The 2017 edition of LA500: The Most Influential People in Los Angeles, marks our second attempt to narrow a dynamic region of 10 million people into a list of 500. Despite the groundwork we laid last year, assessing who should stay and who should be replaced was nevertheless a challenging task.

As we did last year, we tapped our reporters’ expertise and sources, our research staff combed through the dozens of lists we produce each year, and our editors looked for people who were new to town or who might have been overlooked last year. And we had contributions from our readers as well, who in the weeks and months after the inaugural edition came out last year made many thoughtful suggestions.

Is it a thorough look at the region? Absolutely. Is it definitive? Perhaps not. In any endeavor such as this, there are bound to be people who are overlooked, and we’ll be back with another edition of this book next year at this time, so there will be an opportunity to remedy those oversights and take stock of who’s come and who’s gone during the intervening year.

A word on the organization of this volume. With the exception of real estate and media/entertainment, which have an outsized but by no means dominant impact on our economy, our creative team designed a book in which people from disparate industries are grouped in broader chapters, such as Civic Leaders and Industry Leaders.

We also selected 16 people whose impact on Los Angeles transcended their core industries and opened the book with their profiles in a section called Visionaries.

In the end, we came up with a collection we believe represents the best of Los Angeles.

Jonathan Diamond

Editor, Signature Publications and Conferences