BUILDSF: Making San Francisco Resilient at AIASF

Join the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and AIASF for this panel discussion on building a resilient San Francisco, retrofitting to prepare for a disastrous event, and how to respond to and recover from significant multi-hazard threats.

Panelists:
David Wegner, Senior Consultant, Jacobs Engineering Group
Dave Wegner Dave currently works at Jacobs Engineering Group as a Senior Scientific Consultant focusing on three primary areas: (1) the impacts of climate change on drought, extreme weather events, coastal and Arctic impacts; (2) transportation issues associated with harbors, inland waterways and the Great Lakes in respect to commodities and cargo; and (3) developing and mentoring staff to deal with the issues of resiliency and sustainability with water, energy and land management. Previously, he held senior staff positions on water, energy and transportation committees in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he worked on legislation that directly affected administration policy and federal agency actions related to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy.  Prior to serving in Washington, D.C. Dave worked for over 20 years for the Department of the Interior managing water and science programs in the Colorado River basin and the Grand Canyon.

Gail Napell, Senior Project Manager, Gensler
As a Senior Project Manager with Gensler in San Francisco, Gail is a leader in managing complex design and workplace projects for influential companies and institutions in the Bay Area and around the world. Her goals are always to provide excellent client service, integrate sustainability and bring an element of innovation to every project. With a professional background in architecture, interiors and consulting, Gail has helped clients such as Ericsson, salesforce.com, Kaiser Permanente, and HP create environments that enhance organizational performance, achieve measurable business goals, enrich people and communities, and enhance everyday experiences. Gail is a registered architect in California and the Northern Mariana Islands, and has a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.

​Marielle Price, Director of Customer Success, Fieldwire (Moderator)
Marielle works as the Director of Customer Success at Fieldwire, helping clients be the most productive they can on their construction job sites. 
After graduating from Stanford with a Master's degree in Construction Management (with a focus in sustainability) and a B.S. in Civil Engineering, she worked at Pankow Builders for several years. At Pankow, she worked on net zero energy buildings, schools, and with the city of San Francisco, as an Assistant Project Manager and Field Engineer. Part of her duties while working on the San Francisco Public Safety Building (police headquarters, police station, and fire station), was making sure that the building that houses our emergency response teams was prepared for such occasions. She is passionate about lean and green construction, which lead her to joining Fieldwire.
In her free time, Marielle loves urban exploring and hiking on the weekends, as well as trying out new delicious restaurants in SF.

David Ojala, Forensic Structural Engineer and building failure first-responder at Thornton Tomasetti
David Ojala works as a forensic structural engineer and building failure first-responder at Thornton Tomasetti, where he draws on his experience designing building and non-building structures, big and small, to help him investigate structural failures across the country and in difficult field conditions.  He then takes the lessons learned from those failures to provide proactive design, research, peer review, and risk assessment services for his clients.  Outside of TT, Mr. Ojala is a frequent speaker on matters related to resiliency, structural safety assessment, structural plan review, and code changes.  He is Chair of the Existing Buildings Committee for the Structural Engineers Association of California (SEAOC) and a Director of the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC), and is a past-chair of the SEAONC Disaster Emergency Services committee. He is a trained Structures Specialist with FEMA Urban Search and Rescue California Task Force 4 in Oakland, a member of the SEAOC Earthquake Performance Evaluation Program, and is a trained Safety Assessment Program Trainer, Coordinator, and Evaluator for CalOES.

​Bijan Karimi, Assistant Deputy Director for San Francisco's Department of Emergency Management​

Bijan Karimi is the Assistant Deputy Director for the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management and a responsible for overseeing planning and policy implementation, hazard and threat analysis, training and exercise planning and response operations.  Bijan came to the world of emergency management after nearly a decade in the financial services industry. 
Bijan completed a Master’s degree in Homeland Security and Defense at the Naval Postgraduate School his research focused on the connection between economic, homeland and national security.  He also attended Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government National Preparedness Leadership Initiative. Bijan received his undergraduate degrees from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Master’s degree in business from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.