Katharine Burgess is the Vice President of Programs and Operations at Smart Growth America, where she manages organizational administrative initiatives and oversees programmatic work, with a focus on housing, development, and climate. She brings SGA twenty years of experience in urban planning, research, and non-profit management, including work in the U.S., the UK, and Germany.

Katharine has led much of SGA’s climate and land use work, including reports and capacity-building programs addressing the intersections of climate adaptation, housing abundance, and growth. She has published articles and research on urban planning, climate, and housing topics cited in The New York Times, CNBC, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Planning magazine. Prior to Smart Growth America, Katharine led the Urban Resilience Program at the Urban Land Institute (ULI), where she built up the organization’s work addressing how buildings, cities, and communities can be more prepared for the impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise, extreme heat, wildfires, and other climate hazards.

Katharine has also worked in the private sector, where she participated in the design and implementation of large-scale smart growth projects. She managed masterplanning projects as a land use consultant, including campus plans, Main Street or downtown masterplans, and a new community for 10,000 people. She began her career coordinating post-Katrina hurricane recovery charrettes commissioned by the States of Louisiana and Mississippi and the City of New Orleans, where she saw firsthand the need to better coordinate land use planning, preparedness, and response, and the need to support housing access in the face of vulnerability to climate events. She holds an MSc in Regional and Urban Planning from the London School of Economics and a BA from Williams College.