Meet Caroline Brennan, Board Member

Caroline Brennan has served on Piedmont Housing Alliance’s board of directors since 2010. Originally from the New York area, Caroline came to Charlottesville, in 2000, to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Virginia. Caroline currently works at UVA’s school of medicine as a grants coordinator. Her training, however, is as an environmental planner, “which is all about people and places and natural resources. And a lot about facilitation and bringing people together on tough issues. I am passionate about communities, social and environmental justice, ecology, and public health,” she says.

In 2004, Caroline was introduced to Piedmont Housing’s work when she became a first-time homebuyer in the first phase of Piedmont Housing’s 10th and Page neighborhood revitalization project. She is especially excited about Piedmont Housing’s work in combining energy efficiency and nontoxic building materials within the framework of affordable housing.

Before coming to Charlottesville, Caroline was a planning consultant for transportation projects. More recently, she served as Program Manager at UVA’s Institute for Environmental Negotiation, helping stakeholders collaborate on issues of natural resources, land use and public health. She also managed the Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute, and served as deputy director of UVA’s Center of Expertise for Superfund Site Recycling. Caroline holds a bachelor’s degree, in Environmental Design, from the University at Buffalo, and a master’s, in Urban & Environmental Planning, from UVA.