Heather Flint Chatto

Heather Flint Chatto has over 25 years of experience as a professional planner and urban designer, including architecture and green design, planning for resiliency, zero energy buildings, sustainability policy, and has worked with numerous education non-profits. Heather is known to many in the preservation field through her work as owner of Forage Design + Planning and as co-founder and Director of PDX Main Streets, helping communities to create main street design guidelines and identify their important historic buildings. Her background includes high performance buildings policy and zero energy building education with Portland-based national think-tank New Buildings Institute, green design projects with Habitats Inc. and with local architecture firms, on policy research with the Environmental Policy Center, green infrastructure planning with the Green Futures Research and Design Lab, and as a long-range planner with Santa Barbara County Planning Department. In 2015, and again in 2019, the Daily Journal of Commerce honored Flint Chatto as a Woman of Vision for her passion for education and design literacy, community planning work for main streets, and creative community engagement.

Heather knows that with rapid growth and a need for increased housing creating swift changes and political divides across the state, cities like Portland are at a critical inflection point in their evolution. To guide the future, she encourages the importance of strong leadership and vision, strategic planning and preservation of important buildings, local culture and identity, and innovative engagement and advocacy that balances immediate issues with long-range thinking. She believes in evidence-based decision-making, and is a strong advocate for building reuse as a critical strategy for climate action and creating low-carbon affordable housing solutions. 

Heather is passionate about architecture and design and empowering communities with design education and inclusive engagement. She values working with long-time advocates to excite and foster a next generation of stewards and thought-leaders through innovative programs, community partnerships, fundraising, and cultural awareness.

She is honored to be part of carrying on the work of great city-making and preservation - both in creating what we hope will be the next generation of historically important buildings, in preserving the valued resources we have and the artful craft they exemplify, as well as advancing the sharing of a more diverse and inclusive cultural history by revealing the stories of past and present as we work to shape a sustainable future. 

Heather is a working mother of a middle schooler, married to a local sustainability architect, and loves to travel with her family in search of historic architecture, green city design, and innovative urban planning. In her spare time she is a backpacker and canoe-camper, seasonal gardener, community design volunteer, and a vintage treasure hunter and maker of art and furniture from repurposed objects.