I am a planner, designer, and arborist working in Oregon's Willamette Valley. My work is organized around a broad interest in the systems and structures that create the conditions for people and communities to flourish—and in advocating for policies and practices that strengthen those conditions.

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For the past decade, that interest has increasingly focused on the relationship between human well-being and the natural systems that support it. Nature contributes to physical and mental health, social connection, and quality of life. But its importance goes deeper. Trees, soils, water, vegetation, wildlife, and the ecological processes connecting them perform work that helps sustain human communities.

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My path to this work began in public policy. Between 1995 and 2017, I worked for nonprofit organizations in Minnesota, Nevada, and Washington, D.C., primarily on voting rights and election policy. Much of that work focused on the structures that contribute to inequality and on changing laws, policies, and practices that limited participation in the democratic process.

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From 2008 to 2017, I served as president and executive director of Project Vote, a national voting-rights organization whose work combined research, advocacy, litigation, and community-based voter registration. I began my career as an intern to U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone.

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That experience continues to shape how I approach planning and environmental questions: understand complex problems through evidence and specialized expertise, determine what changes the evidence supports, communicate those conclusions clearly, and advocate for their adoption.

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In 2018, I co-founded the Mission Street Parks Conservancy in Salem and served as its full-time president during its first two years. The conservancy allowed me to work directly at the intersection of public space, landscape, community involvement, and human well-being. My work included organizational management, fundraising, volunteer management, garden design, and landscape stewardship in Bush's Pasture Park. You can see the woodland garden planI designed for the park.

 

I became an ISA Certified Arborist in 2020 as I developed greater technical knowledge of trees and urban landscapes. But I also became convinced that the questions that interested me could not be addressed solely at the scale of individual trees, parks, and landscapes. I wanted to work at the larger scale of neighborhoods, cities, public policy, and ecological systems.

 

That led me to the University of Oregon's College of Design, where I earned a Master's in Community and Regional Planning and a graduate certificate in Ecological Design. My graduate work explored the relationship between human communities and natural systems. An early thesis project, Room for All, considered how cities can make room for nature while continuing to function as cities. My master's professional project, Barrio de las Lechuzas, developed a master plan for a proposed sustainable community in the Galápagos Islands.

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Since 2020, I have served on the Salem Planning Commission, including as president in 2024 and 2025. I have participated in an update to Salem's comprehensive plan, helped develop and adopt a new tree-preservation ordinance, and initiated work to update the city's riparian maps and policies. I also served on Salem's Climate Action Committee.

 

Today, my professional work brings these interests together through planning, landscape design, and arboriculture. I work across scales—from individual trees and planting designs to landscapes, public spaces, land-use questions, and community planning—with a particular interest in biodiversity, ecological function, public health, and the relationship between natural and built environments.

 

Across my professional practice, civic work, and writing, I continue to return to the same question: If human well-being depends on functioning natural systems, how do we plan, design, and manage places that allow those systems to function while also meeting human needs?

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Understanding that relationship is only part of the work. I am equally interested in translating evidence into better plans, policies, designs, and management practices—and advocating for their adoption.