Alissa Walker writes and speaks about design, architecture, cities, transportation and walking. She is the urbanism editor at Gizmodo and her work has appeared regularly in Los Angeles Magazine, LA Weekly, Dwell, Fast Company, GOOD, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as on the KCRW public radio show DnA: Design and Architecture. She has been named a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow for her writing on design and urbanism, Journalist of the Year by Streetsblog Los Angeles, and in 2015 received the Design Advocate award from the LA chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Alissa lives in a 1912 Craftsman on the art alleys of LA’s Historic Filipinotown where she throws ice cream socials, tends to a drought-tolerant garden, and relishes life in LA without a car. Read more at her blog, A Walker in LA, and follow her at @awalkerinLA on Instagram and Twitter.

Kasim Reed is the 59th Mayor of the City of Atlanta. He was elected to a second term on November 5, 2013 and took the oath of office on January 6, 2014.

Since taking office, he has hired more than 900 police officers and created the largest force in the city’s history, re-opened all of the city’s recreation centers as safe havens for young people and improved fire-rescue response times. Working with the Atlanta City Council and the city’s employee unions, he successfully initiated a series of sweeping reforms to address the city’s $1.5 billion unfunded pension liability. Mayor Reed began his term facing a $48 million budget shortfall; under his leadership, the city has had four years of balanced budgets with no property tax increases, and its cash reserves have grown from $7.4 million to more than $130 million.

He is also Chairman of the Transportation and Communications Committee of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Chairman of the Regional Transit Committee of the Atlanta Regional Commission.

He was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1998 and served two terms. From 2002 to 2009, he served in the Georgia State Senate, where he was Vice Chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Mayor Reed is a graduate of Howard University in Washington D.C., where he received his Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctor degrees and an honorary Doctor of Laws.