Candace Damon

Biography: Candace is Vice Chairman of HR&A Advisors, Inc. She has over 35 years of experience in the management of complex, public-private real estate and economic development activity in cities across North America. Her specific areas of expertise include supporting master planning efforts for large-scale revitalizations, ensuring the long-term viability of urban open space, leading organizational planning for non-profits and institutions, addressing the financial challenges of making commercial and multifamily residential buildings energy efficient, and providing strategic direction for downtown and waterfront redevelopment. She points with particular pride to the design of what remains the country's largest and most successful effort to invest in energy efficiency in affordable housing - New York State's Affordable Multifamily Program, which ultimately provided a mix of technical assistance and investment capital to 100,000 units across the state - and to a host of new and revitalized urban parks that operate on a financially sustainable basis because of her and her colleagues' work, including Charlotte's Romare Bearden Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and (soon) Seattle's Central Waterfront. She has served on multiple nonprofit boards over her career, including the Atlantic Avenue Local Development Corporation, where she revamped and revitalized New York City's largest street fair and led efforts to strengthen the street as a walkable neighborhood retail corridor. Other board affiliations have included the Urban Green Council and New Yorkers for Parks. She currently serves as a board member of the City Parks Alliance, the country's only national advocacy organization for urban parks, and is a member of the Urban Land Institute's Placemaking Council. Candace is an Amherst College and Harvard Law School graduate. She works out of HR&A's NYC office while living in Vermont with her husband, son, and dog.