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OPENING GENERAL SESSION
Friday, October 31
8:30am-10:00am
Morial Convention Center

A meeting badge is required to enter this session.

ASLA’s annual meeting opens with a dynamic session packed full of information, updates, and excitement. President Paul Morris, FASLA, will review the successes and achievements of the profession during his tenure, including the continued advancement in the areas of government and public affairs. Executive Vice President Nancy Somerville will cover the issues occupying the Society during the past year and recap the many accomplishments, projects, programs, and collaborations, which are under way. As his schedule allows, Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans will attend to welcome ASLA. The program also provides the occasion for recognizing various members and supporters of the annual meeting.

The session will conclude with two dynamic keynote speakers who will spend approximately an hour, imparting their perspective, knowledge, and enthusiasm for this profession. Their combined insights are sure to inspire an energetic start to the meeting!

Dr. Richard Jackson

Dr. Richard Jackson is a pediatrician, an epidemiologist, and a leader in environmental health. After receiving his MPH, he worked with the California Department of Health Services where he headed both the Environmental Hazard Assessment and Communicable Disease Divisions. Eight years ago, he became Director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health. He has worked a great deal on birth defects, cancer, asthma, radiation, pesticide, and toxicology issues, especially lead poisoning in children.

Over the past five years, he has become convinced that a critically important and under-appreciated environmental health issue is that of the built environment: our homes, buildings, sidewalks, bicycle trails, roads, creek beds and water systems, parks and play areas, and cities and town. The built environment shapes behavior and promotes, or damages, our health in ways that are far more profound than most public health professionals realize. Dr. Jackson asserts that we in public health have a great deal to say about how we design and build the environments where we spend most of our time—but our voices have not yet been clear or loud enough.

Joel Kotkin

In this tandem presentation with Dr. Jackson, Joel Kotkin will impart his particular viewpoint as an internationally recognized authority on global, economic, political, and social trends and author of the widely acclaimed best-selling book, The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape (Random House, 2000). His writing, editing, and reporting background gives him a unique perspective on these issues. Mr. Kotkin’s credentials are impressive and include senior fellowships with both Pepperdine University Davenport Institute for Public Policy and the Milken Institute.

For three years, he was business trends analyst for KTTV/Fox Television in Los Angeles where, in 1994, he won the Golden Mike Award for Best Business Reporting on the changing dynamics of the entertainment industry. Mr. Kotkin writes a monthly column in the Sunday New York Times’ Business section, entitled “Grass-Roots Business.” He is a columnist with the Los Angeles Business Journal, ReisReports.com, and a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Forbes ASAP, and The Los Angeles Times, where he is a contributing editor to the Opinion Section. For five years he served as West Coast editor for Inc. Magazine and contributes regularly to that publication.

He is the author of four other books in addition to The New Geography. California, Inc., (Crown, 1982) deals with California’s links to the Pacific Rim. Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success In the New Global Economy (Random House, 1993) traces the connection between ethnicity and business success–-how in-group loyalties are becoming the driving force in the new global economy; Tribes has been published in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and German.

He co-authored The Third Century - America’s Resurgence in the Asian Era (Crown, 1988). This title was translated into Japanese and Chinese, with a special English edition published for the Pacific Rim. His first novel, The Valley, was published in 1983.

Keynote Speaker Kotkin sponsored in part by Landscape Forms.