Leah Sheppard

Biografía: Leah Sheppard is a Manager for the Urban Resilience program, which provides ULI members, the public, and communities across the United States with information on how buildings, development, and cities can be more resilient in the face of climate change and other environmental vulnerabilities. She is a contributing author for multiple ULI Publications, including "Climate Risk and Real Estate Investment Decision-Making", “10 Principles for Building Resilience”, “Harvesting the Value of Water: Stormwater, Green Infrastructure, and Real Estate”, and project briefs on the Developing Urban Resilience website. Recently, she represented ULI as a panelist during the 2018 National Planning Conference, sharing lessons learned from working with city leaders, real estate developers, designers, planners, and community leaders to enhance climate adaptation and hazard mitigation for communities. Leah enjoys working directly with communities across the country through ULI’s Advisory Services program, where she works with ULI’s expert members on week long study trips that promote creative, practical solutions for complex land use and real estate development challenges. In this role, Leah has worked on panels in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Florida, Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, and Lafayette Parish, Louisiana. Before coming to ULI, Leah worked in Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf’s Office, nominating health and environmental focused experts and practitioners for over 800 state-level boards and commissions and leading them through the senate confirmation process. In 2015, she also managed all phases of the grant approval process for public transit state grants for PennDOT, including Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA -fifth largest transit system in the country) and Port Authority of Allegheny County (second largest in the state). Leah began her career in sustainable development advising businesses on green infrastructure implementation strategies amid the role out of Philadelphia’s Green City, Clean Water plan, which still inspires her to this day. Leah holds a B.S. in Community, Environment, and Development from The Pennsylvania State University and a M.P.S. in Sustainable Urban Planning with a concentration in Climate Change Management and Policy from The George Washington University.