Bernstein, Heery Prozes bring expertise to board
CNU’s Board of Directors added two new members at its meeting held in conjunction with the Atlanta Congress. These new additions, Scott Bernstein and Laura Heery Prozes, bring impressive policy and design experience to the board along with a proven ability to form high-level partnerships and alliances. They join the board as terms expired for former board chairs Ray Gindroz and Hank Dittmar and former vice chair Jacky Grimshaw, all of whom provided key executive leadership in making CNU an authoritative force in the movement to improve urban design and development.
Scott Bernstein is the president and co-founder of the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), where he leads CNT’s efforts to understand and better disclose the economic value of efficient resource use in urban communities. He helps CNT advance strategies that help cities leverage the value of this urban efficiency locally.
Bernstein’s work shaping a climate change strategy for the first 100 days of the Obama Administration is one of many examples of his work influencing government policy. Scott co-founded and chairs the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, which provided key support for breakthroughs in federal transportation authorization packages starting with ISTEA in 1991 that expanded local control and delivered a greater share of funds to transit and pedestrian enhancements. President Clinton appointed Bernstein to the President’s Council for Sustainable Development (where he co-chaired its task forces on Metropolitan Sustainable Communities and on Climate Strategies) and to other federal advisory panels on global warming, development strategy, and science policy.
A founding board member at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Center, Bernstein has led the development of the Location Efficient Mortgage and CNT’s extensive resources that reveal transportation-related energy use and carbon output by census tract across hundreds of U.S. metropolitan areas. Since they confirm the efficiency and positive environmental impact of compact, transit-connected mixed-use neighborhoods, these resources appear prominently in CNU’s communications.
As a board member, Bernstein looks forward to undertaking “rigorous review of the benefits of renewed urbanism and developing a strategy for public policy support.” Adding meaning to his board service will be opportunities for “learning from peers trying similar work in very different situations and being part of a true leadership family,” says Bernstein, who studied at Northwestern University and has taught at UCLA. Working with “capable professionals who know what it takes to bring off effective community development at scale,” he would like to help CNU achieve “mainstream recognition for being an unusually engaged and effective community of practice” and “a design movement that’s necessary for inclusive and affordable community livability.”
Laura Heery Prozes
An architect, master planner and strategic planner for community, institutional, and business stakeholders, Laura Heery Prozes served as co-chair of CNU18 in Atlanta and helped nurture the event’s partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its alliances with the Home Depot Foundation, The Coca-Cola Company, American Cancer Society, Atlanta Regional Commission, and others. Leading expanded outreach to local and national non-profit, business, and public organizations, she forged an alliance between CNU and Central Atlanta Progress to create CNU 18 Urban Labs as part of the enhanced initiative “Imagine Downtown sustainable, healthy and livable.” More innovative partnership building lies ahead for her as a board member.
Heery Prozes was master planner for Turner TimeWarner’s campus expansion in Midtown Atlanta, the historic Morehouse College Campus Plan in 2000, and the Peachtree corridor highway-to-boulevard redesign. She was design architect for the Georgia Institute of Technology’s new campus in Savannah and for Porsche’s North American headquarters. Her design innovation has included vertically stacked mixed-use building-types for developers such as Hines Interests and Barry Real Estate.
Heery Prozes provided pre-development concepting for award-winning Atlanta-area new urbanist projects such as Glenwood Park and Serenbe. She contributed to design guidelines adopted by the Georgia cities of Atlanta, Decatur, Roswell, and College Park, as well as Gwinnett County in Georgia and non-profits such as Charis Community Housing. Graduate architectural design studios she led as visiting professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology contributed to the realization of the “lid” over I-75/85 that better connects Midtown Atlanta to the adjacent urban fabric.
Heery Prozes has served on the boards of Atlanta Botanical Gardens, Research Atlanta, EarthShare, Georgia Cities Foundation, and the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. Through the Atlanta Regional Commission, she attended the Regional Leadership Institute and LINK trips to study cities with Andrés Duany and other national urban design leaders.
After receiving a Masters in Architecture from Yale, she interned with I.M. Pei & Partners and Heery International, then worked for John Burgee Architects with Philip Johnson from 1984 to 1988 on the design of the Atlantic Center tower and master plan and other prominent high-rise and mixed-use projects. She cofounded Brookwood Group with George and Shepherd Heery in 1989, and was president until 2004 when she started Laura Heery Architecture & Planning to focus on selected initiatives and individual projects.
