Featured Planner: Genevieve Pearthree - Flagstaff, Arizona
We’d like to introduce the newest members of our board, starting with Genevieve Pearthree from Flagstaff, Arizona. Genevieve serves as our board representative for young professionals.
Describe your current job
I am the Planning Development Manager in the Current Planning Section at the City of Flagstaff. I've been in that position since February 2020. I serve as the single point of contact for new development applications (housing, commercial, subdivisions, rezoning cases, annexations etc.). I make sure projects meet city code, and when applicable, the regional plan. My goals are to use urban design to foster a more sustainable and healthier built environment. Flagstaff is also a Dark Sky City, so I’ve had a big role in ensuring new and existing development meet outdoor lighting standards (Flagstaff has several observatories nearby, including Lowell Observatory, where Pluto was first discovered).
I was also an Associate Planner with the City of Flagstaff from June 2018–February 2020. Before that I was a graduate student at Arizona State University pursuing concurrent Master's degrees: a Master of Science in Sustainability, and a Master of Urban and Environmental Planning.
Genevieve Pearthree, Young Professional Representative of the Western Planner board
When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? How did you get into planning?
I didn’t discover planning as a career path until I was well out of college. I studied environmental justice and environmental science—I was in a program where I could make my own major, and I chose this area because I was always interested in the nexus between environmental issues, social issues, and cities. Jobs were scarce when I graduated in 2008—just as the Great Recession was really getting going—so I worked as a GIS Specialist, as a bilingual teacher in Bolivia, and as a Project Manager for the Arizona Geological Survey (AZ State government). I was still interested in cities and the environment, however, which is what led me to pursue the concurrent master’s degrees in planning and in sustainability, and ultimately a career in planning.
Describe a mentor or someone you admire that has had an impact on your career.
The late Lee Allison (former Director of the Arizona Geological Survey) was my boss for several years. He was a wonderful person who trusted me to take on as much responsibility as I wanted and was capable of handling. I started as an intern, and by the time I left 3+ years later I was a project manager in charge of the U.S. component of a joint U.S.–U.K. initiative to foster sharing of climate change research data among 15+ countries. One of my main tasks was to organize virtual and in-person meetings with scientists, lawyers, data management experts, and others from six continents—I even facilitated workshops in Japan and across Europe. This work fast-tracked my skills in project management, communication, and facilitation—all of which are incredibly valuable in planning. I would never have had these experiences if it weren’t for Lee.
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?
Planning is a pretty broad field. There are a lot of focus area and job types, and one person’s career in planning can be very different from another’s, depending on their area of expertise and whether they work in the public or private sector. It’s important to get exposed early on to as many different focus areas as possible, and get job experience with different types of organizations, so that you have an idea about what would be a good fit in the long-term. However, I also think it is good to try something new—there are a lot of planning-adjacent career paths for which a planning background is well suited. So, it’s good to keep in mind that planning can open a lot of doors.
Why do you belong to the Western Planner? Why is the Western Planner valuable to you as a planner?
I’m a Western Planner member because it is a great resource to share planning expertise across the West and network with the region’s pioneering planners. I’m relatively early in my planning career, and I like learning from the Western Planner articles and from the other Western Planner Board members. I also enjoy getting involved with planning organizations on a local and higher level (I had previously been on the APA-AZ Executive Board and served on an AICP committee), so decided to serve on the Western Planner Board for those reasons.
What's something particular or interesting about yourself?
I wouldn’t be a municipal planner living in Flagstaff, AZ if it weren’t for two coup d’états in 2009—one in Madagascar, and one in Honduras. I was a finalist for a Fulbright Scholarship in Madagascar when the program was suspended after the coup, which led me to take a summer job in Honduras for a youth volunteer program. There was a coup a few weeks after I arrived, which required moving the program to Costa Rica. After that I spent six months traveling in Central and South America, and ended up teaching in Bolivia for two years. After returning to the states and working for the Arizona Geological Survey for several years, I discovered the School of Sustainability and the School for Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. If I hadn’t been in Arizona at the time, I might not have found planning as a career path, and my life would be totally different.