BREAKFAST DIALOGUE: Core Power

Thursday, September 5, 2024

7:30 a.m. - 9:30

The San Diego History Center

1649 El Prado, Balboa Park
San Diego, CA 92101

- DIALOGUE MODERATOR -

Leigh Eisen

Eisen assumed the role of Executive Vice President & CEO on January 1, 2020. An alumna of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning (MSC Urban Planning), Leigh brings nearly two decades of non-profit management experience, as well as public sector/ government experience to the table. Leigh has devoted the bulk of her career to organizations whose missions are to improve the quality of life and economic viability in the built environment.

- PANELISTS -

Betsy Brennan 

Betsy Brennan is the President & DEO of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the economic prosperity and cultural vitality of Downtown's urban neighborhoods. Since 2018, Brennan has brought her background in leadership at the City of San Diego, community-service non-profits, and educational institutions to the benefit and growth of the organization, helping it gain new relevancy as a critical piece of the bright future of the San Diego region. Brennan earned her Juris Doctor, with a specialization in land use, at the University of San Diego (2003) and serves on the Board of Directors for several organizations in San Diego County as well as the board for International Downtown Association. In 2022, she was recognized as CEO of the Year by the San Diego Business Journal.

Jennifer Luce 

Jennifer believes that architecture is a conversation. That exceptional design happens though inquisitive exchange between client and architect, building and landscape, amongst teams, makers, thinkers, room, table, chair, materials and light. That conversation holds the power to transform to surpass expectation. It's the moment of moving through a doorway over a threshold from one space into another. It's when sensation, minds, cultures, selves, memory, tone, meet this is how we build things the matter.

Megan Groth

Megan kicked off the 2024 World Design Capital year by producing and managing the first Transborder Association of Architectural Education (TAAE / ATEA) event! Architecture students from five colleges in San Diego and five colleges in Tijuana worked together to reimagine the future of San Diego Civic Center, looking at the redevelopment through the themes of Arts & Culture, Transportation, Decarbonization, Housing, and the Public Realm. The event focused on introducing students to the power and potential of collaborative design in the Urban Core. Megan is also the co-author of "The Places We Love" a World Design Capital inspires project which was seeded when she was in Helsinki during their World Design Capital year and picked up a similarly sized photo guidebook to local culture and nightlife at a bookshop on Senate Square.

Frank Wolden

Frank is an architect who has worked on many of San Diego's most memorable projects and was a key player in helping shape Downtown San Diego in the 1980's working at the City of San Diego when CCDC was in its formative years. He calls himself an urbanist because of his focus on cities and recently has joined RDC architects, the firm that design the ongoing transformation of Horton Plaza. Over the past 30 years, Frank has led the design of major urban projects in the United States and abroad. The uniqueness of his approach comes in providing a conceptual foundation and design process for projects that creatively engage architecture in the making of new urban spaces.

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