About Holly

Holly Pearson, AICP is an urban planner specializing in local strategies to promote sustainability. She has more than 15 years of experience working in urban and community planning with local governments, NGOs and multilateral organizations in the United States, Canada, Latin America and Africa. Holly has worked for the City of Vancouver, British Columbia on both land use planning and the creation of a city-wide plan for social development. In 2005 she was awarded a grant to work for six months with Fundación Biósfera, an environmental organization in Argentina, on the development of a municipal climate action program in the city of La Plata. She spent several years in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she worked as a planner for the Cities of Oakland and San Francisco and served as the Sustainability Director with the American Planning Association’s California Chapter – Northern Section. She also worked with the Oakland-based non-profit organization Ecocity Builders managing grassroots sustainable cities projects in Peru and Colombia. She has worked with the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) on projects related to comprehensive regional planning for sustainable urban development and slum upgrading and improvement in urban areas. Holly holds a master's degree in Planning and a professional certificate in International Development from the University of British Columbia.