Ashley Z. Hand, LEED AP BD+C, Assoc. AIA relocated to Kansas City last September from Los Angeles where she founded the award-winning Sustainability Committee to promote sustainable urbanism and democracy and was a recipient of the 2010 Green Leadership Award from the County of Los Angeles. She has worked in cities across North America to foster civic engagement, creative problem solving, and community activism and her LA case study was published in the Fall 2010 National Civic Review. As the incoming Associate Director on the AIA CSR Board, Ashley participates on local, regional and national AIA committees to promote professional social responsibility. Through grassroots organization, she has engaged communities to effect a paradigm cultural shift with demonstrated success, such as the start of the nonprofit railLA (www.railLA.org) to promote high-speed rail in California.
Ashley Z. Hand has been an architectural designer and LEED AP at AECOM for the past four years and holds a BA in Political Science from McGill University and a Master of Architecture from the Pratt Institute. She has been recognized as one of the Top 20 under 40 construction professionals in the Midwest by ENR (January 2011), was elected by peers to the Steering Committe of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Centurions Leadership Program, and has recently incorporated the nonprofit Friends of Hale Cook to support the opening of a Kansas City public neighborhood school.