Jeff Bond
(he/him/his)
Jeff Bond recently joined the Board of the APA Northern California Section as Ethics Review Director. He works as the Director of the Community Development Department with the City of Albany, where he oversees land use policy initiatives and planning application review, manages building permit and inspection, and collaborates closely with the City’s police and fire departments on code compliance and resilience/emergency planning. Prior to joining the City of Albany, Bond was a senior planner at UC Berkeley, a development manager with the City of Alameda and early in his career worked for several land use related consulting firms, an economic development non-profit organization, and as a staff person in the California State Legislature. Bond has also been involved with the Northern California Chapter of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and Urban Land Institute. He received a master’s degree in economics from UC Davis and a bachelor’s degree in economics from UC San Diego.
Dana Brechwald
(she/her/hers)
Dana Brechwald was recently promoted to Assistant Planning Director for Climate Adaptation at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), which she joined in 2018 as a manager for the Adapting to Rising Tides program. At BCDC she leads the Bay Adapt program, focused on consensus-building around adaptation planning strategies, and the Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan, focused on standards and capacity building for consistent adaptation planning within the region. Prior to BCDC Brechwald was a regional resilience specialist at the Association of Bay Area Governments. She holds a MUP from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Throughout her career Brechwald focused on urban adaptation and resilience and worked in New Orleans (after hurricane Katrina), Detroit, and San Francisco. Thanks to these experiences, she sees cities as tangible means of expressing hope for the future and as a planner she loves to think about how cities can become the best expression of our values for ourselves as well as future generations. In her work she loves to tackle complex issues such as sea level rise by building consensus and working toward achieving “collective impact”.
Dana’s hobbies include hiking, fly fishing, and seeking out natural hot springs in the desert.
Angie Chen
(she/her/hers)
Angie Chen just joined the Board of the APA Northern California Section as the UC Berkeley Student Representative. She is pursuing her Master’s of City Planning at UC Berkeley while working as legislative aide at the City of Berkeley. Some of her recent achievements include working on a proposal for more equitable towing practices and parking fees and fines with the City of Berkeley, and a school paper on how the failure to extend BART across the Golden Gate Bridge as initially proposed has impacted land use patterns in Marin County. Chen received her bachelor degree in political science and public policy from UC Berkeley.
Chen’s experience of living in Los Angeles and the Bay Area without a car inspired her to pursue urban planning. She believes transportation planners play a critical role in designing streets that are safe and inviting to all users, reducing car dependency, and fighting climate change. After graduation, Chen hopes to focus on active transportation planning in the East Bay.
Angie is passionate about creating safe streets, reducing the role of policing in transportation, and spreading the joy of casual bicycling.
Jacob Garcia
(he/him/his)
Jacob Garcia was recently promoted to Senior Planner at Good City Company, where he provides consultant planning services for Portola Valley, Pacifica Belmont and San Carlos. Prior to joining Good City Company in 2019, he worked as an environmental technician at the Center for Natural Lands in San Diego County, an intern with the American Conservation Experience focusing on hydrological resources, and a technician with the US Forest Service at a variety of National Forests across California. Garcia received a Certificate in Real Estate Development from San Jose State University and holds a MURP from San Jose State University and a bachelor’s in Environmental Science, Technology and Policy from CSU Monterey Bay.
Some of Garcia’s most recent projects include working on campus and institutional projects on the Peninsula a biotech/ life science project in San Carlos. He enjoys being a planner because it’s an opportunity to take complex and detailed projects and make them easier to understand for community members, stakeholders and other city departments, and more effective in addressing the concerns and needs of a community.
Jacob’s hobbies and interests include camping, sailing, plant identification and travel.
Adrienne Heim, AICP
(she/her/hers)
Adrienne Heim, AICP recently joined the Board of the APA Northern California Section and will serve as the Diversity Co-Director, along with current Diversity Co-Director Sonja Caldwell Kos, AICP. She is a Transportation Planner with the SFMTA where she oversees bicycle and pedestrian safety/access projects that support SF Vision Zero goals. Heim has over 10 years of experience in land use and multi-modal transportation planning and in community engagement, and prior to joining the SFMTA, she worked as a public information officer, marketing associate, program coordinator and as a transportation planning justice intern for transit agencies and nonprofits. She holds a BA in economics from San Francisco State University and a MURP from San Jose State University.
