Official List of Speakers

• Thor Arnold, Zimtor Architecture (Bozeman, MT)
  Thor Arnold is a principal architect with zimtor architecture in Bozeman, Montana. He is known for building healthy, efficient, low-maintenance structures that are site sensitive and climate specific. He started his professional career with Jonathan L. Foote, Architect in Livingston, Mont., before he launched Thor Design 1996, an interdisciplinary design/build firm specializing in custom residential projects. In 2006, Thor founded zimtor architecture, in partnership with architect Gary Zimmer. Thor is also a director of TMP Resources, Ltd., a Rossland, British Columbia development company. Thor is licensed to practice architecture in Montana, Colorado and British Columbia. With a passion for wilderness, mountain communities and culture, his work can be found throughout the intermountain west.


• Lou Bieker, 4240 Architecture (Denver, CO)
  Louis Bieker, AIA, LEED AP, is an Associate Principal at 4240 Architecture, Inc, and has been practicing architecture for 20 years in Colorado and California. With work ranging from museums and airports to mountain resort planning and design, Lou is currently involved in the ongoing renaissance of Vail, Colorado. Within Vail, as well as more urban settings, Lou’s efforts have primarily focused around base village / core area redevelopment, considered sustainable practices, and driven by key design elements such as reuse, in fill, pedestrian focus, and transit access. While at another design firm, Lou provided a major role for the Louis A Turpen Aviation Library and Museum in San Francisco, Copia-Center for Wine, Food and the Arts in Napa California, and the First People’s Hospital in Shanghai, China.


• Danielle Blank, National Parks Conservation Association
  Danielle Blank is the Senior Outreach Coordinator in the Yellowstone Office of the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), America’s leading voice for the parks. Since 2006, Danielle has worked closely with Yellowstone’s gateway community leadership, Montana’s tourism industry, and Montana’s Congressional Delegation in an effort to secure adequate funding for national park operations and infrastructure. Danielle also leads NPCA’s regional efforts to build support for climate change mitigation and wildlife adaptation. Before joining NPCA, Danielle worked as the Sustainability Coordinator for San Francisco’s Presidio Trust, where she focused on waste reduction and resource conservation in the park. She has a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College.


• Bruce Burger, Land Decision Resources, LLC
  Bruce has over nine years of experience working with rural landowners and conservation development projects. His background includes specialized expertise in real estate research, feasibility review, master planning, marketing and sales, and other activities for projects incorporating protective development strategies and resource-based land planning. This work has included concept development, demand assessment, programming, asset management and retail product launch. Bruce has also held previous positions in commercial banking and maintains an active Montana real estate license.


• Angela Dye, A Dye Design and American Society of Landscape Architects (Phoenix, AZ)
  Angela Dye, FASLA, LEEDAP, AzAPA, is a licensed landscape architect in Arizona, Colorado, & Utah, with Masters in Landscape Architecture and Community Development & Planning, from the University of Colorado/Denver and a graduate of Montana State University. She founded A DYE DESIGN, a urban design/planning firm specializing in context sensitive transportation and transit, site design, and public art-oriented projects. She is currently President of the American Society of Landscape Architects. She currently serves on the board of Friends of the West Valley Recreation Corridor; serves on the Maricopa Association of Governments Transportation Enhancement Working Group, served on the City of Phoenix Design Review Standards Committee. Recent projects include the recently opened Central Phoenix/East Valley Light Rail project, Phoenix Convention Center (certified LEED Silver), and Tempe Transportation Center (registered LEED Platinum).


• Andy Epple, City of Bozeman, Department of Planning and Community Development
  Andy Epple AICP has been Director of Planning for the City of Bozeman since 1987, after serving in similar positions in Big Timber, Livingston, and Kalispell. In Bozeman, Mr. Epple and his staff develop long range land use and facility plans for the community, write ordinances and regulations to implement those plans, and review development proposals to ensure their compliance with adopted plans and regulations. He has B.A. and M.S. degrees in geography from UCLA and the University of Utah, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. He is a past president of the Montana Association of Planners, the immediate past president of the Western Central Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA), and currently serves as chair of APA’s Chapter Presidents Council.


