American Architectural Foundation’s Jess Zimbabwe Named Executive Director of Newly-Created Center at the Urban Land Institute

Washington, D.C.
March 9, 2009

The American Architectural Foundation (AAF) announced that Jess Zimbabwe, vice president for Programs and director of AAF’s Mayors’ Institute for City Design has been named executive director of the newly-created Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership at the Urban Land Institute.

"It has been a great pleasure working with Jess; she is among our nation's emerging leaders in urban design and city planning policy and governance,” said Ronald E. Bogle, president and CEO of AAF. “Her service to the Mayors' Institute and the American Architectural Foundation has been outstanding. While I am disappointed to lose Jess as a colleague, I am pleased to gain her as a partner in her new capacity as executive director of the Rose Center."

Created in 1996, the Mayors' Institute on City Design is a program dedicated to improving the design and livability of America's cities through the efforts of their chief elected leaders, their mayors. The program is a partnership program of the National Endowment for the Arts, The US Conference of Mayors, and the American Architectural Foundation, which administers the program. Additional funding has been provided through generous gifts from the Edward W. Rose III Family Fund of the Dallas Foundation, Bank of America, and the Surdna Foundation.

“Under Jess's leadership new partnerships were forged that have led to an unprecedented variety in the Mayors' Institute basic format,” said Maurice Cox, the National Endowment for the Arts Director of Design. “She championed single-city institutes, themed institutes and our newest opportunity, follow-up technical assistance to mayors, all of which respond to the particular challenges that mayors face. I can confidently assert that American cities have many more mayors who have found their urban design voice today because of her leadership at the Mayors' Institute.”

Over the Institute's 22-year history, more than 800 mayors and 550 design professionals have participated in a series of two and one-half day long symposiums on city design organized around presentations and roundtable discussions. The Institute has also been recognized with a number of awards, including a Presidential Award for Design Excellence in 2000, a Progressive Architecture award from Architecture magazine in 1997, and an Institute Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1992.

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