Friday, January 9th marked the kickoff for 2015’s Emerging Leaders in Architecture (ELA) class. Sixteen of Virginia’s best and brightest young architects met at the Virginia Center for Architecture to get started on this year’s project, learn a little bit more about each other and hear from two excellent speakers about the past of the profession and the future of leadership.
In this session, the students learned about the history of the profession from Bryan Clark Green, Ph. D., who has done extensive research about the preservation of Virginia’s historical Architecture. Bryan Clark Green, Ph. D., recently became an honorary member of the Virginia Society AIA for his efforts. Kelly O’Keefe, who has won Entrepreneur of the Year and Ad Person of the Year, spoke to the students about how the responsibilities of leaders and industries have changed over the years, and how the students need to set themselves up to meet the future changes head on.
The students will apply these insights while working on their annual project — a section of historical Norfolk that is in danger of being lost to floods and rising ocean levels. The students will be visiting the site in March, and will work on solutions to this problem and present their solutions in November at Architecture Exchange East 2015.
The ELA program began in 2009 and now has over 80 alumni — many of which have assumed leadership positions in their firms and AIA components. Currently there is an ELA alum or current participant on the board of every AIA component in Virginia.
