Starting on July 1st, 2022, I will be serving as a volunteer member of the City of Holyoke (MA) Planning Board. Mayor Joshua Garcia appointed me to a five-year term ending on June 30th, 2027. I am listed on the official City of Holyoke website here: https://www.holyoke.org/planning-board-members/

I am a resident of Western Massachusetts with formal education in computer science and regional planning. I am interested in improving my neighborhood and my region through effective municipal planning, small-scale investments in real estate, and worker-owned businesses. My hope is to create more walkable and vibrant places where everybody owns a stake in their community and lives dignified lives.

The following are three local and national organizations I follow and support:

• Strong Towns at https://www.strongtowns.org/: A national urban planning think tank that promotes bottom-up approaches to create fiscally sustainable and equitable communities.
• Wellspring Cooperative at https://wellspring.coop/: A community development corporation and incubator of worker-owned cooperative businesses in the Greater Springfield area.
• Western MA Regenerative Food System at https://wmrfs.com/: A relatively new organization that promotes regenerative agriculture and other solutions to improve the overall food system for both people and the ecosystem.