Heather Flint Chatto, Urban Planner & Designer, LEED AP
Principal & Owner
Heather is a professional planner and urban designer with more than 20 years of professional work in environmental design, civic and regional planning and environmental policy practice. She is passionate about education, green building, ecological design and fostering innovative community engagement in both her professional and volunteer work. In addition to a Masters degree in Urban Planning and a Bachelors in Environmental Studies for Teachers, she draws on a diverse background of experience working both in the public and private sector as well as nonprofits. She has extensive experience collaborating successfully with architects, landscape architects, engineers, developers, energy efficiency experts, and local and state government leaders. In 2015, she was honored with an award from the Daily Journal of Commerce as one of the Top 25 Woman of Vision for the State of Oregon. She won her second DJC Woman of Vision Award in 2019 for her work with PDX Main Streets raising design literacy and innovative public engagement around community-led planning.
Selected Professional Expertise
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP | She recently served as the Executive Director of the Architectural Heritage Center, a local nonprofit dedicated to historic and cultural preservation, providing leadership for fundraising, educational programs and exhibits, policy and design advocacy, and community engagement. She led annual fundraising campaigns, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars, engaged major donors, secured and implemented large grants, and hosted an annual auction and gala fundraiser. She led the development of several exhibits including “Places of Pride”, honoring the legacy of people and places in Portland by the LGBTQIA+ community. She also curated and designed the “Vision for the City” exhibit, and initiated and facilitated a two-day design charrette in partnership with City Club Committee on the Built Environment bringing together city staff, architects, planners, landscape architects, neighborhood leaders and other stakeholders across southeast Portland in a “2050 Vision for the City”. She is on the board of the Sustainable Southeast Community Coalition (S2C2), and provides expertise on green building, art and public involvement and placemaking.
URBAN PLANNING | While working as an urban planner for Santa Barbara County Planning & Development Department Heather wore multiple hats in both long range comprehensive planning and redevelopment, including leading community advisory groups and coordinating with large redevelopment projects to implement revitalization plans. In addition to other technical research, reports and analysis, she helped implement trail and restoration projects, and managed the process to write and adopt the Goleta Old Town Heritage District Architecture & Design Guidelines. She also initiated a new Public Information Program, including ongoing community events and public engagement resources as well as development of training tools and resources for County staff.
GREEN BUILDINGS | As a project manager for Habitats Inc., a design/build green building, landscape architecture and ecological planning firm, she managed the team of consultants, provided LEED consulting, led design charrettes and the permitting process for the SeQuential Biofuels flagship eco-fueling station on a former brownfield. During this time, she also wrote and secured a $40,000 grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board for the Tiara Stormwater Management Demonstration Home, in addition to other design and planning projects. With her firm Forage Design, she helped the City of Yachats secure a $100,000 public involvement grant for resiliency and energy planning. Working with Green Urban Design, Heather led the public involvement process, developing community priority surveys, decisionmaking criteria, and working with stakeholders to select a priority solar project and deliver a Civic Campus Resiliency Master Plan.
ENERGY + EDUCATION | For over five years, she helped lead New Building’s Institute’s Zero Net Energy (ZNE) Commercial Buildings Action Plan implementation work for the state of California as a consultant to the California Public Utilities Commission. This work involved technical research and policy support and developing and leading a statewide education program with the investor owned utilities on zero energy school retrofits. During her tenure at NBI, she facilitated more than 20 public trainings, charrettes and workshops across the state for architects, engineers, local governments and other industry professionals. She also developed a suite of educational resources including presentations, case studies, fact sheets and design toolkits. At NBI she also co-authored the first of it’s kind zero energy Fellowship program, and led the development of the first ZNE School Leadership Awards Program in the country.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT + ADVOCACY | As co-founder of the Portland Main Streets Design Initiative (PDX Main Streets), Heather has worked tirelessly with neighborhoods business associations, community groups, university design and planning students, as well as planners and policymakers to foster greater design literacy, policy advocacy, public art, community engagement tools, and neighborhood design guidelines now adopted for twelve Portland Main Streets.
FORAGE DESIGN + PLANNING 