Dear members and friends of the AIASMC chapter,
Happy New Year! As we welcome 2025, I want to take a moment to reflect on our journey over the past year and share our plan for the year ahead.
2024 was filled with incredible accomplishments, thanks to the dedication and leadership of our past president, Anne Chen, and the entire board. We welcomed 33 new and reinstated members into our community, enriching our diverse perspectives and comradeship. Our attendance at the AIA Leadership Summit in DC was significant as we advocated for key legislations that impact our profession and your interests. We also had the privilege of hosting various engaging building presentations and educational programs, including the visit to the Google Bayview campus, the Zero Net Carbon Design workshop and the Hard Hat Cafe tours. We finished out the year with our biennial Design Award celebration, during which we recognized the exceptional work and creativity of many of our chapter members.
As we move into 2025, our goal is to strengthen connections – between new and long-time members, emerging professionals and seasoned practitioners, local communities and governments, and partners in the construction industry. To this end, we will focus on our communication and outreach through the newsletters, social media and even personal messages to you! We will work on revamping the weekly newsletters to highlight stories from our members and adding more content that is relevant to your practice. Additionally, we will improve our website’s user experience, making it easier to find out and join chapter events. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the year!
“To help equip our chapter’s architects to be leaders in advocating for architectural and professional issues of our community”. That’s the Vision Statement we unveiled back in 2023. This year, we will embark on a new strategic plan that reflects this vision and also addresses the changing and diverse interests of our profession. We also plan to bring back fan-favorite social events and explore new programs that are better tailored to your interests while providing opportunities to connect us with neighboring chapters and community organizations. Members – your feedback is incredibly important to us! We love to hear from you – please feel free to send us a note about how you feel about the direction of the chapter, and continue to participate in focused-topic members’ surveys!
As you may know, many of our programs are organized by the volunteers of our six sub-committees – Advocacy, Committees on the Environment (COTE), Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), Emerging Professional (EP), Housing and CRAN, Programming and Communication, and Scholarship. Each committee has big plans for 2025 and would welcome your participation! Please join us at the 2024 Design Award Projects Presentation / Members’ Meet and Greet event on January 29! This is the perfect opportunity to meet and learn about the sub-committees and hear “behind the scenes” stories of all the award-winning projects!
As always, we are thankful for our chapter and event sponsors’ generous support and participation. We look forward to continuing our partnership and seeing you at our events in 2025.
Thank you again for being part of the AIASMC community! Please reach out to me and the board here for any questions or thoughts you’d like to share. And don’t forget to renew your membership (if you haven’t done so).
Here’s to another year of growth, connection, and collaboration! Wishing you and your loved ones a joyful and prosperous 2025.
Sincerely,
Kenny W Hung, AIA.
2025 President
(And the AIASMC Board of Directors and the Executive team)