Greetings ACI Members,
I hope this message finds you in good health and high spirits! It is my pleasure to serve as the ACI Southern California President for 2025. I am honored to take the iron gavel from Jacob Brennan, and I am privileged to follow in the footsteps of the many accomplished industry leaders who have laid a solid foundation before me. I am excited to announce that our chapter received the Excellent ACI Chapter Award for 2024. This is the highest honor a chapter can receive and was only given to 26 chapters. This award is a reflection of the dedication and hard work of our Board of Directors and members who showed up in full support of the chapter last year. To continue that momentum, we have numerous exciting educational and social events lined up for this year that are sure to build on our success.
We started the year with our annual Sam Hobbs Awards dinner in January where the new Board of Directors began their term. We had a sold-out event as we honored the many accomplishments and contributions of Don Kahn from Largo Concrete. We also hosted and presented our ACI Student Scholarships to three very deserving individuals. Photos of the Awards dinner are available here. The Catalina Pacific LAX Ready Mix Plant Tour was well attended in February. Thank you to the Catalina Pacific team for showing the group a ready-mix plant in action! You can check out photos from the tour here.
Next up on our events calendar is an informative lunch program on March 19th titled “SCMs and Blended Cements: Reducing the GWP of Concrete While Maintaining Performance,” presented by Lauro Rivas of CalPortland. Registration is now open, and space is limited, so act quickly. You can register for the lunch program here. Our annual Scholarship Golf Tournament will be taking place on April 24th at Coyote Hills Golf Course. This event is fore-sure to be a hit as it is already sold out. I look forward to teeing off with everyone.
Keep your eyes peeled for events the chapter will be hosting later in the year including:
- a young member event in May,
- a project tour in June,
- the annual pickleball tournament in July,
- an educational dinner in September,
- the annual Topgolf outing in November,
- and a holiday mixer in December.
The upcoming events can be found here. We will finish the year with our traditional Concrete Awards. Keep an eye out for outstanding projects worthy of submission for the various concrete categories.
As you can see, our Chapter has quite a bit to be proud of and has a full calendar of events planned for this year. I look forward to seeing all of you at our programs!
All the best,
Sydney Zaragoza
Chapter President 2025
