Thea Agnew Bemben

Thea Agnew Bemben is a principal and founding partner of Agnew::Beck Consulting, a sixteen-person community planning and development firm based in Anchorage, Alaska. She has extensive experience working with very rural, predominantly Alaska Native communities to build local capacity to plan for and implement community development projects. She has assisted with developing comprehensive plans for rural villages, small towns and urban districts. Thea works with communities and organizations to develop sustainable business plans for a variety of initiatives such as affordable and supportive housing, rural vocational education, and community facility development – including health clinics, recreation centers, family resource centers, domestic violence shelters and cultural centers. She has successfully worked to raise millions of dollars for program development, facility design and construction. Thea has facilitated public dialogue on a wide range of topics including community planning, nonprofit organizational development and public policy initiatives. She earned a master’s degree in History, focusing on the cultural history of western Alaska. She is a lifelong Alaskan who grew up in Anchorage and also spent ten years living in the rural community of McCarthy, where she served three terms as president of the local area council.

Chris Beck, AICP

Chris has more than thirty years of planning experience and is a principal and founding partner of Agnew::Beck Consulting. He specializes in the areas of land use planning, public participation and facilitation, tourism planning, community development and urban design. He first came to Alaska in 1979 where he worked with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, and helped set up DNR’s regional land planning process. In 1993, Chris began focusing on community tourism issues, working in such as Girdwood, Cordova, Homer, McCarthy, Prince William Sound, Talkeetna and Dillingham. In 2002, Chris joined with Thea Agnew to form Agnew::Beck Consulting, LLC. Chris holds master’s degrees in City Planning and in Landscape Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley. Outside of the office, he is almost always outside: skiing, glacier hopping, kayaking Prince William Sound, camping, biking up mountains and down the city’s trails and enjoying the sun, snow, sleet, wind and rain.

Ellen Campfield Nelson, AICP

Ellen joined our team in 2004 with several years of project management, graphic design work, teaching experience, and history and language study. She utilizes these diverse skills frequently in her planning work – facilitating discussions, designing informational materials, encouraging public involvement, and researching and writing. Working with communities to find common ground and determine their own future are the elements of her job she most enjoys. She has won minor writing, teaching and graphics awards, including a national design award for work on a product development campaign. Ellen is an ardent reader, decent telemark skier, and dabbling artist. After living in Anchorage through eleven winters, she relocated to Boise, Idaho in 2008 and now staffs the Agnew::Beck office there. She a delighted mother of three under 3 (including twin girls), supportive spouse to her firefighting husband, Derek, and the harried caregiver of her energetic pudelpointer dog.

Beth McLaughlin

Beth first came to Agnew::Beck in 2004, with eight years experience in the arts and education arenas and a passion for working with small Alaskan communities. Originally from the rainy islands of Southeast Alaska, she understands the strengths and challenges involved in developing projects in rural communities. Her work at Agnew::Beck focuses on community development at the grassroots level. She specializes in helping individuals and organizations articulate their vision and translate their desires into sensible goals. This means creating achievable funding strategies; developing sustainable facilities, creating community plans built on local consensus, providing technical assistance and outreach, and coordinating educational events to bridge the rural-urban divide. Beth is a successful grant writer and has helped raise millions of dollars for rural projects. She enjoys skiing; scribbling in her notebook; biking on pavement, dirt and snow; and travelling all around.

Melissa Rodriguez

Melissa joined our team as a Program Associate in 2006. She was born and raised in Alaska and has worked in various capacities at the state and local level in Anchorage for the past seven years. She graduated from Brandeis University with a B.A. in sociology and has completed coursework toward a master's in public administration. She has worked in the affordable housing, transitional housing, advocacy, and substance abuse fields in Anchorage. Melissa has extensive experience providing proposal development and grants management services for state and local organizations. She has worked with organizations to secure millions of dollars for program development and capacity-building efforts. Melissa has also provided research, planning, and program evaluation for behavioral health programs. Melissa enjoys traveling and spending time outdoors. She is also a boxing enthusiast and enjoys putting the gloves on. Melissa and her husband Neil have two beautiful daughters, Mariella and Marcelina.

