Board + Advisory - USGBC-LA

Chair: Gary Lai

Practice Builder-Site Sustainability, Green Infrastructure, Environmental Equity, Kimley-Horn

Gary Lai is an accomplished landscape architect and thought leader in sustainability, resiliency and conservation. Gary leverages three decades of design and planning experience to steer large, complex projects to successful completion. His interest in drawing and environmentalism led him to a field that he describes as the ‘architecture of living things’ with an immense potential to impact quality of life for future generations. Gary is dedicated to transforming public landscapes in any setting—civic to commercial, healthcare to housing, park to plaza, road to river—to enhance the social and ecological health of cities. He has extensive expertise in sustainable design and water issues that enable him to focus and maximize the creative energies of project collaborators toward innovative, yet practical solutions. His commitment to environmental advocacy is reflected in his teaching and speaking engagements, as well as his active involvement in the local professional sustainability community.

Monique Johnson

Senior Vice President, Director of Client and Community Partnerships; CRA Officer, Beneficial State Bank

Monique Johnson, an executive banker in the industry for over thirty-five years, is Beneficial State Bank’s Senior Vice President, Director of Client and Community Partnerships in addition to the Bank’s CRA Officer. Ms. Johnson was initially hired as the Head of Retail Banking in California in 2016. Monique has been on executive management teams for the past 20 years. Before joining Beneficial State Bank, her previous position was Chief Operating Officer of SunPac, LLC, a banking investment vehicle with the strategy of starting up a new bank in Los Angeles. Prior to that role, Monique was Director of Relationship Management and Marketing in addition to serving as CRA Officer and Co-Chair of the enterprise-wide company giving program at Wedbush Bank in Los Angeles, California. Her
extensive background includes working in every type of banking department from de novo banks to those with $15 billion in assets including the former Imperial Bank. Ms. Johnson has been an anchor in Southern California for almost thirty years with private, community and commercial banks overseeing regional banking offices while instrumental in managing the entire sales and client relationships in addition to all marketing and branding initiatives, operational processes and efficiencies, high touch service, technological advances within systems and products, positive compliance and training cultures, facility management and community, corporate and investor relations.

Ms. Johnson earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in finance with a specialization in commercial loan management from Iowa State University. In addition to her new board role at USGBC-LA, she is a board trustee, treasurer and secretary at AltaSea, an organization bringing together leaders in science, business and education to generate innovative solutions to global challenges of human and environmental sustainability. From feeding the earth’s growing population to providing long-term employment and ocean-related careers, AltaSea is a unique model at the Port of Los Angeles. She is also an advocate, board member, volunteer and on the education committee of Junior Achievement of Southern California reaching from Bakersfield to Orange County. Junior Achievement’s mission is to empower young people to own their economic success and stay in school through financial literacy, entrepreneurship and work readiness programs. She was a founding committee member and remains active in Community Resource Exchange (CREX) which develops introductions and new initiatives
between CRA-qualified, community-based organizations and banks in the Greater Los Angeles area. In 2015, she was honored by the California “got milk” Foundation with the Better Future Moms – Los Angeles award for her role as a professional, community advocate and mother. She has been involved in other community organizations over the past few decades including Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation and Culver City Chamber of Commerce.

Monique lives in Hermosa Beach, California, with husband and two daughters who are focused on global environmental sustainability and green commercial architecture.