The LOEB Fellowship

Lynn has spent the last 25 years working to create more walkable, livable, and sustainable communities throughout the U.S. Her primary focus has been on implementation: moving an issue from paper to practice.

Lynn has mostly recently served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Policy and Implementation Officer at Blue Zones, LLC where she was responsible for ensuring well-being improvements in Blue Zones communities by working with local partners to identify and implement high impact policy changes in the built environment, food systems and environments, tobacco, and alcohol policy areas.

Prior to Blue Zones, she served as the President and CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism. During her seven-year tenure, she revitalized the organization, expanded membership, allies, and partners, developed and launched a number of programs, diversified our revenue base, and led a strategic planning process that refocused the organization with a renewed mission to help accelerate the pace of change for all communities. Research and publications she spearheaded included Building Local Strength: Emerging Strategies for Inclusive Development, which highlighted on-the-ground strategies that demonstrated how investment in underserved communities can increase access to opportunities and minimize displacement; two editions of Freeways without Futures, 25 Great Ideas of New Urbanism, and supported legislative efforts on Capitol Hill to accelerate highway removal, funding for which was included in the 2021 Infrastructure Bill and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, and launched the Project for Code Reform, and co-authored five reports on this effort. She also launched a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative to ensure that every event, publication, and program addressed this issue.

Lynn also had a distinguished career as a policy maker at the Environmental Protection Agency serving in a number of roles from Acting Director to Policy Director for the Office of Sustainable Communities. As an urban design expert, she has worked on placemaking issues for dozens of state and local governments helping them reimage their towns and cities and developing implementation approaches. Her work has been instrumental in aligning transportation, land use, and water quality goals at the federal, state, and local levels. She has particularly focused on stormwater management issues, community engagement, and interagency cooperation. She has been instrumental in framing the national debate around the role of density and development as a stormwater management practice.

In addition to a wide array of articles on community design and development, Lynn has published “Protecting Water Resources with Higher Density Development,” and “Protecting Water Resources with Smart Growth.” Her articles have appeared in Planning Magazine, Planner’s Commissioners Journal, Community Development: Journal of the Community Development Society and Stormwater: The Journal for Surface Water Quality Professionals and she has also appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition.

In 2012, Lynn was awarded a Loeb Fellowship in Advanced Environmental Studies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Additionally, Lynn holds a MS in Environmental Science and a Masters of Public Affairs from Indiana University.