city of los angeles:
dept of neighborhood empowerment

Ann-Marie has worked for the City of Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment since 2016, and currently serves as the Public Information Officer there. The Department is the primary support agency for LA’s Neighborhood Council system — a community-based arm of the municipal government.

Sample public relations, communications, education and design projects for the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment shown include:

Neighborhood Council Art Exhibit, Los Angeles City Hall

Ann-Marie gathered all the images and anecdotes for this exhibit and wrote all the copy for this exhibit at LA City Hall celebrating the accomplishments of Neighborhood Councils on issues ranging from sustainability to land use to emergency preparedness. See the photos and stories from this exhibit here (panels designed by Arin Abedian).

Neighborhood Guide trifold brochure

Neighborhood Council participation is open to all who live, work, own property or a business, or have some other routine, substantial local involvement, such as attending church or school in the community. Since this is a uniquely broad concept of stakeholdership, many of those served by a Neighborhood Council are unaware that they qualify as a stakeholder, so they need to be informed that this resource is available to them, via outreach tools like the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council trifold brochure in English and Spanish shown here. The brochure was one of many Ann-Marie created showing customized info about a Neighborhood Council on one side and a list of popular city services on the other.

Candidate Workshop series

Board members are elected officials, but serve their terms of office pro bono. For most of LA’s 1800 Neighborhood Council members, this is their first time holding elected office, so training on how to create a successful campaign is key. Over 300 people attended the seven Candidate Workshops that Ann-Marie taught during the 2019 Neighborhood Council elections.

Board Member Basics manual

When it was created in 1999, LA’s Neighborhood Council system was the first of its kind in the world — a qualitatively new form of government, and a new type of participatory democracy. Because of this, it’s important that best practices are identified and made part of the institutional knowledge that’s passed on to the next generation of leaders, through tools like this “Board Member Basics” manual that Ann-Marie wrote and designed for distribution to new board members after the 2019 Neighborhood Council elections.