Heather Stewart, AICP

Heather combines the strong organizational skills needed to keep a project well-ordered and efficient with the broad perspective of a trained community planner. She has been involved in a variety of planning projects in Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and rural Alaska. Her experience includes helping to facilitate meetings, planning workshops and stakeholder groups. She has recently begun to take on project management responsibilities and has worked closely with municipal staff and a diverse array of stakeholders to better understand and reach consensus on priority issues, as well as to identify feasible alternatives for addressing them. Heather joined our team in 2006, after earning a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Prior to that, she lived primarily in New England, with interludes in Russia, China, Europe and the Middle East. She enjoys exploring new places and the fascinating people who inhabit them.

Tanya Iden

A lifelong Alaskan, Tanya joined Agnew::Beck in 2006 after spending a few years living and working as a community planner in Honolulu, Hawaii and in San Diego, California. Tanya is excited to return to the state that she knows and loves with more planning experience and a fresh perspective. In addition to her planning work, Tanya has a broad range of experience providing technical assistance and strategic planning support to nonprofit associations and government agencies. She excels working with community groups and coordinating public meetings and most enjoys listening to Alaskans and developing planning strategies that reflect the values and strengths of their communities. Like her grandparents who sought adventure by coming to Alaska from Illinois in 1958, Tanya's pursued adventures of her own and loves to travel. She has explored Europe, North Africa, and Southeast Asia in addition to many Alaskan and U.S. communities. She holds a master's degree in urban development planning from the University of London, England and a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Washington. Spending time with her family is her favorite pastime.

Shelly Wade, AICP

Shelly serves our firm as a senior planner and lead facilitator on a wide array of projects, from community development and comprehensive planning projects to health and human services, recreation and land management projects. She has developed community and economic development plans for rural municipalities and tribal entities throughout the state. A lifelong Alaskan, Shelly originally hails from North Pole, AK, and has deftly explored other parts of the world as Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in China. Now at Agnew::Beck, she takes every opportunity to travel throughout the state to work with rural communities. Outside the office, you can find her on the trails of Southcentral Alaska – hiking, skiing, backpacking and biking – or in the gym instructing group fitness classes. Shelly earned a master’s degree in Community and Economic Development and Sociology from Illinois State University Peace Fellows Program and a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Kelly DuFort

Kelly uses her background as a photographer, journalist and graphic artist to create elegant products for our community planning, development and communications projects. She enjoys sculpting complex ideas into simple and attractive explanations with images or words. She specializes in offering clear, clean, concise content in user-friendly formats out of a sense of service to the people and communities who use our products. This is evident in all of her work from website design and maintenance, document layout and editing to coordinating print production, advertising and marketing strategies. Outside of the office, she enjoys exploring Anchorage's trail system with her good-natured sidekicks: Flag (90-pound retriever mix) and Isaac (ambitiously athletic husband).

Heidi Wailand, PMP

Heidi is a certified project management professional with extensive experience as a facilitator, project manager and business analyst. Before joining Agnew::Beck in 2010, she worked as the executive director of an internal consulting team at the New York City Department of Small Business Services. There, she facilitated the Workforce Development Divisions 2009 strategic planning process aligning on-the-ground operations with the agency’s vision. Heidi has initiated and led critical improvement projects, defining project scopes and budgets and implementing new processes and technologies. She earned a master’s of regional planning from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard. Her first introductions to Alaska included facilitating five-year strategic planning efforts with watershed councils in Skagway, Haines, Yakutat and Kasaan.