• Robert Hull, Miller/Hull Partnership (Seattle, WA)
  Robert Hull FAIA is a founding partner of The Miller|Hull Partnership. The firm's projects are modest, distilled, and utilitarian. The modernist work has consistently maintained an elegant simplicity coupled with animated forms and has contributed to contemporary regionalism in American architecture. Recognizing the beauty in simplicity and the dignity of restraint, Hull has explored locally available off-the-shelf technology and sustainable principles applying it to design. Rationalist strategies have resulted in buildings distilled to the point of austerity, devoid of arbitrary style. The firm has received over 190 local, regional and national design awards, including 8 national honor awards over the past 10 years. The Miller|Hull Partnership received the 2003 Firm Award from the National American Institute of Architects.


• Ralph Johnson, MSU School of Architecture (Bozeman, MT)
  Ralph Johnson has taught urban and community design at Montana State University since 1986, where he is also is the Executive Director of the Wheeler Center and the former Director of the Community Design. Additionally, he maintains an active planning and design consultancy with an emphasis on providing sustainable, contemporary and creative responses to planning and preservation issues faced by Rocky Mountain communities. He has recently completed a book entitled Building from the Best of the Northern Rockies, which articulates sustainable planning and design principles through case studies. Johnson is the planning consultant to the cities of Manhattan and Three Forks, communities for which he has facilitated and developed master plans, capital improvement plans and community impact analysis.


• Ben Lloyd, CommaQ (Bozeman, MT)
  Ben Lloyd AP LEED is the founder of Comma-Q Architecture Inc. and has over 20 years of experience as an architect. His firm has worked on a wide variety of projects in the Gallatin Valley, including renovation of the historic Carnegie Library building, the restoration of the Story Mansion, and the redevelopment of an historic industrial site into the Northside mixed-use project on the corner of Rouse and Oak. His commercial projects include the Community Food Co-op, Plonk restaurant, and MacKenzie River Pizza on Main Street in Bozeman. Comma-Q’s civic projects include the renovation of the old public library into Bozeman’s new City Hall, and the Bozeman High School renovation, currently under construction. They have also designed many residential projects, from urban infill to rural retreats, throughout the Southwest Montana region.


• Gary London, The London Group (San Diego, CA)
  Gary London is President of The London Group Realty Advisors, a diversified real estate strategic advisory, development management, investment, capital access and analysis firm whose clients include investors, developers, lenders and public agencies. Mr. London is an Instructor at The Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate, University of San Diego, as well as taught at the University of California, San Diego Extension for 24 years. He was the West Region Director of Real Estate Consulting for Price Waterhouse and Executive Director of The Goodkin Group. A “Distinguished Toastmaster” in Toastmaters International, Mr. London speaks regularly to industry and business organizations, frequently writes and is often quoted in the media, and is a columnist for the San Diego Business Journal.


• Don MacArthur, MMW Architects (Missoula, MT)
  Don is a founding partner of MacArthur, Means & Wells, Architects. His firm seeks to create architecture that contributes to the community, demonstrates leadership in issues of sustainable design, responds poetically to the particularity of the site and climate, and features direct and inventive use of materials. Don, both AIA and LEED certified, has focused on the architecture and planning of residential projects. His work has been awarded state and national awards for design excellence. Don is the chair of the Missoula Consolidated Planning Board, he also serves on the Transportation Planning Policy Committee for Missoula and is on the board of the Missoula Urban Transportation District.


• Alan Maskin, Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects (Seattle, WA)
  Alan Maskin joined Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen in 1992, becoming an associate in 1995, and an owner in 2008. He was lead designer for the award-winning Noah’s Ark at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and he collaborated on the award-winning Frye Art Museum renovation. Alan designed the graphic proposal for an international design competition for the Bellingham Art and Children's Museum and he has provided conceptual design services for Starbucks, W Hotel, and Sedgwick Rd. advertising firm. Maskin’s work has won many awards – he was named a 2006 Fellow of the Northwest Institute for Architecture and Urban Planning in Italy. Noah’s Ark at the Skirball was awarded an American Institute of Architects Award of Merit. The Frye Art Museum has won two Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects and an AIA Sustainability Award.


