Our Team

Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.

Ben Abramson is a Staff Writer at Strong Towns. In his career as a travel journalist with The Washington Post and USA TODAY, Ben has visited many destinations that show how Americans were once world-class at building appealing, prosperous places at a human scale. He has also seen the worst of the suburban development pattern, and joined Strong Towns because of its unique way of framing the problems we can all see and intuit, and focusing on local, achievable solutions. A native of Washington, DC, Ben lives in Venice, Florida; summers in Atlantic Canada; and loves hiking, biking, kayaking, and beachcombing.

Chris Allen is the Director of Events and Partnerships at Strong Towns. With a long career in operations, sales, and management, Chris brings a passion for collaborating around big ideas and seeing them through. He brings his enthusiasm for the built environment and community advocacy to our partners and supporters through the work of the Development Team. Chris is proud to work out the Strong Towns principles with our partners and donors—encouraging flourishing for all to positively impact our communities.

If you are interested in supporting or partnering with Strong Towns, please contact Chris Allen at chris@strongtowns.org.

Carlee Alm-LaBar is the Chief of Staff for Strong Towns. Carlee has become a champion for strong communities and civic engagement through her work in Lafayette, Louisiana. She has held senior leadership roles in local government and nonprofit organizations. When she’s not with her husband Will or dog Jozy, she spends her spare time volunteering with a variety of local organizations that build connections between people and empower local residents. Carlee graduated Magna Cum Laude from Northwestern University and holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from Louisiana State University.

Caroliena Cabada is the Social Media Associate for Strong Towns. Raised in suburban Illinois, she moved to New York City for school and graduated from New York University with a B.A. in Chemistry. She then worked in nonprofit communications and social media before moving back to the Midwest to earn an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University. She writes fiction and poetry when she's not writing social posts. She's terminally online, but will gladly remind you to go outside.

Karen Douglas is the Public Relations Specialist at Strong Towns. With an educational background in Architecture and City Planning, four years in nonprofits, and 10 years as a full-stack content marketer and PR specialist for small businesses and startups, she brings a well-balanced perspective to media and Strong Town concepts. Through data analysis and emotional intelligence, she’s passionate about forming lasting relationships, building win-win solutions, and creating campaigns that resonate with people.

Karen’s love for public relations comes from her love of travel, culture, and community building. In her downtime, you’ll find her browsing bookstores, record shops, and museums; building new “music to work/relax to” playlists; and discussing her favorite books, movies, and TV shows.

Are you a member of the media and want to talk about Strong Towns? Email Karen.

Edward Erfurt is the Director of Community Action at Strong Towns. He is a trained architect and passionate urban designer with over 20 years of public- and private-sector experience focused on the management, design, and successful implementation of development and placemaking projects that enrich the tapestry of place. He believes in community-focused processes that are founded on diverse viewpoints, a concern for equity, and guided through time-tested, traditional town-planning principles and development patterns that result in sustainable growth with the community character embraced by the communities which he serves.

Michelle Erfurt serves as Strong Towns' Event Pathfinder. Guided by a passion for helping people, her first career was in music therapy. She spent her clinical years working to decrease pain, improve coping, and enhance interpersonal relationships of hospice and hospitalized patients.

Those therapeutic skills have served her well. In her work at Strong Towns, Michelle navigates people through the process of bringing a Strong Towns event to their area in a way that helps them achieve their goals to help build a stronger place.

Would you like to bring Strong Towns staff to your town for a speaking engagement? Please email Michelle.

Tony is the Community Engagement Coordinator at Strong Towns. Tony believes incremental action and humility are key ingredients to community growth. Prior to joining the team, Tony worked in operations and communications with start-up ventures in the renewable energy and collaborative technology fields. His vocational experience spans across project management, process design, facilitation, fundraising, and organizational development. Tony holds a Master of Arts in Conflict Transformation from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. He currently calls Annapolis, Maryland, home.

Seairra Jones serves as the Lead Story Producer for Strong Towns. In the past, she's worked as a freelance journalist and videographer for a number of different organizations. She currently resides between small-town Illinois and the rural Midwest with her husband, where they help manage a family homestead. When Seairra isn’t focusing on how to make our towns stronger, you can find her outside working on the farm, writing fictional tales in a coffee shop, or reading in a hammock.

Rachel Leonardo is a Video Creator at Strong Towns. She began her career in project management for construction projects before transitioning to freelance video production, specializing in educational content about urban planning. Rachel believes everyone deserves to live in strong, resilient towns and that people have the power to make those changes happen. Currently, Rachel is based in Spain, but she grew up in Maryland. Outside of work, she enjoys learning new languages (currently working on Italian!), creating cardboard furniture and chatting late into the night with friends.

