About A View From The Future

A View from the Future is the focus of a breakfast program hosted by BWAF on Tuesday, June 5, 2012 from 8:15 - 11:00 am at the CUNY Graduate Center Proshansky auditorium in New York City.

This program will illuminate the enormous transformation occurring in the industry over the last five years. Speaker, internationally acclaimed futurist Edie Weiner, joined by a panel of top experts will discuss emerging new opportunities in the architecture/engineering/construction (AEC) industry.

This transformation is unlike any the AEC Industry has ever witnessed. In terms of economic guideposts that define a recession, what the building industry is facing today is NOT a recession. It is NOT a shrinking, new normal based on the previous one. It is a new beginning. If firms are not aboard with innovation relating to current cross-disciplinary transformations, they will become obsolete.

BWAF brings to NY’s building industry speaker Edie Weiner, whose presentation will change your thinking. This new thinking can enhance your professional performance and perspective, whether a practitioner, planner, developer, realtor or educator. From a business standpoint, it will affect your thinking about your market share, employee engagement, your corporate social responsibility profile, and help increase your profits.

Women are an intrinsic part of this transformation. More than half the US labor force, 59.2%, is comprised of women. However, the low rate of entry of women into most sectors of the building industry coupled with the high attrition rate throughout means that the built environment continues to be created almost entirely without the voices and skills of women leaders. The future will require all the best available brainpower.

Research shows that the most profitable innovation comes when women’s views join men’s. And that innovation is minimized when women’s voices are lacking.

Following Ms. Wiener’s talk, the panel discussion, moderated by Jane Chmielinski, chief operating officer for AECOM Technology Corporation, will focus on applications to the AEC industry and real estate community. Among the panelists is Michael De Chiara, founding partner of Zetlin & De Chiara LLP, MaryAnne Gilmartin, Executive Vice President and Director of Commercial & Residential Development for Forest City Ratner Companies, Jurij Paraszczak, Director of IBM Research Industry Solutions, and Ana Bertuna, Vice President of Design and Construction for Related Companies.