Board Member Dave Alden is Registered Civil Engineer who is using semi-retirement to become involved in his town of Petaluma, California, serving on multiple City committees including Ped/Bike and Transit, coordinating citizen discussion groups such as Petaluma Urban Chat, and supporting like-minded candidates on City Council campaigns.
Board Member Mitch Conner is Principal Architect at ArchiLOGIX in Santa Rosa, and a founding member of UCP. A nationally recognized leader in fire station design, Mitch has enjoyed a blend of public and private projects, including commercial, manufacturing, hospitality and civic projects, and more recently is also enjoying winery projects and mixed-use developments. Beyond the office, Mitch has devoted years of service to Sonoma County. He served on the board of the Redwood Empire chapter of the AIA where he chaired Government Affairs; served as vice-chair of the Town of Windsor steering committee dealing with the AIA sponsored Sustainable Design Assessment Team; the Windsor Planning Commission; the Environment Committee of the Sonoma County Alliance; and the board of Tomorrow’s Leaders Today. Additionally over the years he has been active with revitalization efforts in downtown Santa Rosa as founding president of CityVision, and on the board of the Sonoma County Cycling Association.
Board Member Paul Fritz is an architect, urbanist, co-founder of UCP and author of the blog smalltownurbanism.com. Paul has worked on affordable and market rate housing projects, single-family homes, mixed-use urban infill and commercial projects and has had his own firm since 2010. Paul is a founding member of The Core Project, a grassroots group of Sebastopol business owners who advocate for a revitalized downtown Sebastopol through better design solutions. Paul is passionate about creating vibrant human-scaled places that allow us to reduce our dependency on the automobile and live, play and work in environmentally, fiscally and socially sustainable places. Paul is on the Planning Commission in Sebastopol, California.
Board Member Robin Stephani has 20 years of experience working in Design, Architecture and Construction and is currently the Vice President of Preconstruction at Wright Contracting. Her background in Energy Engineering and Building Materials Technology translates into an in depth understanding of Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Building Strategies. She has lectured on Green Building Means and Methods, Transforming Suburbia, Sustainability, Community Development and Augmented Architecture. She has also participated as a design charrette facilitator for Healdsburg, Windsor and Russian River Re-Visioning workshops.
In 2006 Robin served as the start-up Executive Director for Community Housing Sonoma County, a non-profit community development organization specializing on service enriched housing. She was also a founding member of Farmworker Housing Sonoma County. In 2008 Robin hosted the West End Creative Salon which brought together community to weather the downturn and sparked events such as the Handcar Regatta and economic development such as the Share Exchange. Robin served on the Chop’s Teen Club board of directors from 2008- 2012. In 2012 she helped launch Sonoma County BEST, a public-private economic development organization. Robin is currently on the Executive Board of the Sonoma County Alliance and chairs the Environmental Committee. Drawing from her background in community and economic development, design, and sustainability, Robin is interested in exploring innovative solutions to solve overlapping problems facing our community.