Harriet Tregoning 

Harriet Tregoning was confirmed as director of the Office of Planning in February of 2007. Prior to this she was the director of the Governors’ Institute on Community Design and co-founder, with former Maryland Governor Glendening, and executive director of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute. The Governors’ Institute on Community Design is a national, nonpartisan effort created specifically to assist governors and their top staff as they guide growth and development in their states. By harnessing the expertise of leading practitioners and academicians in key fields including land use policy, design, transportation, energy, development, and regional economics, the Governors’ Institute helps inform each state’s executive team as it makes choices that shape the future of communities throughout their state. A sister program of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, the Governors’ Institute is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

Tregoning developed her expertise in state level action in the State of Maryland where she served Governor Glendening as both secretary of planning and then as the nation's first state-level cabinet secretary for Smart Growth. In that role, she chaired a 15-member Smart Growth Subcabinet and coordinated key Smart Growth initiatives such as revitalizing neighborhoods, historic preservation, increasing transit and transit-oriented development, promoting walkable communities, and preserving open space.

 

Prior to her tenure in Maryland state government, Tregoning was the director of Development, Community and Environment at the United States Environmental Protection Agency. At EPA, Tregoning helped to found and coordinate the National Smart Growth Network, a national partnership program designed to inform and accelerate innovative smart growth policies and practices. The Smart Growth Network has more than 1500 individual and organizational members and partner organizations including the Sustainable Communities Network, the Urban Land Institute, the American Planning Association, the National Association of Counties, the Association of Metropolitan Planning Associations, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Trust for Public Land, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and many others.

 

Tregoning’s academic training is in engineering and public policy. She was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design for 2003-2004.