On a sunny March morning, the Palisadian-Post finds itself in the Gensler war room where a closed-door executive session plays out. At the table: Glenn Rasumssen (hospitality technical director), Warwick Wicksman (hospitality designer), Lisa Asahara (practice area marketing coordinator), and Diane Cullen-Levin (client relationship manager). On the table: projects in development with Nickelodeon, Eagle Lodge, and other high-profile entities big enough to own a piece of our daily lives. At stake: enterprises years in the making, with hundreds of millions of capital investment hanging in the balance. Leading the discussion: architect Rob Jernigan and interior designer Nila Leiserowitz, a pair of seasoned professionals who also happen to be Palisadians. In the heart of Santa Monica beats Gensler, a global architecture, design, planning and consulting firm that handles top-tier architectural assignments for the most prominent clients in L.A.’s financial, medical, municipal and entertainment sectors. Gensler pumps lifeblood into the design of contemporary Los Angeles. Projects at Gensler include some of the costliest, most ambitious architectural challenges in our city’s 158-year history; large-scale projects’make that events!…that will shape the destiny of our city for many decades to come. As co-managing directors of the 360-person Los Angeles office, Jernigan, 52, and Leiserowitz, 54, work in tandem at what is considered”within Gensler’s international network of 30 offices (including locations in London, Tokyo and Dubai) and 3,000 employees”the most creatively progressive office. Jernigan heads the architectural division. Leiserowitz designs interiors of buildings and campuses. Both Jernigan and Leiserowitz bring impressive credentials and resumes to the figurative table. Jernigan’s resume includes a short list of Houston’s most prominent edifices. In March, Leiserowitz received her profession’s highest honor when she was named Designer of Distinction by the American Society of Interior Designers. With his Ryan O’Neal-Warren Beatty-ish looks, semicasual attire, and a soft Texan accent, Jernigan clearly and confidently leads the internal roundtable. Sporting cat’s-eye glasses, curt hairstyle, and checkered socks and black shoes, Leiserowitz looks every inch the artsy master interior designer and appears strikingly bohemian compared to the mix of formal and casually dressed studio leaders in the room. Leiserowitz does not talk as much as Jernigan does, but when she speaks, the room listens. A ‘BD’ (Business & Development) discussion ensues, which segues into a conversation on colleague and client relations, and on improving internal consultation and training, finally ending with venting frustration with the insular, cloistered culture of a particular hotel chain. All in a day’s work for this team. ‘?Rob and Nila both have an eye for identifying new young leaders in the architectural community,’ Wicksman says. ‘Their knowledge of current architecture and design, industry trends, and their understanding about focusing on the important issues, inspires confidence within the office, and with our clients.’ Paired together by Gensler, the Leiserowtiz-Jernigan juggernaut is a partnership that works. Thoughtful and soft-spoken, Leiserowitz counters Jernigan’s brashness with a different kind of temperament. ‘Nila is persuasive in a calm sort of way,’ Cullen-Levin says. ‘She’s a very strong, organized thinker,’ Jernigan says of Leiserowitz. ‘She’s very honest.’ ‘Rob is much more verbal and outgoing than I am,’ Leiserowitz says of her partner and fellow Palisadian. ‘He’s a very talented architect. We have similar values, so when we’re trying to set a direction for the office, we’re aligned. We bring two different perspectives to the same issue, which is healthy.’ [DROP CAP] Nila Leiserowitz jokes that she envies the fact that her husband of 22 years, Ron Leiserowitz, works from home because ‘his commute is much shorter than mine.’ She and Ron like to spend their down time around the Palisades with their Irish setter, Leo. ‘It’s a walking city,’ Leiserowitz says. ‘We live near St. Matthew’s so we can walk to the Village for lunches and to the farmer’s market. ‘Something that you would never expect about Nila is that she climbs mountains!’ Cullen-Levin says. ‘Nila has such a calm demeanor, and one would not expect that she would do something so physically taxing and extreme. But it definitely supports her personality in that she is always shooting for the pinnacle, whether it is in design or in her personal life.’ ‘We’re avid hikers, so we appreciate the access to the trails,’ says Leiserowitz, who also likes to laze around Caf’ Vida on Antioch. Before heading West, the erstwhile Nila Hildebrandt wallowed in her Midwest roots, growing up in South Dakota and getting her interior design degree from the University of Minnesota. At age 24, she and partner Gary Wheeler created the successful interior design firm Wheeler-Hildebrandt. After a decade, Leiserowitz moved to Chicago and worked for Perkins & Will (from 1988 to 1995), the firm which purchased her 20-person firm. While at Perkins & Will, she enjoyed her first brush with the West Coast when she partnered with a local firm to design San Bernardino Community Hospital. There was no question when Gensler came calling in 1995 for Leiserowitz, who was ready to put her career on a pedestal. ‘It was the number-one firm that interested me,’ she says. ‘A global firm that has its roots in interiors. The types of clients that you’re able to attract are much more diverse ‘I love the diversity. We work on projects from as large as airports to product design.’ Blessed with unlimited budgets, Leiserowitz adds that ‘a part of our responsibility is to find that balance.’ Leiserowitz’s career highlights since joining Gensler have included Western Asset Management in Pasadena and Saban Capital in Century City. ‘Until recently, there was a lot of work in the financial industry. All of a sudden the entertainment industry is active again,’ says Leiserowitz. ‘When the recession goes down, our corporate services will shift into a different mode. There’s different work to be done, but all of it is challenging.’ [DROP CAP] ‘Robert Jernigan is passionate about life,’ Cullen-Levin says. ‘He is passionate about architecture and designing the best building to meet the client’s ‘point of view,’ but he is just as passionate about his family. He has been active with his son and the Boy Scouts since Grayson [Jernigan’s oldest child] was little.’ Indeed, Jernigan received an illustrious acknowledgment last month when the Boy Scouts awarded him the Design and Construction Industry’s Distinguished Citizen Award. But his Palisades lifestyle is where his heart is. Specifically, Paseo Miramar, where Jernigan, after graduating from the University of Georgia and University of Tennessee, moved to from swingin’ Manhattan Beach upon marrying wife Sue. Today, Jernigan is very involved with St. Matthew’s Parish with his three children, Grayson, 13; Cassie, 11; and Charlotte, 8. Through the children’s soccer games and the like, Jernigan befriended such esteemed individuals as William Morris CEO Jim Wyatt, for whose firm Gensler will be establishing the new digs of Wyatt’s talent and literary agency; and Jason Reese of Imperial Capital, another Gensler client. ‘The kids’ network is powerful,’ Jernigan says, smiling. The Palisades, to him, ‘represents the best of L.A. It clearly has the best climate. For a certain stage in your life, it’s the perfect place”very close-knit, family-oriented.’ In the workplace, Jernigan proves as dedicated to his craft as he is to his family and community. Jernigan climbed his way up from a prominent Houston architect to heading Gensler L.A.’s architecture department. He worked on the Wells Fargo Bank Plaza (formerly Allied Bank Plaza) in downtown Houston, which he helped design while at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Today, the building stands as the 13th-tallest building in the nation; a magnificent 992-foot, 71-floor urban monument of steel and glass that extends four stories below street level. Jernigan also designed Downtown L.A.’s Gas Company Tower. He counts among his proudest achievements the new CAA building in Century City, as well as downtown’s Ritz-Carlton Residence and Hotel. When you build a 90-ft. by 100-ft. hole in the middle of an endeavor such as the new CAA headquarters, ‘the first question becomes – which will be the movie which shoots rockets through it,’ Jernigan says. In other words, like the Welton Becketts and Armet & Davises before him, Jernigan intends such a monument to today’s entertainment establishment to radiate iconic. But Jernigan is currently tackling bigger fish, namely the Staples Center-centric L.A. Live entertainment district downtown, due in 2010, which, he says, represents ‘the way we live in L.A.’ ‘It includes a 54-story hotel and residential tower, a conference center, a 14-screen Regal Cinema, and a 2,700-stall parking garage,’ Wicksman says. ‘It is probably the most prominent project under construction in L.A. right now, and Rob is instrumental in providing high-level leadership to the team.’ While such lifestyle projects will be built on a grander scale, they will become dated in a few generations, whereas the corporate work, Jernigan notes, ‘needs to look timeless for 50 years, but the lifestyle stuff, you will remodel it. Because it is experiential, it’s going to be reinvented.’ So does Jernigan prefer the expansive lifestyle projects or the corporate complex assignments? ‘I enjoy them all, but I have a bigger track record in the corporate office building,’ he admits. Perhaps LACMA was a bit of both. Jernigan worked with no less than architect Renzo Piano on the just-opened Broad Contemporary Art Museum. ‘We’re doing phase two as we speak,’ he says. ‘We really work in regions. We are the Southwest region. A lot of the young talented people come to L.A. ‘The audience is much more accepting of creative design here than in other cities,’ Jernigan adds, keeping in the Southern California tradition of why the Schindlers, Neutras, Sorianos, Wrights, and Albert Freys were able to create their masterpieces here. Leiserowitz agrees. ‘Here, people are more experimental,’ she says. ‘Exploring new ideas and thinking. Still an advantage in L.A. We’re a Petri dish for new ideas. We’re probably the most diverse design firm.’ ‘We’re a professional service firm,’ Jernigan says of Gensler L.A. ‘Our equity is our people.’ So does Jernigan miss working as a hands-on architect, or has he settled into his role working with Leiserowitz to oversee 360 employees? ‘I would go stir crazy in a five-person firm,’ admits Jernigan, who remains proud of his talented Gensler team. ‘It’s a challenge and it’s fun,’ says Jernigan of him and Leiserowitz. ‘We’re no longer playing on the court, we’re coaching. We’re helping these younger people recognize and reach their full potential. It’s no longer ‘me, me, me,’ it’s ‘we, we, we.”
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