"No One Wants to Work Anymore": Between Labor and Purpose - 1.25 PDH (LA CES/HSW)

Recorded On: 09/18/2026

As society rethinks labor, value, equity, and purpose, this session brings together emerging professionals and industry leaders together to explore change, build empathy, redefine success, and co-create a resilient, relevant, and human-centered future for landscape architecture rooted in shared accountability and collective imagination.

Learning objectives:

Identify how generational, cultural, and demographic shifts are reshaping expectations of work within landscape architecture.
Build tools for advocacy, boundary-setting, and cross-generational collaboration.
Envision and enact collective agency in the profession.
Develop shared language to discuss work ethic, value, and professional purpose across generations.

Avery Haynes, Assoc. ASLA

Planting Design Specialist

Hoerr Schaudt

Avery is a landscape designer and planting design specialist currently based in Chicago, IL. Being from Baton Rouge, Louisiana has given them a strong connection to nature, art, food, people, and place. As a planting designer, they get to combine a love for conceptual design thinking with ecological and practical applications of landscape architecture. They strive to create opportunities for themself and other Black and Indigenous people of color to participate in their own empowerment through a connection to our landscapes.

Carlos Torres de Janon, Assoc. ASLA

Educator, Designer

Self-Employed

Multi-lingual and creative, with experience in multiple international architecture and construction firms, higher education sustainability management and programming and non-profit visual and performing arts advocacy and planning. +4 years of experience as a high school ESL, literature and art appreciation teacher.

Originally from Guayaquil, Ecuador, he moved to Vermont for college, interned in Barcelona, Boston, Sonoma, and back home in Guayaquil. After a 4.5 year-long career as a high school educator, he came back to the U.S. to pursue his MLA at LSU. Life's too short to wear one hat! He currently works and lives in Seattle, WA.

José de Jesús Leal Loera, FASLA, PLA

Principal and Native Nation Building Studio Director

MIG, Inc.

José de Jesús Leal Loera is a truth teller, landscape architect, and bridge-builder who believes laughter is good medicine. A lifelong student of land and culture, his work is grounded in humility and spiritual awareness. As Co-Founder and Director of the Native Nation Building Studio at MIG, he advances Indigenous self-determination through sovereignty-forward planning and culturally responsive design. José partners with Native Nations to support community capacity, climate resilience, and cultural resurgence. Through his presentations and practice, he positions landscape architecture as a vehicle for healing, restoration, and collective transformation rooted in truth and relationships.