Alumni and Friends
Alumni on Campus for Sustainability Week
Rebecca L. Flora '83, AICP, will be on campus October 23 for a keynote speech during Sustainability Week, a collaborative week of activities Oct 22-26. Flora is the executive director of the Green Building Alliance (GBA), a non-profit organization that drives market demand for green building through education programs, economic development initiatives and project facilitation. As the organization' s first executive director, Flora was responsible for its start-up and strategic direction over the past 10 years. While at GBA, she has also served as a LEED AP for Pittsburgh's $350 million convention center expansion project and as chair of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Convention Center Design Commission.
Previously, Flora was executive director of the South Side Local Development Company (SSLDC), a non-profit that provides business development, planning and housing services to Pittsburgh's historic main street and riverfront South Side neighborhood. During her tenure, the SSLDC was the 1996 winner of the Great American Main Street Award. Prior to the SSLDC, Flora worked for the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Pittsburgh, serving as a project manager on large scale brownfield redevelopment projects. Before coming to Pittsburgh, she was employed as a planner for K.W. Poore & Associates, a planning and consulting firm.
Flora has served as a member of the LEED Neighborhood Development Core Committee, is an advisory board member for the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative, and the chair-elect of the U.S. Green Building Council. She also serves as an adjunct faculty member of Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School of Public Policy and Management. Flora was named an "Environmental Hero for 2004" by Interiors & Sources magazine and as one of "The Top 50 Cultural Forces in Pittsburgh" by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Greetings from Urban Affairs and Planning
We have exciting plans to include alumni and friends in the planning for the future of the program and the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), within which UAP is housed, including an electronic newsletter that will be sent out once or twice per semester. We plan to include profiles of alumni and friends in the newsletter.
This fall marks the 50th anniversary of the Masters in Urban and Regional Planning program at Virginia Tech, and plans are being made for that celebration on October 26.
If you would like to receive regular communication from us--including the newsletter--or want to give us an update on you, please send an email to uapvt@vt.edu with your contact information.
Feel free to contact me at anytime also and drop by the Architecture Annex next time you are in Blacksburg. We want to see you.
Sincerely,
Jesse J. Richardson, Jr.
Virginia Tech Class of 1984
Associate Professor and Incoming Program Chair
(540) 231-7508 (phone)
(540) 231-3367 (fax)
jessej@vt.edu