Sarit Sela, AICP (she/her/hers)

City Architect
City of Gainesville
Gainesville, Florida

Sarit Sela, AIA, AICP, LEED AP, and LEED for Cities Pro, is the City Architect for the City of Gainesville, Florida. Sarit leads complex municipal capital projects while advancing citywide sustainability, resilience, and performance. In 2024–2025, Sarit led Gainesville’s achievement of LEED for Cities Gold certification, completed entirely in-house without external consultants, establishing a measurable framework to track performance and guide sustainability policy across city operations and services.

With more than 25 years of experience in architecture and urban design across the public and private sectors, Sarit bridges building-scale design and city-scale systems thinking. Her work includes leadership on Gainesville’s Downtown Strategic Plan, recipient of an International Downtown Association Excellence Award, and implementation of projects ranging from the City Hall Plaza refresh and civic building renovations to adaptive reuse, historic preservation, and in-house design of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) for city-owned affordable housing, released as free downloadable plans to the public.

Sarit’s leadership focuses on aligning vision with implementation, bringing people, ideas, and systems together to move complex initiatives forward. Her work demonstrates how mid-sized cities can leverage internal capacity and collaboration to achieve durable, measurable sustainability outcomes.

Disclosure information not submitted.

Presentation(s):

• LEED for Cities: How to Certify Your Community

  Monday, April 27, 2026
  10:30 AM - 11:30 AM CT