• Roger Millar, Missoula City/County Planning (Missoula, MT)
  Roger, Director of the Missoula Office of Planning and Grants since January 2007, implements the City and County vision and mission as they relate to existing and proposed land use and the built environment. Roger’s previous experience includes two years as Deputy City Manager for the City of McCall, Idaho, eight years with the City of Portland, Oregon and 15 years in private practice. Projects in which Roger played a leadership role, particularly the Development Plan for Portland's Pearl District and the Portland Streetcar, are seen as national models for urban livability. He has also managed or participated in signature projects for rural, resort and National Park gateway communities throughout the American West.


• Dr. Arthur "Chris" Nelson, Director of Metropolitan Research, College of Architecture + Planning (University of Utah, Salt Lake City)
  For the past thirty years, Dr. Nelson FAICP has conducted pioneering research in growth management, urban containment, public facility finance, economic development, and metropolitan development patterns. Numerous organizations have sponsored his research such as the U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, and Transportation; American Planning Association; National Association of Realtors; and The Brookings Institution. His research and practice has led to the publication of 14 books and more than 200 scholarly and professional publications. In 2000, he was recognized as the first Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners elected based on a national - as opposed to state - process. Prior to academia, Dr. Nelson managed his own West Coast consultancy in planning and management. Dr. Nelson has earned three teacher of the year honors at two universities, won national awards and international distinction, and students who have won numerous national awards including the national student project of the year award given by the American Institute of Certified Planners.


• Cynthia Parker, Mercy Housing (Seattle, WA)
  Cynthia Parker is regional president for Mercy Housing Inc, in charge of Intercommunity Mercy Housing in Washington and Mercy Housing Idaho, which develops affordable housing for families, seniors and people with special needs. She is currently a director for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle, which includes banking members from the 12th District, serving Montana, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming. She also serves as a member of the board of the National Affordable Housing Trust. From 2002 - 2008, Ms. Parker served as senior vice president of Seattle-Northwest Securities heading up its affordable housing and real estate group. Ms. Parker is a former president of the National Neighborhood Housing Network, and a former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, where she served as deputy chair from 1992 – 1998.


• Chris Saunders, Bozeman Department of Planning and Community Development
  Chris Saunders is the Assistant Director of the City of Bozeman Department of Planning and Community Development. He has been with the City for 13 years and has been lead or co-lead planner for several of Bozeman’s most significant recent planning processes. These include a new Unified Development Ordinance, Transportation Plan, and two growth policies. Sustainability is a key theme throughout the City’s latest growth policy, now in public review. Mr. Saunders was an active member of the Yellowstone Business Partnership process to develop the Greater Yellowstone Framework for Sustainable Development. Mr. Saunders received his Masters degree in Town and Regional Planning in 1993 from Utah State University.


• Joshua Spitzer, Sun Ranch Group
  Joshua Spitzer is the vice president of operations for the Sun Ranch Group, several integrated businesses sustaining important landscapes and the communities within them. He is responsible for all planning and operations across seven businesses and multiple locations. Josh co-founded and sits on the board of Sun Ranch Institute, an organization supporting rural education, land conservation and blended-value business models in the Intermountain West. He has served as an independent consultant to enterprises and individuals investing to create social, environmental and financial value. The World Economic Forum, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Oxford University and Stanford University Graduate School of Business have sponsored and published his work. He has also developed MBA curriculum for the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Josh has an MBA from Stanford University and a BA from Cornell University.


