Faculty List Full Faculty Description

SHORT AMI BIOS

Louis L. Marines, President
Visioning, Coaching, Mentoring
"I am passionate about living my life compassionately for myself and for others. I want to touch people with grace and integrity and to thereby encourage their same stance in the world. My life is about more than work, though much of it is leadership development for A/E's, because it’s important to me that they’re empowered to create our better world. My life is also about more than knowledge, because I equally value imagination and fierce compassion. Expression of those values is my mission, and I am accountable for the generous use of the gifts I've been given. Our lives and times require extraordinary toughness and courage: to defend our boundaries, to make and implement unpopular decisions we believe in, to live guided by our moral compasses, and to express integrity in the totality of our lives, so that our deeds are in accordance with our words, and aligned with our hopes for, and our expectations of, others. Vaçlav Havel speaks of Optimism as sophomoric and naïve, and I embrace his alternative call to Hopefulness, to do something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. That pursuit affords my life meaning, and I live to encourage others in the pursuit of their own meaning, their reason for being alive and gifted and on our planet at this moment. So we can, each and every one, affirm Thoreau's encouragement that when we die we feel we've left no lives unlived."

Steven J. Isaacs, PE, Associate AIA, Managing Director
Firm Organization and Management, Project Management, Strategic Long Term Planning, Negotiations, Financial Controls
Steve Isaacs has thirty years of experience leading design and construction firms and major engineering, architecture and planning projects throughout the United States and overseas. He assists firms to improve their practice in the areas of overall organization and management, strategic long term planning, financial controls, project performance and profitability, negotiation, mergers and acquisition, staff mentoring and development, ownership transition, joint ventures and partnering. He designed and teaches courses in project management and the leadership of architectural, engineering and planning firms and in effective negotiation. Steve has been teaching and consulting in the design industry since 2001. His career in practice includes serving as President of SmithGroup California. Prior to the merger with SmithGroup, he was CEO and President of Stone Marraccini & Patterson (SMP) an international multi-office architectural and planning practice with over 150 employees.

Joseph D. Rei, Ph.D., Director of Executive Development
Leadership, Corporate Learning
“I get my greatest rewards and satisfaction from watching firms grow and build their learning capacity as an organization, and by helping firms build systems that help the people in their firm achieve their highest potential. My vision for our AMI clients is to help them build sustainable competitive success through the full engagement and development of the people that make up the organization.”

Cheryl May, Director of Strategic Leadership Development
Strategic Leadership Development, Project Management, Assessments, Teambuilding, Employee Retention and Engagement, Onboarding, Organizational Development
Cheryl is committed to inspiring clients to think creatively and make distinctive, enduring and significant improvements to their lives, their firm, the industry and the world. Her work with architecture, engineering and real estate development firms has included the design and delivery of strategic planning initiatives, executive coaching, organizational needs assessment, team-building, facilitation, negotiation, individual assessment, succession management, Project Management programs, and on-boarding. Cheryl specializes in coaching leaders and their teams through an effective focus on the people side of the business. She has helped A/E firms with the design and development of leadership development and project management programs. She is an expert in the use of numerous assessment instruments. Cheryl graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.S. in Psychology and B.A. in Speech Communications from the University of Missouri, Columbia. She received a Master Certificate in Organizational Development from Villanova University. She is certified in numerous methodologies including Myers-Briggs Type II Indicator, Harrison Assessment, Enneagram, Strategic Leadership Development, Personal Directions and many others.

Roy W. Johnson, AIA, Senior Fellow
Firm Management, Project Management, Corporate Universities, AIA/CEC Peer Reviewer, Leadership Development
"My personal mission is to blend my 30+ years of practice experience with the latest ideas about learning organizations, corporate universities, and emotional intelligence into my teaching and consulting work with individuals and firms across the country. The opportunity to address their challenges and work towards transformation of the design profession, in order to best serve our clients and communities, is a worthy one for this phase of my career. Sharing my perspective with professionals from their 20’s to their 60’s, and facilitating their dialogue with each other, has proven to be both stimulating and valuable to all involved."

Susan O'Connell, AIA, Faculty
Project Management
Susan O’Connell, AIA, is a highly experienced architect and educator, who teaches Project Management programs at AMI. She has served as a guest lecturer in the UCLA Extension’s Project Management program. Susan has over nineteen years of experience leading architectural teams in the design and management of complex laboratories and academic projects throughout Southern California and the U.S. Susan has repeatedly demonstrated her ability to build consensus among large, complex user groups. Her approach to building consensus starts with her ability to listen and discern real concerns, distill a wide range of input, and identify a common ground so that through a process of negotiation a substantive design solution is found and embraced. Susan’s strength lies in her ability to collaborate with clients and take great architectural concepts through to a completed project that fulfills the client’s vision.She has been a presenter at Society of College and University Planners Pacific Region Conference, and the Tradelines Conference. Susan is a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS).

Denis O'Malley, Faculty
Project Management
Denis Senior Project Manager with Brown and Caldwell Consultants, a national environmental consulting firm. He has over 30 years' experience in engineering and construction project management. He directs teams of design professionals working on projects from concept development through construction and follow-up. He is Diplomate for the American Academy of Environmental Engineers.

F. Leigh Branham, SPHR, Faculty
Employee Engagement and Retention
Leigh Branham, SPHR, Faculty, works with organizations to analyze root causes of turnover and employee disengagement, then helps them develop and implement employer-of-choice strategies. Leigh has 25 years of experience in human resource consulting, and speaks frequently on the topics of employee engagement/retention, career development in organizations, employment practices, workforce trends, leadership, and management development. He has been interviewed on National Public Radio, and quoted in Business Week, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and many others via The Associated Press, as an expert on employee retention. Branham graduated from Vanderbilt University, and has two Master’s degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Tom Jindra, Faculty
Benchmarking, Strategic Competitiveness, High Performance Teams, Lean Thinking, Leadership Development
Tom Jindra works with management teams in the areas of benchmarking strategic competitiveness, high performance teams, lean thinking, and leadership development. He is an award-winning Lecturer at the University of Kansas School of Business where he teaches Strategic Management, General Management, and Professional Leadership Development. In the past few years he has provided consulting in strategic issues, operations, and leadership development in Germany, Slovenia, Poland, Luxembourg, Turkey, Morocco, and South Africa, advising senior management in those locations about strategic issues in their markets. More recently he has been involved in U.S. and European facilities assisting in operations improvement through lean manufacturing techniques, application of the theory of constraints, leadership and team development. He has played an active role as change manager aligning organizations to new and optimized business processes.

Craig Galati, AIA, Faculty
Leadership Development, Strategic Planning, Vision Planning, Coaching, Mentoring

Craig Galati works directly with people to engage them, unite them, motivate and inspire them to create and transform their environments, both personally and professionally. What is best for a person’s connection to their community and organization is a guiding principle and lens that Craig uses to filter these efforts. Through visioning, strategic planning, corporate coaching, and employee development, he has provided invaluable clarity and direction to multiple public and private organizations. Craig holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Idaho, and is a principal of Lucchesi Galati, a Las Vegas, Nevada-based consulting firm specializing in the disciplines of architecture, sociology, and sustainability. He is married and has two sons. In addition to writing The Heart of Business blog for In Business Las Vegas, Craig has authored two books, Admit it! 21 things you already know but apparently have forgotten regarding client service (iUniverse, 2005) and A Man in Transition: Reflections on Relationships, Leadership, and Life (iUniverse, 2008).

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