I am a Communications Associate for the Orton Family Foundation (http://www.orton.org), an operating foundation that helps small towns in the Rocky Mountains and New England take a values-based approach to their land use planning decisions. We've found that this Heart & Soul community planning process requires innovative approaches to outreach and civic engagement, and as such have begun to explore a wide variety of interdisciplinary community building efforts through our CommunityMatters network (http://www.communitymatters.org). We are currently preparing for our CommunityMatters '10 conference in Denver, October 5-8, 2010.

I hold a masters in technical communications with an emphasis in public relations from Colorado State University, and have been in the nonprofit sector since 2002.