Members directly elected to CNU board
This year, for the first time, CNU conducted member-led elections for seats on the Board of Directors. Online voting began March 5 through May 11, with nearly 15 percent of CNU’s membership base casting votes.
The winners, announced at CNU 20, are Eliza Harris, John Massengale, and Mathew McElroy.
Eliza Harris
Eliza is a Senior Associate at Canin Associates in Orlando where she focuses on active transportation, regional planning and coding. She led a multi-county GIS and design effort for the metro Orlando MPO Long Range Transportation Plan that introduced land use as an important variable to improve transportation efficiency while contributing to sustainability and quality of life. She previously interned with the City of Charleston Planning and Neighborhood Design and for developers Cornish Associates in Providence, RI.
During undergraduate studies in Biochemical Sciences at Harvard College, Eliza encountered the New Urbanism in a “Designing the American City” course as a distribution requirement. It resonated with her experiences growing up both in Manhattan and in suburban South Carolina. Thereafter she made it her mission to spare future generations from a childhood trapped in sprawl and attained a Masters of Urban Planning from Harvard Graduate School of Design. Since joining CNU in 2004, she has served as the student board member of CNU New England, chair of the Next Generation of New Urbanists, and the local director of CNU Orlando (Florida Chapter).
John Massengale
John Massengale has won awards for architecture, urbanism, architectural history and historic preservation, from organizations and publications ranging from Progressive Architecture and Metropolitan Home, to the National Book Award Foundation (with the first architecture book to be nominated for a National Book Award), to several chapters of the American Institute of Architects. A founding member of CNU, he is the former Chair of CNU New York, and a former board member of the ICAA (Institute for Classical Art & Architecture) and FCWC (Federated Conservationists of Westchester County).
As Massengale states, “I like all sorts of towns, cities and buildings, but what I design are Classical buildings and traditional neighborhoods and towns. At Massengale & Co LLC, I offer expert services for urban design, town planning, New Urbanism, Smart Growth, SmartCodes and planning consultation. As John Montague Massengale AIA, I am a registered and licensed architect in the State of New York, with expertise in affordable and affirmative housing, traditional building types, City Beautiful buildings, Classical and Palladian architecture, the architecture of New York, New England, and New Mexico, and the architectural traditions of 18th and 20th century America.”
Mathew McElroy
Mathew McElroy, AICP, CNU-A, is Deputy Director of the Planning and Economic Development Department for the City of El Paso. Mathew is a University of Texas at El Paso graduate of the English (BA) (1997), Master in Public Administration (2000), and Master of Science in Economics (2008) programs. Mathew oversees the Planning Division, where he has grown CNU membership in El Paso from three people two years ago to what will be over 150 by May of 2012 and will have trained approximately 150 people to sit for and pass the CNU-A exam (city-planners, engineers, private developers, private consulting engineers). Prior to joining the city of El Paso, he served as the
Associate Director of the Institute for Policy and Economic Development (IPED) at the University of Texas at El Paso. In his work at IPED, Mathew oversaw research operations. His work extended from redevelopment studies and housing to econometric forecasting, input-output based economic impact analysis, and working with geographic information systems (GIS). In his final year at UTEP, he co-led the team that won the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) National Award for Excellence in Policy Analysis for a binational industry cluster study. McElroy was the recipient of the 2012 Groves Award at CNU 20.
