Could you provide a brief summary of your career and any projects that you would like to highlight?

After grad school, I moved to New York and worked for the Alliance for Downtown New York, a business improvement district serving the 1-square-mile area of lower Manhattan. I worked on planning projects, which really meant helping the business improvement district advocate for better planning and a better public realm. “Public realm” is a [term] we use a lot in my field, which really means the space between the buildings.

In that work, I [focused a lot on this corridor called Water Street that was a sort of aging office building corridor that had a lot of public space in theory, but none of it was really good quality. I did a lot of different things. It was fun because I could be entrepreneurial. I could propose projects and then do them.

We helped some property owners put out tables and chairs outside their buildings to encourage people who were walking by to have a little coffee or chat with a friend outside. I helped a colleague create a single Wi-Fi corridor along this stretch of the street so that people could hang out outside more, use their phones, and talk to friends. Back then, it was really remarkable that we were able to accomplish this, even though now I think the expectation in public spaces is that we get free public Wi-Fi and a place to sit.

I did that job for about 3 1/2 years. Toward the end of that, Hurricane Sandy [hit] New York City and that region, which was really devastating, particularly for the businesses and residents of lower Manhattan but also for so many other neighborhoods across the tri-state area. Overnight, our work pivoted to recovery and resilience work. Instead of working on projects over the long term, we switched what we were doing to focus on the economic development aspect of recovery and working closely with small businesses. In particular, in developing or writing grant proposals to support the cost of recovery as well. I also worked with community members on shaping projects to be funded for recovery.

In the course of that, I hired the company I’m with now; I became the client and worked on a very short but intense project for about six weeks. Through that introduction and the network I had built in New York City, I became really interested in the company and got a phone call a few months after we wrapped up the project, asking if I was interested in a role there. I was hired — it’s almost 12 years to the day that I started working there. I was originally hired for one particular project that was really big, but it had not quite started yet. So I continued [working on] Hurricane Sandy recovery in my job. It was incredible. We got to work with seven different communities around the city and their recovery paths. I worked very closely with Lower Manhattan.

Then the big project that I was hired for actually started, and that really consumed me. That project is called The Lawn on D in Boston. It started as an idea to turn about 3 acres of dead space next to a convention center into something that could be activated and well used and create a new sort of public vitality in a part of the city that was overlooked — really thought of as a corridor between two things. You pass it on your way to something. You use it as a back route to avoid traffic.

The Lawn on D was named for D Street, which is that corridor. I worked on that project for 18 months, and it was incredibly rewarding. I did everything, from organizing a team to putting together a project team. I hired a venue manager; we developed the programming concept and branding. We explained to people how the site should be used and what it should be seen as. And then we actually opened it. I [talked with] circus performers, festival organizers, and producers. I helped get things on the calendar to turn that 3-acre site into a park people could actually experience.

There was a small but growing neighborhood right around that site. I remember one of the things we did was commission a very cool public art piece for the site — just an idea a colleague of mine and I had for something illuminated, something that was public art but really interactive that kids and grown-ups could enjoy. We commissioned this work from two Boston-based artists and architects, who created the project called “Swing Time.” [They are] illuminated swings in the heart of the park, and they became very, very well-known.

There were a couple of moments when I realized the impact of what we had done. The first was just seeing neighbors come and use it and having a part in creating it — seeing people use the thing we had conceived. Though I am not a landscape architect, nor can I really build anything other than a piece of IKEA furniture, it was very cool to have a part in creating it. I also remember people posting pictures of themselves on the swings in their Tinder profiles. I felt like that was really the moment when we had made it as a project.

In the work I do and have done with my company [over] the last 12 years, I actually do a lot of public open space-related work — not necessarily as deep as what I just described, but often with new parks, thinking about what the programming strategy should be. In other words, what types of activities and events can this place host? Should it host and for whom? How can that impact what the design will be, how it will be operated, and hopefully also funded? I also work a lot with park systems, including here in L.A. with the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department.

How do you ensure that diverse voices, particularly community voices, are represented in your projects?

Ensuring representation is always a challenge with the work that we do. I think one thing that I have seen in my work to really be true is that it is not just about community engagement, and it is not just about how a project can specifically create a place for people to go. It is actually in all the aspects of how a project is conceived, planned, implemented, and operated. It is something that we think about a lot in the work we do.

What I mean by that is, are the people on the design team who are creating a park design, for example, representative of the community? They don’t always need to be fully representative or come from the community; there is always a need for outside voices and experts to play a role. There does need to be some aspect of community and even demographic representation on our teams, so we work hard [with them] to find that balance.

