Seek Out Discussion Leaders at Initiative Meetings and Open Source

Ideas are the currency of CNU 20. Get ready to share your ideas throughout the Congress, including at this year's Open Source Congress and Saturday afternoon's Initiative Meetings.

See below for bios of select leaders who will be engaging in conversation regarding CNU's new Health Districts initiative:

Open Source: Thursday, May 10, 10:45 AM to 12:00 PM
Open Source: Friday, May 11, 2:00 PM to 3:15 PM
Open Source: Saturday. May 12, 3:45 PM to 5:00 PM

Laura Heery Prozes, Architect and Planner, AIA
Laura Heery Prozes a co-founder of Brookwood Group, was Principal-in-Charge and lead design of projects for Turner/TimeWarner Entertainment; The Coca-Cola
Company; thePeachtree Corridor Redesign for BCID; Georgia Institute of Technology in Savannah; Disneyland, Paris, and Lendlease. She has practiced as a registered architect for more than 20 years, provided strategic planning and master planning for stakeholders and enterprises, including a global environmental center with thought leadership from C.S. Kiang and J.R. Spradley in 1993 to Downtown Urban Labs with Central Atlanta Progress, underwritten b The Coca-Cola Company, Kendeda and Home Depot Foundations in 2010. Laura is a board member and Initiatives Chair for the Congress for the New Urbanism, and leading new CNU initiatives related to energy, health and finance.  She was an Executive Co-Chair of CNU18, organized with assistance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
 
Selected for World Presidents/Young Presidents Organization; the International Women’s Forum; the Atlanta Regional Leadership Institute, L.I.N.K., and other civic and
business groups; Laura has served on the board of Research Atlanta at the Andrew Young School of Policy Research, Atlanta Botanical Gardens, Earthshare, as well as the Carter Center Board of Councilors and other non-profits.  Laura worked for John Burgee Architects with Philip Johnson as a designer on mixed-use projects, such at Atlantic Center, after interning with IM Pei & Partners and Heery International.  Ms Heery has been a speaker/facilitator for Urban Land Institute, Southface Energy Institute, and smart growth forums; a visiting professor and critic for the Georgia Institute of Technology Graduate Architecture Program and other universities.  She received a Masters in Architecture from Yale University.

David Green, AIA, LEED AP, Associate Principal, Senior Urban Designer, Perkins + Will
David Green focuses on large-scale urban design and planning projects for the firm. He has been involved in hundreds of projects in the past twenty years, encompassing all scales of development from individual buildings to multi-thousand acre projects. His work focuses on issues of development, particularly healthcare and research districts, in contemporary urban areas. He further addresses the regulatory framework within which this development occurs, and provides innovative strategies for appropriate policy implementation. David received the AIA Atlanta Silver Medal in 2003 and the AIA Georgia Bronze Medal in 2008. David has been a member of Georgia Tech College of Architecture Faculty since 1992 and is currently appointed as Professor of the Practice of Architecture. He lectures widely on issues of urban design, planning and architecture.

Charles Green, MA, MFA, CNU-A, Health Communication Specialist, Healthy Community Design Initiative, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Charles Green, MA, MFA is a Health Communication Specialist for the Healthy Community Design Initiative in CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH), Division of Emergency and Environmental Health Services. A 24-year veteran in health communications, Mr. Green has been with CDC for more than 10 years. He served as campaign manager for CDC’s award-winning Choose Your Cover skin cancer education campaign, and Team Lead for NCEH/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s Office of Communication Science. Charles’s awards include Public Relations Society of America’s Golden Anvil and Outstanding Young Professional Awards, CDC Communications Roundtable Award, and CDC’s NCEH/ATSDR Honors Awards. He is the first CNU-accredited New Urbanist by the University of Miami School of Architecture and served as local executive co-chair for CNU 18’s “New Urbanism: Rx for Healthy Places.”

Brett VanAkkeren, EPA, Smart Growth
Brett Van Akkeren is a senior analyst in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Sustainable Communities. He has been working on a wide variety of smart growth issues since 1996. He has a long history of funding and working with the CNU and New Urbanists. This includes supporting creation of such studies and reports such as: Strategies for Successful Infill Development, Valuing the New Urbanism, Turning Greyfields to Goldfields and, Financing New Urbanism Projects: Obstacles and Solutions.

Brett was EPA’s liaison to the LEED-ND core committee where he championed shift in strategy of crediting stormwater management. He has also worked with New Urbanists on a variety of projects including working with DPZ on the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Lifelong Community Charrette which proposed transformation of six suburban communities to accommodate an aging population and working with Geoffrey Ferrell in the creation of a form-based code for Marquette Michigan’s waterfront.

A self-described utility infielder of smart growth Brett has worked on nearly every smart growth issue save rural communities. That might change soon if he is brought on to work on a new project that could be titled: The Clinics of Madison County.

Brett has recently participated in a variety of Multi-Agency Federal Initiatives including the First Lady’s Let’s Move program and the National Prevention Strategy.