Some of the highlights Heim’s career so far include securing a $23M federal grant for the Howard Streetscape Project in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, and leading a communications and outreach effort with community groups to build additional Muni bus operator restrooms throughout the city. As a planner she is committed to listening to communities and stakeholders and to being internally and externally honest about the historic and present harms that city departments have placed on communities of color. Heim believes that now is the time to correct past wrongs and to proactively respond to community needs, and her work at SFMTA is an opportunity to not only accommodate transportation safety, access, connectivity, and affordability, but to value people’s time to access places.
Outside of work, Adrienne loves to camp, hike, kayak, and go to music festivals.
Brandon Horthart
(he/him/his)
Brandon Northart recently joined the City of Martinez as an Associate Planner, where he will focus, among other things, on rewriting the City’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Code. Prior to Martinez, he was a senior planner at Urban Planning Partners, focusing on environmental review, transit oriented development, contract planning, and entitlements assistance, working for clients such as Redwood City, Wareham Development, Hines, and Eden Housing. Brandon holds a bachelor’s degree in urban studies and planning from San Francisco State University.
What Northart loves the most about being a planner is the dynamic nature of this field and how it’s constantly evolving, challenging him to learn new skills and embrace change.
Outside of work, Brandon enjoys going to San Jose Sharks games and hanging out with his wife and three cats.
Carlina Rose
(she/her/hers)
Carlina Rose recently started working as a TDM Coordinator for Transportation Solutions at San Jose State University, where she is also pursuing her master’s of urban and regional planning. Prior to this, she worked at the SJSU Office of Sustainability as a student assistant, as a policy and legislation graduate student assistant at the City of San Jose Department of Transportation, and as an administrative management at the Center for the Development of Recycling in San Jose. Rose is also a member of the Board of the APA Northern California Section where she serves as the SJSU Student Representative. She holds a BS in environmental studies from SJSU and an AS in math and science from Norco College.
Some of Rose’s most recent projects include planning upcoming events at SJSU, including the Urban Planning Coalition (UPC) Spring Symposium and the annual Green Career Panel. Her passion for planning stems from having the opportunity to provide tangible benefits to the community served.
In her free time, Carlina loves spending time in nature, traveling to new places, and building community.
Sam Sargent, JD, AICP
(he/him/his)
Sam Sargent, JD, AICP, joined the Board of the APA Northern California Section as Associate Editor of Northern News. He is the Director of Strategy and Policy at Caltrain, where he works on a variety of initiatives, including MTC’s Regional Network Planning framework, a regional rail partnership study, and a mix of projects with transit agencies and city partners. Prior to joining the railroad’s executive team, Sargent served as interim vice president of Government Affairs, director of strategy, and deputy chief of staff for Capital Metro in his hometown of Austin, Texas. While at Capital Metro, he had the opportunity to work on Austin’s first light rail and bus rapid transit program, starting at the feasibility planning phase all the way into project development. He is a Mass Transit 40 Under 40 and Railway Age 25 Under 40 award winner. Sargent holds a BA and JD from Boston University.
What Sargent enjoys the most about planning and public transportation is the human element and the challenge of putting himself in other people’s shoes, especially of those who might be most impacted (negatively and positively) by a proposed solution.
Sam lives in the Bay Area with his wife and dog, Gracie and when he is not working at Caltrain, you can find him running, reading and exploring California.
Brian Soland, AICP
(he/him/his)
Brian Soland, AICP recently joined BART as a Manager of Rail Planning where he will focus on the Link 21 project. He comes back to the Bay Area after five years in Vancouver, Canada, where he worked for TransLink (the local transit network) as a lead planner. While at TransLink one of the projects he was involved in was planning and advancing a business case for the UBC SkyTrain Extension, a seven-kilometer passenger rail extension in Vancouver, BC. Prior to his Canadian experience, Soland worked as a transportation planner and project manager at CDM Smith in San Francisco, and as a Senior Planner at MIG with a focus on land use and multimodal planning. What he enjoys the most about the field of planning is working alongside so many dedicated, passionate and smart people.
He holds a master’s in city and regional planning from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a bachelor’s degree in geography from CSU Sacramento. Soland is also a former member of the Board of the APA Northern California Section, where he served as regional activity coordinator for the San Francisco area.
Brian’s hobbies include being outdoors, cooking and eating good food, watching sports with family, and playing ice hockey.