In the planning itself, how are we reaching out to communities and meeting them where they are? In the outreach itself, are those ways actually culturally sensitive, encouraging, and welcoming of people to show up, be in a big room, and sometimes go up to a microphone to say something [to a] big group of people and have their voices heard? Sometimes, even just the way you set that up can be culturally appropriate or, alternatively, insensitive, without coming from a place of just wanting to get the job done and sometimes inadvertently omitting people’s voices, in addition to just language and language access.

In the operation implementation, I think of it not just as [whether] we are succeeding in getting those people to use the park that we said we wanted. But how are they involved? In some cases, they are nonprofit organizations that help plan the programming and help raise money. Even the governance of the nonprofit — by which I mean there are board members; there are people making decisions about what goes there and who can go there. To me, that is so critical to the long term.

I zoom out and think there is so much of my work impacted by who the person in government is, who is either letting or encouraging something to happen. So much of my job actually involves working with government actors and with city staff members whose job it is to be responsible for, plan, encourage, and demand that the people working for them create projects with great outcomes.

When I think about the difference in projects, it often [lies in] the person who is doing their job as a government representative, who brings their identity and the communities that they represent to that job. To me, it is why we need representation in government at all levels. It has been so obvious to me in the work I have done that it has such an impact.

What do you think will be most important for young people in L.A. to pay attention to as the city grows and changes?

Heat and, alternatively, shade are the issues that will make or break us in our region when we face climate change. Extreme heat is already one of the most pernicious results of climate change in the number of deaths it causes. Sometimes it is invisible in that you do not necessarily know it is directly from the heat. People are working outside in these conditions [without] protection. It [can also] exacerbate illnesses that people already have.

There is a lot that we can do to protect people. I mean, it is a lot of different things. Even while getting more people reliable air conditioning, there is also building more shade, planting more trees, and then taking care of the trees we have. Shade comes from a big tree canopy, and big tree canopies come from mature trees and not just little itty-bitty things coming out of the ground on day one. We actually need to invest in the trees that we have. Those are things we already know how to do. So I think there are lots of different things. Some of them are really expensive and hard to do, while some of them we know how to do. We need to educate folks about these — both elders and younger people.

What would you say are the most important lessons you have learned from your career?

I do not feel like I am the wisest person yet, but I do think I have learned some things. One is that there is a value to continuous improvement and learning. When I was younger, I thought that by the time I graduated from college or was settled down in my first job, I would have figured things out. Every year that goes by, I learn more and more about how to be a better professional and a better contributor to my job and to society.

Some of that is related to the second thing, which is that people and relationships are so critical to success, at least in what I have seen, in that you can achieve good. You can get good grades. You can have a lot of professional success. But to me, what defines success is really the ability to connect one-on-one with people, see and understand them in their wholeness, and then use that to do good work. That is [why] so much of my work is relationship-based: I can connect and then use that connection to tell an important story that needs to be told or use data to respond to the person’s or the group’s needs. So much of what I do is actually around understanding people. I am still learning and getting better.

Moving forward, what are some of your personal, work-related, and community goals?

This is a good time of year to be thinking about resolutions! I was thinking this morning about something my daughter was learning in her taekwondo class — the whole month of November, they celebrated the attitude of gratitude. I just love that because I think I was so fortunate growing up, and we are all busy, but I think what is sometimes lacking is a moment to pause and reflect on what we have and what we are grateful for.

My daughter spoke in front of her school around Thanksgiving as part of a show, and every kid [who] was up there said what they were grateful for. [My daughter] said, ‘I am grateful for trees.’ It was so sweet. I want to bring the attitude of gratitude into my work and personal life. From a personal perspective, I also want to be able to have intentional quality time with my family while managing my job. I don’t exactly know how that will happen, but we will figure it out.

For my community, I want our government to invest more in public space and the public realm, and especially in our parks. I want our community to know what it feels like to be proud of the place we live — where we pay taxes — and where we are going to raise our families. I think a lot of that comes from a sense of belonging but also from caring about the spaces we have.

Is there anything you would like to add, either about yourself or your work?

I am so honored to be doing this because I am always thinking about how to connect with my Korean American roots, and it is fun to step back and think about myself through that lens.

One other thing that goes back to what I learned over my career is that my Koreanness has been an asset in a lot of ways, as I am sure many people have found over the years. One of the things that I think about is “nunchi” (눈치 — the ability to read the room or gauge others’ emotions), which I do not even know the right definition of, but it is something that is a skill and an asset to have, among many other things. It is just one example of why I think it is important to reflect on our culture and think about what it bestows upon us. Some of it is positive, and some of it is negative, but it is not all just one thing or the other.