Amber Lombardo

Amber Lombardo is the Executive Director of AIA Memphis and founder of CiV, the Center for Architecture + Design in West Tennessee. She serves on the 2024 AIA National Board of Directors and Government Advocacy Committee (as liaison to the Strategic Council's AI working group). In addition to being the 2023 President of the Council of Architectural Component Executives (CACE), she also served on the Strategic Council, the Secretary's Advisory Council, and the Advocacy Capacity Building Group. Lombardo has a Bachelor of Science degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture, Civil Engineering and Marketing from Mississippi State University. Upon graduation, she worked as a web developer for a variety of organizations (most notably the National Science Foundation Engineer Research Center) in the then-emerging tech industry. In 1999 she began her own web shop and sold it 17 years later after it evolved into an advertising agency, community magazine, art gallery and digital print shop, garnering over 70 industry awards ranging up to international recognition. In 2016 she returned to architecture through grassroots advocacy efforts for the Mississippi Historic Tax Credit and later, in coordination with the National Trust, the Federal Historic Tax Credit. She has presented at several AIA National events, at the National Main Street Conference, the National Trust, National Preservation Week and more. Her creative works (photography, writing, etc) have appeared in numerous notable publications including National Geographic Traveler, Preservation Magazine, Where to Retire, Southern Bride Magazine, and others. She has launched three magazines, Elevation the Journal of the Mississippi Heritage Trust, TourCollierville Magazine, and Folio the Annual of AIA Memphis. Recent awards include the 2021 AIA Memphis President's Award, the 2022 Memphis Business Journal's Women Who Lead in Architecture, and 2023 Louise Blanchard Bethune Fellow. She is a native of Enterprise, Mississippi and currently resides in Collierville, Tennessee.