Geraldine Gardner is the Director of the Urban and Regional Policy program. Before joining GMF in May 2012, Geraldine held in a variety of planning and economic development positions in the District of Columbia Government, including serving for five years as an Associate Director of the Office of Planning (DCOP). In her tenure at DCOP, she led the successful completion of over eighteen neighborhood and revitalization plans. She also led the District’s efforts to establish a regional innovation cluster based on the national security industry as part of a multi-billion dollar development of the historic Saint Elizabeths Campus. Her work at the local level focused on the intersection between economic development strategy development, community revitalization, and physical planning. Ms. Gardner has also worked in a variety or research and planning capacities in Los Angeles, New York, and Berlin, Germany. She has a master’s degree in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles and a bachelor’s degree in Metropolitan Studies from New York University. She was also the recipient of a Bundeskanzler/ German Chancellor Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to support a year-long research project to track the development of the creative economy in post-Wall Berlin.