Featured Planner: Allison Platt - Bend, Oregon

We’d like to introduce a new member of our board, Allison Platt from Bend, Oregon. Allison serves as our board representative for Oregon.

Describe your current job:

I have been a Senior Planner with the City of Bend in the Growth Management Division (long range planning) for the last 2.5 years.

Allison Platt is Western Planner Resources Board representative for Oregon.

When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? How did you get into planning?

For career day as a kid, I shadowed a politician and an actress. But I also thought I wanted to be an architect at one point and even invested in a computer platform so I could draw up various home designs. In high school and college, I was extremely passionate about environmental studies- appalled at the surmounting garbage in our oceans and the effects of climate change. After studying abroad in Spain, I was able to see how different personal behavior choices around transportation, energy consumption, etc could be shifted by the design of the spaces we inhabit. This led me to my interest in urban planning. Planning provides me with a venue to combine my passions of places, the environment, politics as well as a theatre where I get to present my work to the public and City Council.

Describe a mentor or someone you admire that has had an impact on your career.

My mom is my greatest mentor. She worked as a hospital administrator and her compassionate leadership style has taught me that you can motivate and empower those around you towards achieving a common goal through compassion, empathy, listening and understanding.

What advice would you give someone just starting out in their career? What do you wish you'd have known when you were starting out?

Develop tangible skills that interest you (in planning these include: GIS, data analytics, making graphics, writing/presentations, InDesign, etc) in addition to understanding/studying policy and theory.

Why do you belong to the Western Planner? Why is the Western Planner valuable to you as a planner?

Western Planner is valuable to me as a connection to other planners facing similar issues and a network of talented people tackling similar issues across the West. Having grown up in rural Colorado, serving on the Western Planner board allows me to feel connected to communities such as the one that I grew up in.

What's something particular or interesting about yourself?

I have travelled to 26 countries and lived in both Spain (for over a year) and have spent nearly a year in Asia (primarily India) but even more interesting than that—I was the first Rodeo Sweetheart in Brush, CO (my hometown up until I was 13 years old).