Meet PlanPhilly's first advisory board.
The primary functions of the board will be to provide story and beat ideas to the managing editor, direction and outreach for opinion pieces, and feedback on existing coverage.
The editorial board is composed of 10 individuals who will serve for one year. Meeting schedules and communications protocols will be established by the board, but it is not expected that it will meet more frequently than
monthly.
The members' biographies are listed below.
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Matt Blanchard
Matt studied architecture and planning as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia, worked in real estate finance in Manhattan, and later went on to become a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and finally, PlanPhilly.com. He is now pursuing a PhD at UPenn's Annenberg School of Communication.
George L. Claflen, Jr.
George has been the principal of Claflen Associates, Architects & Planners, since 1976. The firm works primarily with non-profit owner occupant clients on a variety of institutional projects. The firm served as the urban design consultant for the Philadelphia City Planning Commission’s study of parking in Center City and coordinated a series of design reviews of large new residential projects along the North Delaware waterfront.
George has designed two community-controlled schools on the Navajo Indian Reservation working closely with local communities in association with other architects. He was one of two principal organizers of the Philadelphia School Design Charrette in 2005, and one of four invited reviewers of the Philadelphia Waterfront Design Charrette of 2007 both sponsored by PennPraxis.
George received Bachelor of Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Master of Architecture MCP from University of Pennsylvania.
Matt Golas
Matt was a newspaperman for 35 years starting at the now defunct Washington Star and continuing in Dallas, Hartford, Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre.
In 20 years at The Inquirer, Matt was Deputy Sports Editor, Delaware County Editor, New Jersey Editor and Metro Editor. He was Executive Editor at the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.
Now he is the managing editor for a two-year old new media web site called www.PlanPhilly.com that covers design, planning and development issues in Philadelphia.
Kevin Gorman
Since 2002, Kevin has been the Vice President & General Counsel of SCA Americas Inc. based here in Philadelphia. SCA is a global consumer goods and paper company that develops, produces and markets personal care products, tissue, packaging solutions, publication papers and solid-wood products. Sales are conducted in some 90 countries.
From 1997 through 2001, Kevin was living in Brussels where he was the Vice President & General Counsel of Volvo Construction Equipment S.A. Prior to that he was Division Counsel with FMC Corporation in Brussels, Hong Kong (one year) and Philadelphia.
Kevin began his career with Duane Morris here (then it was known as Duane, Morris & Heckscher), after graduating from Cornell Law School and University of Notre Dame du Lac.
Chris Satullo
Chris is executive director of news and civic dialogue for WHYY, the public media service in Philadelphia.
Before joining WHYY, he worked for 20 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, serving as editorial page editor, a columnist and director of civic engagement, as well as other editing jobs. He founded the paper's Citizen Voices program, an effort to engage readers in deeper political dialogue, and is co-founder of the Project for Civic Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania.
Among the more than 30 journalism and service awards he has won are the James F. Batten Award for Excellence in Civic Journalism and a National Headlines Club award for innovations in journalism.
Before coming to Philadelphia, he worked 13 years for The Express newspaper in Easton, Pa. and wrote a weekly column that was distributed throughout the Thomson Newspapers chain. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he is a graduate of Williams College and spent a year teaching in France on a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship.
Natalia Olson de Savyckyj
Natalia is Director of Global Initiatives at H2L2, a Philadelphia based architecture and planning firm and has over 15 years of experience working with international, regional and local entities in the Philadelphia region and abroad in Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Olson de Savyckyj was appointed by Mayor Michael Nutter to serve on the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and Zoning Code Commission on January 2008 and serves as the Vice-chair of the Zoning Code Commission. She also serves on the Mayor's International Task Force and is one of the founding members of the Philadelphia Green Economy Task Force where she serves as the Co-Chair of the Policy Committee.
She has a personal and professional interests in environmental planning, climate change, sustainable building and development and increasing the green-collar workforce in the Greater Philadelphia region. She holds a Masters in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, School of Design.
Sandra Shea
Sandra is the editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Daily News. She joined the board in 1998 as associate editor, and covered city hall, utilities, parks, housing, casinos, waterfront and more. She co-wrote the editorial series "Acres of Neglect" that investigated the problems with the city's park system; the series was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize and led to the recent merger of the parks and recreation departments. In 2008, she created the "It's our money" beat that covers the city budget (ourmoneyphilly.com). She has an MFA from Bennington, and teaches writing at the University of Delaware.
Harris Steinberg
Harris is the executive director of PennPraxis, the clinical arm of the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Harris is also a member of the faculty of the School of Design, serving as an adjunct assistant professor of city and regional planning where he currently teaches citizen participation and civic visioning and is one of four studio critics leading a 2nd year graduate planning studio working on a vision for Philadelphia in 2040.
Harris recently led the public visioning process for the "Civic Vision for the Central Delaware" - a 13-month project authorized by executive order of Philadelphia Mayor John Street in October 2006 that engaged more than 4000 Philadelphians in imagining a future for a seven-mile, 1146-acre stretch of the Delaware River in Philadelphia. Funded by the William Penn Foundation, the vision and its companion action plan was publicly embraced by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter in June 2008 and now serves as the basis for the work of the newly-reformed Delaware River Waterfront Corporation.
Harris received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Pennsylvania and holds a Master of Architecture degree from Penn as well. A registered architect who practiced architecture in Philadelphia for twenty years before becoming the founding executive director of PennPraxis in 2002, Harris was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 2006.
Mary Tracy
Mary has worked for over twenty years as a community advocate to improve the visual quality of Philadelphia. She is a founding member and executive director of SCRUB, "the public voice for public space". SCRUB started as a grassroots coalition in 1990 to stop the proliferation of billboards in Philadelphia. In 2000, SCRUB became a
nonprofit organization focused on advancing healthy, vibrant and beautiful public spaces throughout all of Philadelphia through the use of advocacy, public awareness and education, community mobilization and legal actions.
She has served as an advisor to city government in a number of capacities, including the transition team of Mayor Nutter's Planning and Zoning Committee and as president of the Fairmount Park Commission Advisory Council. She is on the board of Scenic America, a national scenic environmental organization, past president of the Overbrook Farms Club, and a founding member and trustee of the Overbrook Farms Civic Foundation. As chairman of the Overbrook Train Station Restoration Committee, Mary spearheaded efforts to obtain funding for the station's restoration.
Mary has received numerous awards for her efforts to protect the scenic environment including, Scenic America's Stafford Award for outstanding leadership in beautifying America, the Environmental Leadership Award from the Pennsylvania Resources Council, and the Forward Thinker Award from Philadelphia Forward.
Elise Vider
Elise is the deputy director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, a staff position created last year to strengthen senior management leadership of the Alliance. In her previous position, she served for eight years as director of communications at the Center City District.
She has a master's degree in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania. Elise is a co-founder and member of the steering committee of the Design Advocacy Group ("DAG") and, before moving to Philadelphia, served as chair of the Haddonfield NJ Historic Preservation Commission.
In an earlier stage of her career, she was an award-winning journalist, specializing in real estate, architecture, design and historic preservation.
