Leadership Role: Board Member

Board Member

Mayra Fernandez has served as a change agent with over 20 years of non-profit experience with a focus on education, health equity and housing parity in historically under-resourced communities.

Mayra is a seasoned public policy professional with experience in shaping and influencing policies that drive meaningful change. She has worked on the local and international levels and has experience building innovative and transformative programming and has led organizational change through thoughtful strategic planning and coalition building.

In addition to her extensive public policy background, Mayra is expanding her expertise in the real estate sector, bringing a fresh perspective to an industry often dominated by traditional narratives. She is passionate about bridging the gap between policy and practice, working toward creating more inclusive spaces and equitable housing solutions that empower underserved communities.

As a woman of color, Mayra brings lived experience and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by underrepresented groups. She is committed to using her platform to amplify diverse voices, foster community engagement, and ensure that policies reflect the needs and aspirations of those who have historically been excluded from decision-making processes. Through her work, she seeks to create agency for individuals and communities to advocate for themselves, driving social and economic transformation.

Mayra earned her Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and her Masters of Public Administration from California State University in Los Angeles.

With over twenty years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Mayra Salazar has become a trusted resource for organizations seeking to secure educational and health facilities across the Greater Los Angeles area.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mayra has an innate understanding of the city’s diverse neighborhoods and the unique challenges and opportunities that come with serving its communities.

Throughout Mayra’s career, she has worked alongside small to large size organizations, helping them navigate the complexities of securing spaces that support their missions. Whether it’s negotiating leases, securing funding, or managing facility development projects, Mayra brings a comprehensive understanding of real estate transactions and a passion for community service.

Fluent in both English and Spanish, Mayra is able to bridge cultural and language gaps, ensuring that clients from all backgrounds receive the highest level of service.

Her deep connections in Los Angeles and commitment to improving the quality of life for local residents has made her an invaluable ally and a standout professional in the field.

Board Member

Danielle Rago is an advocate for good architecture and has made it her mission to bring architecture to a wider public. Trained as an architect herself, Danielle has built her career around supporting emerging architects by providing building, development, PR/marketing, curatorial and writing services.

Board Member

John Arnold, AIA, is a partner at KFA Architecture in Culver City, where he specializes in multi-family housing of all types, including affordable housing and adaptive reuse. John is a Boston native with family roots in New Hampshire. He received his undergraduate degree in Environmental Design from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and his Masters Degree in Architecture from the University of Washington. He has held long-term positions as the Board Architect on the University Park HPOZ and the Jefferson Park HPOZ, and currently serves on the Board of Abode Communities Housing and AIA Los Angeles. He has lived in a 1906 bungalow in West Adams since 2001. In 2023 he and his husband Curt purchased the neglected Paul R. Williams House in Exposition Park. It is currently under restoration. In his spare time, John likes to make things in the kitchen, take long walks through Los Angeles, and garden with native plants.

Board Member

Christopher brings a varied background to his responsibilities with FORT:LA. A California native, his interest in Los Angeles architecture sprung out of the ground-breaking MOCA exhibition on Case Study houses “Blueprints for Modern Living” in 1989. This led to study at UCLA on architectural history and interior design, along with participation in the LACMA Decorative Arts Council for several years. In 2001, during a three-year sabbatical in Paris, he deepened his knowledge with art and language courses at the Sorbonne, École du Louvre and completed a certificate program in Art, Decorative Arts and Architectural history of France at Christies Education, Paris. Since 2018 he has been a docent at the Gamble House, and is a past board member of Friends of the Gamble House (FOGH). 

His professional experience includes over twenty years in technology sales that included stints living in London, Paris and Melbourne, Australia. He was also the founder of Paris Private Guides, a top-rated bespoke tour company that offered personalized private tours of Paris; including art, architecture, fashion and gastronomy led by noted experts and authors on Paris.

Board Member

Born in Knoxville, TN, Meghan made Los Angeles her home after graduating from FIDM and UCLA. She is a comedic actress who came up through the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theater in Hollywood. She also writes for tv, film, and animation and dabbles in directing. Her passions outside of work are her husband, two dogs, and well-stocked craft room.

