Featured Presenter: Fiona Ma

Assembly Member Fiona Ma’s life seems the stuff of dreams: born to immigrant parents and now making history as the highest-ranking Asian-American woman in the state Legislature.

Ma has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, a master’s degree in Taxation from Golden Gate University and an MBA from Pepperdine Unversity. Her CPA career started in the tax department of Ernst & Whinney’s Manhattan office, followed by five years working for Ernst and Young in San Francisco. Next, Ma joined the tax practice at Ghiasi & Company, where she worked for 10 years, specializing in real estate, hospitality and high net worth individuals, after which a series of events led her into public office.

Ma’s ties to her roots remain strong, as she’s taken her local concerns to Sacramento—along with her skills as a CPA. California CPA talked with Ma (D-San Francisco) about her journey to the Capitol and Sacramento politics. …(read on)

SAN FRANCISCO TO HOST ECOCITY WORLD SUMMIT 2008

World’s Best and Brightest Will Gather to Design the City in Balance with Nature

San Francisco will host the 7th International Ecocity Conference (Ecocity World Summit), next April 22-26 2008. The event will be convened by nonprofit Ecocity Builders and held at UC Berkeley Extension and Nob Hill Masonic Center/Grace Cathedral.

“Times are crying out for a much larger effort in the direction of the city that restores, not destroys, the biosphere,” says Richard Register, President of Ecocity Builders and author of (New Society Publishers, 2006). The answer to many of our pressing social and environmental problems, he believes, is to redesign and rebuild cities for people and revitalization of nature instead of for cars and sprawl.

The world-renowned series follows the first, held in Berkeley in 1990, and five subsequent conferences in Australia, Senegal, Brazil, China and India. Ecocity World Summit 2008 will take center stage before the highly influential Bay Area community of architects, planners, designers, policy makers, green businesses, political and nonprofit leaders, with the added participation of international experts and delegates.

Speakers include architect and master planner Jaime Lerner, former Mayor of Curitiba Brazil; former Governor of Maryland Parris Glendening, President of Smart Growth America Leadership Institute; Wang Rusong, President of the Ecological Society of China; Fiona Ma, CA State Assemblywoman and Chair of the Congressional High Speed Rail Caucus, Stephen Schneider, Stanford University Climatologist; plus architect and design visionaries like Paolo Soleri and Richard Register, and directors from nonprofits such as Global Footprint Network, who have important sustainability accounts for entire countries.

The conference will also draw high profile journalists and media attention; conference organizers are already signing on media partners and are receiving requests for interviews and articles.  According to proponents of the ecocity approach, the healthy built human habitat is the “walking city,” of which some parts of existing cities are already good examples. Whether small scale or large, it would cover a small fraction of the land consumed by today.s sprawling cities and towns. The guiding principle is “access by proximity.”

“The idea is to design communities so that instead of having to drive “over there,” what you need or want is “just around the corner,” says Register.

Current conference sponsors include SF Environment, UC Berkeley Extension, SF AIA, EDAW, BART, SF Neighborhood Parks Council, SPUR, Ecological Society of China, SF Bicycle Coalition, Ecocity Builders, Green Century Institute and organicARCHITECT.

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For more information or to schedule an interview with Richard Register or other Ecocity World Summit speakers, please call Amy Senn at 312.528.9111 x102 or e-mail Amy at AmySenn@sensiblecity.com.