• Dan Stevenson, CTA Architects Engineers (Bozeman, MT)
  Dan Stevenson, PE, LEED AP, has been involved in energy conservation and alternative energy projects since 1991 and specializes in the implementation of low energy and alternative energy approaches. Dan has overseen the design of commercial scale biomass and solar thermal energy systems throughout the western United States as well as biomass program development for several states. As a Principal with CTA Architects Engineers, Dan along with a multi-discipline team, is responsible for the design and implementation of CTA's Sustainability Initiative.


• Michael Tavel, Michael Tavel Architects (Denver, CO)
  Michael Tavel Architects specializes in sustainable mixed-use town planning and architecture. Michael completed his masters of architecture from UC Berkeley in 1989 and worked for Mark Mack and Christopher Alexander before moving to Denver to teach at the University of Colorado. His award-winning projects integrate solar and sustainable systems into tight urban layouts, using inventive building/lot typologies and contemporary architecture. In 2006 he completed Solar Village, a mixed-use urban complex at the entrance to Prospect New Town in Longmont, Colorado. Breaking ground in 2009 is the 25-acre, 280-unit, urban mixed-use Geos Neighborhood in Arvada, Colorado. Geos optimizes urban density with solar access, integrates stormwater management throughout its town plan, and utilizes high performance building systems. It is expected to be America’s largest net-zero energy neighborhood.


• James Tuer, JWT Architecture and Planning (Bowen Island, BC, Canada)
  James Tuer MAIBC, BCSLA, AIA, NCARB, principal of JWT Architecture and Planning, is a registered landscape architect (British Columbia) and a registered architect (Florida, South Carolina and British Columbia) with a career path focused on bridging the two disciplines. These include the design of new communities, resorts and buildings where the interface between nature and the culture of building is key to the project’s success. His built work exhibits a regionalist approach to design, taking cue from context, culture and environmental factors. In the past 17 years, projects have taken him to Australia, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Japan, Korea, China, The Caribbean, Central America, Europe, and throughout the United States and Canada. Much of Tuer’s work focuses on creating pedestrian oriented ‘places’ in mountain, seaside and desert settings.


• Ekaterini “Kat” Vlahos, Center of Preservation Research, College of Architecture & Planning (University of Colorado, Denver)
  Ekaterini Kat Vlahos is an Associate Professor of Architecture in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver and the Director of the Center of Preservation Research. She received her B.S. in Environmental Design from the University of Colorado Boulder and Masters in Architecture from UCD. Prior to entering the academy, she was a licensed architect and practiced for 18 years. Her current research focuses on the documentation, preservation, and interpretation of the vernacular of western ranch’s cultural landscapes. Her investigations emphasize understanding the development of working landscapes of early Colorado settlements. As a native Coloradoan, her insight comes from personal experience and family ties to ranching in northwestern Colorado. Her research explores sustainable and low-impact design within the context of historic ranching landscapes as architectural solutions to western sprawl.


• Rachel Winer, Idaho Smart Growth (Boise, ID)
  Rachel Winer came to Idaho Smart Growth as the Executive Director from the Idaho Conservation League where she served as the Outreach Coordinator. She graduated with a B.A. in 1995 from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and in 1998 with a J.D. and Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from Northwestern School of Law at the Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Rachel is a graduate of the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Boise program and is a member of the Boise Young Professionals. Rachel is a member of the Boise City Club board of directors and the executive committee of the Urban Land Institute Idaho District Council.


• Robert Young, Red Feather Development (Bozeman, MT)
  A former clothing manufacturer with a B.A. in political science from the University of Washington, Robert Young founded Red Feather Development Group in 1994. As Executive Director, Mr. Young has overseen the successful completion of over 65 reservation-based home construction projects, which includes conventional home construction, home rehabilitation (handicap accessible), as well as sustainable straw bale home construction projects. Red Feather has collaborated with universities, tribal colleges, schools, tribal housing authorities, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Services, community development corporations, foundations, and corporations to create a strong presence as an innovative housing organization working solely with tribal nations. In 2007, Mr. Young was appointed by Governor Schweitzer to sit on the Governor’s Advisory Council on Economic Security for Montana Families.