2023 Leadership Summit (Formerly Grassroots)
February 14–17 the AIA held its annual leadership summit in Washington D.C. in person for the first time in three years. This event is an opportunity for the leadership and representatives from 205 AIA component chapters from all over the world (yes, the AIA has chapters internationally such as in the U.K. and Hong Kong) to learn from one another and attend seminars geared towards developing leadership, chapter management, and civic engagement.
As VP / President-Elect of the Maui Chapter it was my first opportunity to have the opportunity to interact at a national level with leadership and it was very insightful. Most interesting is the advocacy day of the summit and the visit to capitol hill to meet with our national representatives from Hawaii. Walking the halls of congress to develop relationships and promote national and local issues of concern to the AIA as well as our personal local issues is an experience I will never forget.
During our visit we got to meet with Senator Schatz and discuss current legislation of importance to the AIA as well as local affordable housing issues. This year the AIA is advocating for congress to pass the Democracy in Design act that will eliminate the opportunity in the future for a president to decree by executive order that federal buildings must adhere to a classical or neo-classical architectural style. The second piece of legislation is the Resilient America Act would increase federal funding for jurisdictions to adopt and current buildings codes in order to lessen the destruction to the build environment from natural disasters as pre-mitigation strategy.
Four architects from Hawaii attended the leadership summit: Reid Mizue (AIA Hawaii President), Kevin Loo-Chan (Hawaii Young Architect Representative), Jason Takeuchi (Northwest Pacific Region Young Architect Representative), and myself, David Sellers (AIA Maui VP).