Brie Hensold is an urban planner, co-founder and principal of Agency Landscape + Planning. With a passion for understanding and improving communities and places, Brie brings a systems-based approach that celebrates diverse perspectives. She has extensive experience developing creative and meaningful community engagement processes. Brie’s work encompasses multiple scales, from downtown plans to citywide park systems to resilience strategies. Her work has received awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Architects, among others. She is a Design Critic in the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where she also leads an executive education class in resilient cities. Download CV. 

Kate Tooke, a landscape architect and principal of Agency Landscape + Planning, has focused her career on the intersection of community and public space. She leverages a diverse background as an educator, an engineer and a landscape architect into a practice unabashedly passionate about connecting people to the urban environment. Kate’s listening-oriented approach to project leadership as well as her strategic thinking, design eye, and technical acumen have been instrumental in the success of diverse projects ranging from master planning to site-scale work and extending coast to coast. She is a prominent national voice in the movement towards contextual adventure playgrounds.

Jill Allen Dixon is a planner with a focus on the intersection of park/landscape planning, climate resilience, and public engagement. She has a passion for collaborating with communities to implement strategies that increase equitable access to parks and that grow greener, more resilient cities. Common to her work is a focus on bringing together diverse constituents to identify shared visions for places and open spaces. Jill believes that asking meaningful questions, providing accessible information, and listening carefully to responses will lead to creative ideas that advance multiple objectives.

Steve Woods is a landscape architect with nearly three decades of creative design practice in both public and private landscapes of varying scales. Named by the ASLA Professional Practice Network in 2017 as one of “Landscape Architecture’s greatest unknown landscape architects”, his passion rests in the merging of art, history, community, and function, especially in urban landscapes. Steve has provided award winning collaborative leadership in the unique design and visioning for a wide variety of clients and communities. Areas of experience include design leadership for corporate headquarters, Middle Eastern new city planning, hospitality and entertainment venues, and mixed-use urban developments. In his free time, you might find him baking, painting, playing disc golf, or relaxing on or near Seneca Lake.

Allen Penniman is a Senior Urban Planner at Agency and a Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. He specializes in Community Economic Development (CED), working within the disciplines of urban policy and urban design to realize equitable revitalization in distressed urban communities. Allen previously served as Planning Director of Detroit’s east side, where he oversaw the deployment of a transformative neighborhood reinvestment program that is fueling the comeback of long-languished neighborhoods while growing community wealth and ownership. Allen endeavors to see America’s urban communities thrive through action-oriented and impactful planning. On Saturdays, you'll find Allen either neck deep in a DIY project or rooting for his obscure and floundering, but beloved, English soccer club.

As a landscape architect, Henry is inspired by the complexities of nature and the craftsmanship of good design. Rooted in an interest in technology both present and past, he looks for innovative ways to problem-solve scenarios with his team across project scales. More specifically, he advocates for increasing stewardship for our waterways — finding strategies that promote their sustainability along with public activation. Expanding on his interest for the outdoors, on the weekends, you will likely find Henry with a garden trowel, a fishing pole, or a power tool.

Jamaica Reese-Julien is an urban planner and designer working in Philadelphia. She holds a dual degree in City Planning and Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, with a concentration in Housing, Community, and Economic Development. Jamaica is passionate about designing spaces and systems that center community expertise. Her volunteer work with community organizations in Philadelphia focuses on housing stability and grassroots governance over public space. Before joining Agency, she worked as an architectural designer on several public libraries throughout New England. On the weekends, Jamaica can be found exploring the city with her dog, Junie, and attempting to finish craft projects.

Leigh Miller is a landscape designer with a background in environmental science, energy efficiency, and horticulture. She delights in unearthing hidden narratives and demystifying the complex processes at the intersection of design and policy. Leigh holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Vermont and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she was named the 2022 University Olmsted Scholar. Outside of Agency, Leigh enjoys working with her hands and learning new skills from old books.

Phoebe (Xiao) Cheng is a landscape architect drawn to the quiet magics embedded in a place. With a deep sensitivity in cultural relevance and equitable design, she advocates for thoughtfully curated public spaces that shape people’s perception and memory in urban environments, through establishing relationships between human beings, materials, and other inhabitants of nature. Phoebe holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin and is fluent in both English and Mandarin. In her spare time, she is an avid cinephile, enjoys hiking in the woods, and cherishes cozy times with her cat, Mono.

