Planning & Policy Work

I have worked as a consultant and advocate on issues of community development, urban planning, youth participation, and participatory budgeting. From 2000 to 2002 I served as a full-time program advisor with the NGO ETP Slovakia, working mainly on a UNDP community development program for Eastern Slovakia's marginalized Romany communities and a DFID environmental planning and training program. After leaving Slovakia, I completed a Masters in Planning from the University of Toronto, in the process preparing policy reports for the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy, the City of Toronto's Sustainability Roundtable, and the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. Since then, I have worked with Project for Public Spaces in New York and Planning Action in Toronto, developing campaigns and resources on community-based planning. As a steering committee member of Planners Network since 2003, I have helped build an international network of planners, academics, and activists who use planning as a tool for social justice.

Since 2003, most of my policy work has focused on participatory budgeting. While in Toronto, I prepared a report on participatory budgeting for the City's Community Engagement Unit, and worked with community organizations on a city-wide participatory budgeting campaign. In 2005, I launched an international participatory budgeting network, which has evolved into the organization The Participatory Budgeting Project, which I direct with Gianpaolo Baiocchi. This work has led me to advise several cities and organizations on implementing participatory budgeting processes.