Cumming’s very own Leslie Sydnor was recently elected to serve as Vice President / President Elect on the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles (AIA|LA) Board of Directors. We are very proud of this accomplishment and sat down with Leslie to chat and learn more!
Hi Leslie, can you tell us a little about yourself and your professional background?
I am currently a director of public project management (PM) in southern California at Cumming. I practiced architecture for about 20 years, including as Associate Principal at a large firm in Los Angeles. In 2013, I transitioned to work on the owner’s side, taking a role at a local community college working in construction management. Since starting at Cumming in 2015, I’ve worked with school districts in cities such as Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Anaheim, providing construction management, bond program management, project management, and project planning services.
I am one of only 510 black women currently licensed as an architect in this country.
Can you tell us a little bit about AIA|LA and your involvement with the organization?
AIA is the American Institute of Architects. It is the largest industry group for architects in the country and has been around for over 100 years. AIA|LA is the Los Angeles chapter, which I believe is the third largest chapter. The L.A. chapter is very politically active within the city of Los Angeles. The mission we have is to bring the power of design and architecture to all Angelinos. We advocate on behalf of architects with City Hall, for example, trying to improve the planning and building department process, as well as for the architectural discipline in general through committees related to Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI), the environment, building practices, practice management, and more.
I first joined the AIA in the mid to late 90s with a different chapter (not L.A.). After moving to L.A. in the mid aughts and joining the L.A. chapter, I was involved as a member of the design awards committee, which helps put on the design awards, our biggest event of the year where we have jurors from all around the world coming in to review architects’ projects and grant awards to a dozen or so of the best-in-class projects.
Three years ago, after several friends were involved in the board of directors and had really positive experience, I decided to run myself and was elected to the board. During that time, I was involved in the strategic planning committee that puts forth the vision of what the chapter wants to accomplish over the next three years. I was also involved in the formation of the JEDI committee in the middle of last year. The end of this month will be the end of my term as a director. I was just elected as Vice President / President elect. I will become Vice President starting in January 2022 and President starting in January 2023.
Wow, what an incredible journey! Can we talk a little bit about your new role and what it entails?
As Vice President / President elect, I am part of the executive committee that sets the tone of what we are trying to accomplish as a chapter. My platform for my run as president was to be more collaborative with other like-minded organizations such as the Urban Land Institute, SoCal NOMA, and other organizations to tackle challenges. My particular interest is in environmental justice and making sure that everybody has access to clean water, fresh air, adequate housing, and the like. As architects, that is really one of the issues we can tackle in terms of justice, equity, and inclusion.
What does this role mean for you both personally and professionally?
Personally, my election to V.P. / President Elect is a great milestone for me. Having started as a young architect, often the only woman of color around and not really seeing anybody of color in any kind of upper management position, or even at the time, not really seeing anybody of color on the board — to be a board member now, to be the head of the board, is an incredible feather in my own cap. I am only the second African American woman to hold the title of President for AIA|LA, the first being Barbara Bouza back in 2019. Currently, most of the board moving into 2022 are women and, more importantly, people of color, so I think that’s a great representation of the population of Los Angeles and really, the population of the country as a whole as we are moving to see more people of color in positions that matter.
I am really happy to represent Cumming in this role because it puts Cumming out there in front of the architecture community. Architects will get to know Cumming better because they will be seeing me a lot and will come to understand that we are a great partner to the work that they do. Architects can count on us to provide all the services they need if they don’t know about us already. Hopefully, by having my name behind the Cumming name as I assume my role over the next two years, architects and architectural firms will come to recognize that we would be a great partner that they could and should work with. While we are not an architecture firm, there are lots of architects in our ranks and we work with them all the time over the course of our projects. For them to see us advocating for issues that architects are involved in speaks really well to what Cumming can do for architects and projects in general.