Aanchal Chopra is an urban planner and policy strategist based in Cambridge, MA. She holds a Master’s degree in Urban Planning from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, with a concentration in Housing, Community, and Economic Development. Aanchal brings experience as a strategy consultant and DE&I practitioner with Boston Consulting Group were she worked with public sector clients on policy and programmatic challenges such as disaster recovery and economic development. Across her work, Aanchal believes in unravelling complexity and advancing equity using qualitative and quantitative methods, and community-engaged design processes. Outside of work, Aanchal enjoys running and finding delicious coffee and baked treats afterwards.

Wallace Cotton is a summer urban planner and interdisciplinary professional interested in the nexus of urban planning, design, and behavioral psychology. He is passionate about making refuge easily accessible in cities and believes in supporting public life, collective agency, non-human ecologies, and the embedded history of places to do so. Originally from New York City, Wallace also brings UX, content strategy, and research to his spatial practice. He recently completed his Master in Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. After work, you can find him biking, plane-spotting, or finding awe—from solo hikes to humble neighborhood strolls.

As a landscape designer, Berit Schurke is passionate about crafting adaptive, accessible, and productive spaces for humans and non-humans. She strives to infuse this passion in both her professional work and personal endeavors, including ongoing research on climate adaptive infrastructure design in the Arctic and teaching part-time in the landscape architecture department at Boston Arch College. Berit holds a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Carleton College and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In her spare time, Berit can be found mountain biking, skiing, or running in the woods with her furball, Uli.

Siqiao Zhao is a landscape designer passionate about celebrating the intersection of design and memory. Originally from Beijing, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Design before moving to New England, where she completed her Master of Landscape Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. With an international background, Siqiao believes thoughtful design has the power to heal landscapes that are sensitive ecologically and culturally. She strives to be a good listener, embracing diverse perspectives to create spaces that are inclusive, safe, and responsive to the unique needs and voices of the communities she works with. In her free time, Siqiao enjoys spending time outdoors, crafting, and collecting frog art.

Corey Watanabe is a landscape designer and graduate of the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he was named the University’s 2024 Olmsted Scholar and received the MIG Scholarship for Equitable and Inclusive Environments. As an artist, maker, and designer, he firmly believes in the power of landscape to uplift marginalized voices, shed light on silenced histories, and dismantle systemic barriers within our built environment. His research focuses on reframing cultural perceptions of “invasive species” and the histories of Asian American vernacular landscapes. Outside of the studio, Corey enjoys nerding out about plants on hikes, surfing, and making textile art.

Alyssa Taylor is a landscape designer with a Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Humanities from Whitman College. Across academic disciplines, Alyssa aims to elevate the perspectives of small, gentle, and often-overlooked human and non-human beings. With prior experience in environmental conservation, she is passionate about designing outdoor spaces that are resilient in the face of climate change and accessible to all. In her free time, Alyssa enjoys running, collaging, and reading fantasy novels with her cat, Percy.

Kazia Rodrigo is a landscape designer and urban planner with a passion for approaching complex technical problems with solutions rooted in values of interconnectedness and mutual respect between human and non-human communities. With a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning from Toronto Metropolitan University, Kazia leverages her background to collaborate meaningfully with diverse communities and foster inclusive decision-making processes. Her personal research focuses on the exploration of language and stories as tools for opposing predominant colonial narratives of landscapes, rooted in the traditional ecological knowledge of Indigenous Filipino communities. Kazia also enjoys cooking complex meals, reading, and exploring her new city on foot.

Olivia Gardner-Parlow is a marketing intern and nature and wildlife photographer dedicated to using creative and visual mediums to communicate a variety of stories. A two-time graduate of the University of St Andrews, she received her Master of Arts (Honours) in Modern History and Master of Letters in Environmental History, specializing in polar and South Pacific exploration, whaling, and invasive species management. Olivia brings her passion for using data and analytics to create meaningful marketing campaigns and engage with diverse audiences to Agency. A supporter of Liverpool F.C., she can be found volunteering at film festivals, ice skating, playing guitar, and building custom mechanical keyboards in her free time.