Shanna Zuspan, AICP

Shanna joined A::B as a Senior Land Use Planner after six years serving the City of West Sacramento and another three as a land use consultant in California. Her passion for helping communities reinvent struggling neighborhoods led her to manage several initiatives to help West Sacramento implement its riverfront master plan, redevelopment goals, and infrastructure master plans. Recently, she facilitated a public-private partnership to encourage waterfront revitalization and infill housing. Shanna was born in Alaska, spent her early years in McCarthy, and graduated from high school in Anchorage. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Northern Colorado and returned to serve the Anchorage School District as manager of demographics and GIS. She then earned a master’s degree from MIT in city planning. Shanna and her husband are excited to raise their son, Jack Owen, in their home state. Out of the office, she loves practicing yoga, spending time with her family, being outdoors and rediscovering Anchorage.

Kirk Rappe

Born and raised in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, Kirk provides whip-smart support to a broad range of the firm’s planning and community development projects. His research and analysis skills draw on his in-depth urban planning education and experience serving nonprofit and government agencies. He is especially interested in planning and implementing changes which encourage environmentally sound, human-scale communities. To that end, he’s honed his skills in ArcGIS mapping, real estate inventory, energy and qualitative and quantitative analysis. And he has a strong understanding of land use regulation and environmental planning methods, to boot. He earned a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Washington where he was elected to represent the university’s Planning Student Association to the American Planning Association’s (APA) executive board. When he wanted to learn more about renewable energy, he served as research intern for Seattle’s electric utility, exploring innovative models for conserving energy and reducing costs and climate impacts. Kirk is a proud, toe-tapping player of the accordion.

Meg Loomis

A social worker by training, Meg has significant nonprofit grantwriting, management and programmatic experience. Prior to joining Agnew::Beck, Meg was the Executive Director of the Alaska Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, an organization for which she has also served on the board. Additionally, in Alaska she has worked for The Foraker Group providing technical assistance to peer-based mental health programs and Southcentral Foundation integrating behavioral health services into their OB-GYN clinic. She is also an adjunct professor with the UAA School of Social Work. Meg was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and a master’s of social work degree from the University of Alaska Anchorage. In her down time, she enjoys hiking, skiing, volunteering for Star Alaska and traveling in and out of Alaska.

Anna Brawley

Anna brings her versatile planning, analytical and research skills to Agnew::Beck as an associate in business and community development.  With experience in planning, process improvement, web design, GIS analysis, organizational structure and leadership, she effectively navigates between the details and the big picture.  She focuses on understanding the past through historical research and moving organizations forward through strategic planning, new technologies and coordinated action of its committed members. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Anna holds a master’s degree in regional planning from Cornell University, an M.A. in social sciences from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in history from Denison University. Her graduate thesis focused on food distribution infrastructure in Chicago, a project for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP). When not at work she is exploring her new home in Anchorage by foot or pedal, photographing the built and natural environment, or online keeping up with the outside world.

Karen Benning

Karen moved to Alaska twenty years ago from Oregon, where she was born and raised. She thinks of herself as a recovering accountant and has worked with the nonprofit sector since 2002, most recently as the Executive Director of the Alaska Council on Economic Education. Her nonprofit work has also included grant writing, capacity building and strategic planning, and she helped launch several early childhood initiatives during her time as a Community Action Director at United Way of Anchorage. With an MFA in creative writing, she has also published a variety of essays and articles and has received national recognition for her writing. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the nonprofit organization 49 Writers. In her spare time, Karen loves cross-country skiing, mountain biking, road cycling, and hiking.

Molly Mylius

Born and raised in Alaska, Molly draws on her well-rounded, homegrown background to keep our office running smoothly. She has experience taming teeming work environments both in agency offices and outdoors in the backcountry. She’s served as an instructor at Alaska Center for the Environment’s Trailside Discovery Camp and worked as a certified wilderness-first-responder guide in Wrangell St. Elias National Park for visitors learning about the park’s glaciers, wilderness and history. She’s also made her mark outside Alaska, helping to recommend policies for an agricultural pilot program in Maine, where she earned an environmental studies degree at Bates College. Her studies included a semester in Tanzania studying conservation, ecology, politics and Kiswahili – a language of the region. Molly manages Agnew::Beck's office with swashbuckling versatility, a confidence-inspiring smile and competent ease.