Ilana Lipsett is a community design strategist, and works at the intersection of policy, community engagement, and development. Ilana works with cities, real estate developers, international aid organizations, and creative communities around the globe to harness our collective capacity to address the world's biggest challenges. She creates and activates spaces to catalyze community development through art, culture, dialog, public input, and economic opportunity. Using culture as a means for bridging divides, and human-centered design as a guiding principle for economic development and urban planning, she was recognized by the Obama White House as a “Champion of Change in Civic Innovation" for her work co-founding freespace, an initiative to temporarily transform vacant spaces into community, cultural and arts hubs.
Ilana served as the Political Director of a labor union, and spent years as a community organizer for workers' rights in Washington DC, leading successful legislative campaigns to secure and protect workers' rights. She has also worked with international NGO's to create gathering spaces and opportunities for refugees, and has led numerous advocacy and political campaigns for social and environmental justice.
Ilana is committed to creating social and economic equity; she sits on the board of Code Tenderloin, a innovative nonprofit dedicated to providing job training and placement for individuals with the highest barriers to employment, and she has partnered with local police departments to provide "opportunity not punishment" through the creation of police-sponsored jobs fairs. She is also a board member of ReAllocate, an open-source platform that connects world class talent to social impact projects to create real world solutions.
She holds an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio Graduate School, and is an active member of the Urban Land Institute, where she works with developers and cities to improve their public processes and public engagement campaigns.
