One of Louisiana’s most challenging moments led to a formative period in Rachel DiResto’s career.
It was the mid-2000s, and DiResto was working as vice president of Plan Baton Rouge, helping to implement Baton Rouge’s downtown plan and then expand those planning efforts to Old South Baton Rouge.
Then hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the state.
And so Plan Baton Rouge became the Center for Planning Excellence, and DiResto—a Hammond native who had earned a master’s degree in urban, community and regional planning while on the job—suddenly found herself in meetings with renowned architects and urban planners from around the world whom she was familiar with only through books.
Today, DiResto is a force in community transformation, in Baton Rouge and throughout Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, and she is one of Business Report’s nine 2024 Influential Women in Business honorees.
She led the creation of the Connect Coalition, a regional transit and housing coalition advocating for improved transportation connectivity between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and sparked the adoption of Complete Streets policies, inclusion of transit projects in regional and state plans, and the formation of a Rail Authority charged with implementing passenger rail between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
Read the full story, and check out features on this year’s other WIB honorees.
