principal of dForm, a San Francisco design firm with interests in architecture, interior architecture, workplace research and design, professional practice, landscape architecture, urban design, digital fabrication, and research-based design processes. In addition to 22 years of professional practice, she has been a guest lecturer, critic, and educator for more than 10 years.

PROXY is an evolving open space experiment in the heart of Hayes Valley. A placeholder for more permanent development, PROXY creates a place out of no place—transforming temporary sites into a thriving construct of culture, commerce and community, changing peoples’ perception of what public space can be.

Deanna Van Buren is a global thought leader researching, formulating, and advocating for restorative justice centers, a radical transformation of justice architecture. She currently sits on the national board of Architects, Designers, and Planning for Social Responsibility and is the founding partner of Designing Justice Designing Spaces, an architecture, and development firm focused on ending mass incarceration. Recent work in her practice includes the Syracuse Peacemaking Center in New York, the first of its kind in the US and Restore Oakland, a multi-use hub for restorative justice and economics. Deanna is also conducting the first design studios with incarcerated men and women and is a recent awardee of the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist grant to develop a prototype mobile resource village. Deanna received her BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia, an M. Arch from Columbia University and is an alumnus of The Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Rebuilding Together San Francisco mobilizes volunteers to repair homes and renovate nonprofit facilities and schools in San Francisco’s underserved neighborhoods. Together we transform the lives of low-income residents by improving the safety and health of their homes and by revitalizing their communities.

Urban street beautification projects often confuse “beauty” with cleanliness, sweeping aside the unsavory realities of the street. The Guerilla Street Museum serves as a model for engaging and activating the street while simultaneously revealing what beautification projects often seek to hide. Museums traditionally display only artifacts deemed worthy by the culture that supports it. Here, we give the street its own “museum,” which can be replicated across the city as a mechanism to reveal the hidden stories of many diverse constituencies and neighborhoods.

This project was a collaboration between architecture students at CCA, led by Associate Professor Neal J.Z. Schwartz, and Larkin Street Youth Services. The work both promotes the mission of Larkin Street and exhibits the creative work of the homeless and at-risk youth they serve. The project was exhibited as one of fifty installations selected for the 2015 Market Street Prototyping Festival and was supported by the CCA Center for Art and Public Life’s ENGAGE Program.

ARH 250, a second year undergraduate architecture studio, was challenged with prototyping the homeless shelter to create vital, connected spaces in a morphing city where inequality is booming. Instead of further quarantining, students proposed that architecture has the capability to bring together disparate populations, generating discussion and radical new commentaries responding to the challenges of homelessness in San Francisco.