Our Team

Managing Director

Garlynn is an urban planner, real estate developer, and geographer with more than 20 years of experience in regional planning, urban analytics, natural and working land carbon accounting, transit-oriented development, housing policy and funding, zoning code audits, real estate development, and the use of GIS technology (including cutting edge scenario planning tools) for urban planning and decision making support. He helps clients make the connection between planning, development pro formas, regulatory codes, and multidisciplinary outcomes ranging from municipal fiscal health, public health, economic development, development feasibility, implementation strategies, to greenhouse gas emissions, and strategic planning for equitable outcomes.

Previously, Garlynn started and ran a new company focused on developing middle housing in Portland, OR, including the first new adaptive re-use fourplex in the city under current codes. Prior to that, he served as a Project Manager for Calthorpe Associates, overseeing projects including Vision California, Southern California SCS Scenarios, and the Honolulu TOD Study, and was instrumental in the development and deployment of the RapidFire and UrbanFootprint urban and regional scenario planning and modeling tools. 

Before Calthorpe Associates, he spent eight years with the MPO of the San Francisco Bay Area, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in Oakland, CA, working on a variety of projects, including: the Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Study (with the Center for Neighborhood Technology, the Center for Transit Oriented Development, and Strategic Economics); the Lifeline Transportation Study; and the Environmental Justice (EJ) analysis of the 2001 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). At the Portland Bureau of Transportation, he focused on the intersection of local transportation planning and the use of Geographic Information Systems. During his time with TriMet, he worked on community affairs, historical transit studies, and station area planning for the Westside Light Rail Project.

Associate

Meghan’s interests and expertise lie at the nexus of coupled socio-political and ecological systems in both urban and natural landscapes. She has 10+ years of experience of both on the ground and academic pursuits working within the environmental sciences and natural resources management fields. Most recently, she has worked with climate adaptation projects to better understand the complexities and trade-offs of managed retreat and community resettlement schemes. Meghan also has experience in forest and wetland restoration, invasive species management, temperate and tropical forestry, and hardwood silviculture. 

As a geographer, she uses an interdisciplinary approach to cut across boundaries and bring forth creative, novel solutions to crucial problems. She approaches questions from a critical perspective to better understand how power and systems produce the conditions for current crises such as climate change, white supremacy, etc. She has a broad skill set including (but not limited to): GIS cartography and spatial analysis, policy analysis, qualitative discourse and content analysis, quantitative analysis, project and data management, survey development and implementation, and field collected metrics. 

Prior to the start of her position with Woodsong Associates, she received a M.S. degree in Geography from Portland State University where she served as both a research assistant and a teaching assistant. Before graduate school, she worked as a seasonal field technician in a variety of positions from the Northwoods of Minnesota and Wisconsin, to the tropical rainforests of Ecuador and Puerto Rico. These positions exposed her to a wide variety of world views and experiences that has fostered her curiosity and passion to create meaningful change in the world.

Project Coordinator

Izzy graduated from Portland State University with a B.S. degree in Environmental Studies. She has a background in philosophy and experience in grant writing for environmental defense, and is fascinated by the interplay between the anthropological and non-human dimensions of our world.

Inspired by the ancient relationships between indigenous communities and the land, she is most passionate about awareness and activism regarding the declining wild salmon populations of the Pacific Northwest, and seeks to contribute to the solutions through the protection and restoration of the rivers and landscapes they inhabit. Overall, she lives and works under the assumption that humans and non-human beings are equally important in our environment, and that our actions in all capacities play a role in the whole of our system.

An interest in the outdoors has fueled her affection for the landscapes of the American West and her drive to protect them, and immersion into other cultures through extensive international travel has taught her about other ways of being and of governing, widening her scope of what solutions to the problems we face in our own country may be possible.