Board Member

Chris Erric Maddox attended Winchester, Massachusett’s A Better Chance Program for boarding school, Tufts University for his Bachelor’s Degree, and Columbia University for his Master of Fine Arts Degree. Since completing his education, Chris has worked as an actor, writer, and producer. After touring the country, performing Shakespeare’s canon, and landing numerous roles acting on television shows like “Accidentally on Purpose,” “The Middle,” “Modern Family,” “Mom,” “Castle,” and “Dads,” Chris began his writing career. He was accepted into the Paramount Writers Mentoring Program in 2015 and, afterward, began writing and producing television shows, including “Bull,” “A Million Little Things,” “Monarch,” and “Dynasty.”

Board Member

Jake Lazere is a licensed Realtor who is trained as an architect. He brings over a decade of experience in architecture to his real estate clients at DPP Brokerage. Having worked at respected Los Angeles architecture firms including Frederick Fisher and Partners and Koning Eizenberg, he gained a discerning eye for quality design and construction as well as a keen understanding of the regulatory processes of building. For residential clients as well as institutional ones including the Los Angeles Natural History Museum and Princeton University, he honed skills to assist clients in making difficult decisions to achieve their goals. As a real estate agent he works with clients from first-time home buyers to astute investors, helping them achieve their goals with his knowledge of architecture, construction, Los Angeles city and its real estate market.

He grew up in Southern California and loves living in Los Angeles. He’s enamored by the city’s exciting diversity of residential architecture – the homes from the turn-of-the-century Arts and Crafts movement, the Hollywood-inspired storybook houses of the 1920s, the homes of the mid-century modernist boom, and the great contemporary architecture that is being designed and built today. He holds a Master of Architecture from the Tulane School of Architecture, where he graduated with the award for design excellence and currently sits on the school’s alumni council.

Board Member

Teresa Grimes has 30 years of experience in the field of historic preservation. She is widely recognized as an expert in the identification and evaluation of historical resources having successfully prepared dozens of landmark and historic district applications for a wide variety of property types. Teresa graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a Master of Art degree in Architecture and has worked in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. Maintaining a leadership role from inspection to completion, Teresa has overseen numerous rehabilitation and adaptive reuse projects as well as expertly guided property owners through the process of securing Federal Rehabilitation Tax Credits and Mills Act Historic Property Contracts. She has managed the preparation of historic structure reports and worked with architects, engineers, and conservators to comply with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. Teresa  also has extensive experience in the preparation of environmental compliance documents in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act including the identification of historical resources, analysis of direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts, and development of mitigation measures.

Board Member

Priscilla Fraser, Director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, has been working on exhibitions, publications, and projects in the field of architecture for over fifteen years. As a senior designer and project manager for the LACMA, she supervised trail-blazing installations such as Chris Burden’s Metropolis II and a James Turrell retrospective, among others. Prior to joining the MAK Center, Fraser was LACMA’s internal project manager for architect Peter Zumthor’s expansion proposal for the new permanent collection building. In New York, Fraser was responsible for exhibitions and publications at the architectural firm of Steven Holl and worked under Barry Bergdoll in the Architecture Department of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Photo credit: Lauren Ross

Board Secretary

Siddhartha is principal at Wyota Workshop- an architecture firm based in Eagle Rock in Los Angeles. The firm has worked on wide range of projects including award winning spa and dog house, ADU additions to historic homes, apartment buildings, vacation retreat in Joshua Tree to a 80 home resort masterplan in Costa Rica- always with an emphasis on creating beautiful, sustainable and climate resilient environments.

Siddhartha began his professional career at SPF:architects in 2000 and some of his most notable recent work include Rainbow Bridge in Long Beach, the Wonderful Bridge in Lost Hills, the Taylor Yard Bridge over the Los Angeles River, the Obama Sports Center in Los Angeles. Over his career he has worked on the Getty Villa Museum renovation and expansion, and two UCLA projects, CENS (Center for Embedded Networked Sensing), a computer science related research facility, and UCLA Stunt Ranch, an off-the-grid reserve and biological field station in Malibu. He has also taught design studio at the School of Architecture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He is passionate about cricket and currently captains the Pickwick Cricket Club of the Los Angeles Social Cricket Alliance. He is a licensed architect in California and India.