Alissa Walker

Trailblazer

Alissa Walker is the Urbanism Editor at Curbed LA. She connects people with where they live through writing, speaking, and walking. As the urbanism editor at Curbed, she authors the column Word on the Street, highlighting the pioneering transit, clever civic design, and game-changing policy affecting our cities.

For her writing on design and urbanism, Alissa has been named a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow and Journalist of the Year by Streetsblog Los Angeles. In 2012 her project Good Ideas for Cities was selected for inclusion in the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2015 she received the Design Advocate award from the LA chapter of the American Institute of Architects. She is also the co-founder of design east of La Brea, a nonprofit that has received two National Endowment for the Arts grants supporting its LA design events.

Alissa lives in Los Angeles, where she is a co-host of LA Podcast, a contributor to the KCRW show Greater LA, and a mom to the city’s two most enthusiastic public transit riders.

Alan Hess

Trailblazer

Architect and historian Alan Hess is author of twenty books on Modern architecture and urbanism in the twentieth century; his subjects include John Lautner, Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Ranch House, Googie architecture, Las Vegas, and Palm Springs. He is a Commissioner on the California State Historical Resources Commission, and serves on the boards of Preserve Orange County and Palm Springs Modernism Week. He has been the architecture critic of the San Jose Mercury News, a contributor to The Architects Newspaper, grant recipient from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Clarence Stein Foundation, and a National Arts Journalism Fellow. Buildings from the Modern era which he has helped to conserve or landmark include CBS Television City (Pereira & Luckman, architect), Bullock’s Pasadena (Wurdeman & Becket, architect), and the oldest remaining McDonalds stand (Stanley Meston, architect.) Awards for his work conserving Modern architecture include the Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Docomomo/US’sAward of Excellence, and the President’s Award from the Los Angeles Conservancy. His newest book, “Hollywood Modern: Houses of the Stars,” was published by Rizzoli International last October. He is currently writing a history of Modern Architecture in California.

Ann Scheid

Trailblazer

Ann Scheid heads the Greene & Greene Archives at the Huntington Library. The archives is administered by the Gamble House, University of Southern California. She is an author and historian who has published books on Pasadena history as well as articles and essays on the history of architecture, planning, and landscape in Southern California. She is a graduate of Vassar College, the University of Chicago, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She contributed a chapter on the women clients of Greene & Greene to the publication “A ‘New and Native’ Beauty: the Art and Craft of Greene & Greene.