Jess Zimbabwe, Executive Director
Jess Zimbabwe, Executive Director
Jess Zimbabwe was named founding Executive Director of the ULI Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership in 2009. The Center’s flagship program is the Daniel Rose Fellowship for public leaders, which brings the mayors and senior leadership teams of 4 cities together for a year-long program of learning from land use experts, technical assistance, study tours, leadership development, and peer-to-peer exchange. The Rose Center also holds forums on of public/private real estate development and workshops to educate public officials.
Previously, Jess was the Director of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design. In that capacity she worked with over 125 American mayors and cities to help local leaders advocate for better built environments in their own communities. Prior to that, Jess served as the Community Design Director at Urban Ecology, providing pro bono community planning and design assistance to low-income neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jess was a Comparative Domestic Policy Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and a Fellow of the Women’s Policy Institute of the Women’s Foundation of California. She serves on the Board of Directors of Next American City. She is a licensed architect, certified city planner, and a LEED-Accredited professional.
Alison Johnson, Program Manager
Alison Johnson, Program Manager
Alison Johnson is Program Manager of the ULI Rose Center for Public Leadership with responsibility for developing and implementing educational and research programs like forums and webinars. Targeted towards a predominantly public sector audience, this programming provides public officials with information, insights, peer-to-peer learning, and best practices to help their work of successfully building and sustaining their cities.
Alison also serves as Government Compliance Manager at ULI. As manager, Alison contributes to ULI’s capacity, financial analysis, and program planning/reporting associated with grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development by way of the Office of Sustainable Communities and Housing (OSCH) and previously from the federal stimulus program – Neighborhood Stabilization Program Technical Assistance (NSP TA).
Alison has more than ten years of experience working in a corporate financial environment along with corporate foundation and non-profit intermediary exposure. Through this course of time, Alison has put in to practice her experience and knowledge of financial management to the operations of mission related grant making, public outreach and managing volunteer campaigns.
Alison earned a Master of Urban Planning from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University and a B.A. in Political and Economic Philosophy from Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, WV.
Caroline Dietrich, Logistics Manager
Carrie Dietrich, Logistics Manager
Caroline Dietrich is the logistics manager for the Education and Advisory Group at the Urban Land Institute. In this capacity, she coordinates the logistics for all of ULI’s advisory panels and advisory service functions, all professional development workshops and a variety of other events within the group. In addition, she works closely with the ULI Rose Center, assisting them with logistics for retreats, forums and fellowship
events.
Before joining ULI, Dietrich worked for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation as a gala assistant, where she oversaw the planning and production of the annual “Night of Hope” Gala and silent auction. She worked closely with the Gala committee and JDRF staff to help raise over 1.7 million for research. Prior to her work with JDRF, Dietrich spent six years as an elementary school teacher in Fairfax, Virginia, teaching social studies and language arts to 5th and 6th graders.
Dietrich has a B.A. of Science from West Chester University in Pennsylvania, and has completed the Event Management certificate program from The George Washington University. She is currently working to become a CMP–Certified Meeting Professional. She is an active member of ISES DC, planning special events for groups in the DC area.
