Better Planners Podcast

Better Planners is a podcast that aims to highlight and facilitate real stories about real solutions from the ground-level work of planners, community development advocates, and allied professions. With an emphasis on amplifying the voices and stories of marginalized communities. The episodes will be a resource and guide to provide insights into planning related topics people face on a daily basis that may be inspiring, challenging, questioning, and/or innovative. 

This podcast is intended for urban, regional, and rural community planners. Or you could be a community advocate, student, newcomer, or seasoned professional, this podcast series will have something for everyone!

So join us as we all become better planners! 

Want to be a part of the podcast? Send us an email!

The team behind the upcoming Better Planners podcast wants to hear from you about the real life issues you handle as a planner. What obstacles do you face? What are the honest, gritty, wicked problems you find yourself managing?

To share your experiences, email us at betterplanners@gmail.com. Your email might end up in one of the upcoming podcast episodes. You can be as anonymous or as identifiable as you want.

Follow us on Social Media:

Instagram: @betterplanners 

Latest Episode - A Conversation on Tribal Planning with Chuck Sams

This episode was a great one with Chuck Sams, an enrolled member of the  Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Cayuse tribes, as well as the 19th director of the United States National Park Service from 2021 to 2025. He now serves as one of two of Oregon's members of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, the director of Indigenous programs at the Yale Center for Environmental Justice, and senior fellow at the University of Oregon Law School.

Chuck has extensive experience in environmental stewardship and has spent nearly over 30 years doing salmon and watershed restoration work all across the Pacific Northwest and across the country on larger scale watershed restoration. We talk with him about tribal planning, lessons we can learn from indigenous nations, relationship building between tribes and government entities, and the current hot topic: data centers. 

Meet the Hosts

The views and opinions expressed through the podcasts are those of the guests hosts, and may not reflect those of the Oregon Chapter of the American Planning Association or any other affiliates of this program.

Mary Heberling-Creighton has been a city planner for over six years in the state of Oregon. She has worked in a variety of planning areas including community visioning, comprehensive planning, housing, and community outreach. Her passion is using storytelling (both verbal and visual) to find out ways to explain complicated or technical planning jargon for the average community member to understand.