Hannah Hieu
Former Senior Vice President of Design, Practice Leader, Culture & Engagement Advisor, Westfield
Hannah is a highly organized and disciplined project executive with a 20+ year career in retail architecture. Her experience includes management of more than $2.5B in annual retail development and capital expense across 30 national properties, including: The World Trade Center, Garden State Plaza, and San Francisco Centre. She is a skilled strategizer, with a history of managing multiple projects with budgets ranging from $1M to over $400M. Hannah has directed both internal and external consulting design and technical teams. She has a fine-tuned skill for collaborating with stakeholders, CEOs, senior leaders, vendors, and peers throughout the project life-cycle.
Hannah started her career as a Junior Draftsperson for Westfield over 21 years ago. Today she is the Senior Vice President of Design, Practice Leader, Culture & Engagement Advisor at Westfield. She leads a team that is responsible for creating iconic development projects across 32 properties in the portfolio. Hannah and her team continue to push the design envelope to create a retail experience that has never before existed. In addition to reshaping the “shopping” experience, Hannah’s more recent focus has been talent and team development. Hannah is revolutionizing the working environment so that it supports, cultivates, engages, and attracts the right people to execute Westfield’s vision and brand. In this expansion of her role, she is responsible for staffing and hiring, fostering learning and development initiatives, assembling high performing teams, encouraging work/life integration in modern culture, developing a system of checks and balances, and acting as an overall professional coach to her department.
Hannah lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two young children. She is deeply engaged with the community and enjoys participating in the development of young minds. As a mentor for The ACE Mentor Program of America, Hannah helps inspire students to pursue careers in design, architecture, and construction through mentorships and design competitions. Hannah is a black belt in Shotokan Karate and loves to travel, camp, and garden. One of her favorite activities is trying out new and creative recipes with her husband and generally exploring life with her family.
Hannah holds a Bachelor Degree in Molecular Biology from San Jose State University, a Bachelor of Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture. She also holds a Certification of General Management from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and is currently working on her iPEC (Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching) accredited professional coaching certification.