Ms. Gabriela Juarez is a land use planner for the Department of City Planning for the City of Los Angeles.  Her current role in city planning deals primarily with processing entitlement requests in the Central City/Downtown, Westlake and Hollywood Community Plan Areas.   In the seven years she has been with the Department, she has also worked on conducting studies on the Los Angeles Municipal Code.  These studies range broadly in scope: from assessing improvements for streamlining entitlement process to creating new policy and development regulations to incorporating new legislation that trickle down from Federal and State levels.  Additionally, she has worked on day-to-day case processing and design review to long range planning such as community plan updates for West Adams – Baldwin Hills – Leimert Community Plan in the South Los Angeles area and intermediate projects like the Northeast Los Angeles Zone Change work program.  Prior to working for the City of Los Angeles, she worked for various planning and land use organizations and companies including non-profits and expediting consultants.  She attended the University of California, San Diego where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Ethnic Studies with an emphasis in Urban Planning and the University of California, Los Angeles where she received her Master of Arts in Urban Planning with her concentration in Transportation and Land Use. She currently serves on the Los Angeles Section of the APA Board as Programs Co-Chair.  Previously, Ms. Juárez has served on the Los Angeles Board since 2007 in various Chair positions.