Asia (pronounced “ah-sha”) Mieleszko serves as a Staff Writer for Strong Towns. A dilettante urbanist since adolescence, she's excited to convert a lifetime of ad-hoc volunteerism into a career. Her unconventional background includes directing a Ukrainian folk choir, pioneering synaesthetic performances, photographing festivals, designing websites, teaching, and ghostwriting. She can be found wherever Wi-Fi is reliable, typically along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.

Abby Newsham is the cohost of the Upzoned podcast. Abby is an urban design and planning consultant at Multistudio in Kansas City, Missouri. In her own community, she works to advance bottom-up strategies that enhance both private development and the public realm, and facilitates the ad-hoc Kansas City chapter of the Incremental Development Alliance. When she’s not geeking out over cities, Abby is an avid urban mountain biker (because: potholes), audiobook and podcast junkie, amateur rock climber, and guitarist. You can connect with Abby on Twitter at @abbykatkc.

Allison Oliver is the Office Administrator & Local Conversations Administrator at Strong Towns. Allison has worked in real estate for the past 10 years, with a focus on title insurance. She enjoys gardening, hiking, traveling, and patio season. She moved to Breezy Point, Minnesota, two years ago and lives in a cabin in the woods, surrounded by Forestry Service land. She’s passionate about food and cooking—from recipe creation, to picking ingredients, to spending three hours making a meal.

John Pattison is the Community Builder for Strong Towns. In this role, he works with advocates in hundreds of communities as they start and lead local Strong Towns groups called Local Conversations. John is the author of two books, most recently Slow Church (IVP), which takes inspiration from Slow Food and the other Slow movements to help faith communities reimagine how they live life together in the neighborhood. He also co-hosts The Membership, a podcast inspired by the life and work of Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, writer, and activist. John and his family live in Silverton, Oregon. You can connect with him on Twitter at @johnepattison.

Want to start a Local Conversation, or implement the Strong Towns approach in your community? Email John.

Evan Pesch is the Web and Graphic Designer for Strong Towns. Raised in a household with a local historian and a city planner in Muskegon, Michigan (our 2018 Strongest Town Contest winner), he’s always found a way to tie his own interest in design and creative work back to the city he called home. After creating several projects to get involved in his community, he left to get a bachelor’s degree studying user experience design at the University of Michigan. He later bounced around as a designer, web developer, and artist for numerous organizations before returning to his hometown in search of new ways to apply his varied skillset to improve the city he loves. If you want to find him, just visit Muskegon’s Lakeshore Trail. He’ll likely wander by you soon.

Rachel Quednau serves as Program Director at Strong Towns. Trained in dialogue facilitation and mediation, she is devoted to building understanding across lines of difference. Previously, Rachel worked for several organizations fighting to end homelessness and promote safe, affordable housing at the federal and local levels. Rachel also served as Content Manager for Strong Towns from 2015-2018. A native Minnesotan and honorary Wisconsinite, Rachel received a Masters in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Harvard Divinity School and a Certificate in Conflict Transformation from the Boston Theological Interreligious Consortium, both in 2020. She currently lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her husband and young son. One of her favorite ways to get to know a new city is by going for a walk in it.

Mya Riley is the Copywriter/Editor at Strong Towns. She’s passionate about learning new things and sharing knowledge with others. In the past, that passion informed her work as a copywriter and researcher for an educational organization. Now, it’s drawn her to Strong Towns and its non-partisan, ground-level approach to improving communities through education and civic engagement.

In her free time, Mya enjoys hosting game nights with her friends and writing fantasy and crime fiction. You can usually find her going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and she’s always ready with a fun fact about any topic.

Lauren Ronnander, the Director of Communications for Strong Towns, is an actual idealist who loves making things and double-spacing the end of sentences. Before joining the Strong Towns team in 2020, she worked as a journalist and an editor. She lives with her husband and an almost uncountable number of animals (including cats, dogs, sheep, chickens, and rabbits) in a super-awesome neighborhood in the American Midwest. Her experience in the Alaska Bush, downtown living in an up-and-coming Midwestern city, and now residing in a rural Chippewa Valley, Wisconsin, community has provided her with precious insight into the many ways our places can grow stronger.

Shina Shayesteh serves as the Editor-in-Chief for Strong Towns. She self-identifies as a jack of all trades, with a master’s degree in history and a background in education, linguistics, research, and digital art. A native Houstonian, she loves to travel both in and outside of the United States. When not working, she enjoys needlework, picking up new crafts, playing tabletop RPGs, studying other languages, and coercing her friends into eating weird foods.

Linda serves as Strong Towns’ Controller. After a long career in corporate accounting and finance, she is happy to apply her skills and experience in the nonprofit sector. Originally from Maryland, she moved to Charleston, South Carolina, over 20 years ago, and is now grateful to live just a block away from the beach on Edisto Island. She enjoys good books, good food, and the company of good friends. She also loves to travel, and is looking forward to new adventures in the near future.

Got a question about billing or payments? Email Linda.