Seattle Planning Commission - Who We Are

Xio Alvarez is a resident of White Center/Highland Park (District 1) and a designer at LMN Architects in downtown Seattle, where she works on projects that bridge between planning and architecture. In addition to project work, she co-leads the firm’s resilience research group. She is interested in leveraging quantitative data about climate, geography, and the built environment with qualitative experiences and stories of neighborhoods and places to tell more complicated and nuanced stories about what it means to adapt to change. An innovative and collaborative designer, she is interested in finding resilient and sustainable ways for people to live together. She approaches her projects with an emphasis on engagement and excels at creating accessible spaces for technical and non-technical stakeholders to talk about complex problems. She is particularly passionate about youth involvement in city design processes.

Previously, Xio worked on heat and flood resilience projects with social justice communities in the Boston area, looking at ways that the design process for plans and projects can build coalitions between communities of color, environmental advocates, and government stakeholders. She has a bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies as well as a Master of Architecture and a Master in City Planning. Her joint Masters thesis research studied how people experiencing homelessness adapt the public spaces of the city, and what the design community could learn from these adaptations in designing a more resilient public realm for all residents.

Outside of the office, Xio can be found biking and busing around the city, hanging out along the Duwamish trying to spot new birds, and taking on ambitious cooking projects.

Cecelia is an ADA and Disability Equity Specialist for King County. Previously, Cecelia worked with nondrivers and people with disabilities to fight for transportation justice as an organizer for Disability Mobility Initiative at Disability Rights Washington. There she led campaigns for accessible Seattle sidewalks, expanded multi-modal investments in the 2024 Seattle transportation levy, and an inclusive comprehensive plan.

As a quadriplegic and wheelchair user, Cecelia knows how difficult it can be to find accessible housing in the City of Seattle and understands that disabled voices are needed to adequately address the crisis in accessible and affordable housing.  She currently serves on the board of Be:Seattle, an organization that works to protect renters’ rights, and is a member of Sound Transit’s Citizens Accessibility Advisory Committee.

Outside of organizing, Cecelia is a photographer, avid mountain biker, and plays wheelchair rugby with Seattle Slam.  In 2023, she co-created “(De)Constructing: Access Tests,” a video-based art project about sidewalk accessibility with exhibitions at 4Culture, The River and SOIL.

Rebecca is a Senior Project Manager for Transit Oriented Development at Sound Transit, where she manages the redevelopment of agency-owned surplus property into affordable housing. Her projects span the region and include both multifamily affordable rental projects and permanently affordable homeownership projects, with additional programmatic work focused on sustainability initiatives, remnant property activation, and facilitating community-driven development. Originally from Long Island, Rebecca moved to Seattle in 2013 and was introduced to the housing field through an AmeriCorps service year at Compass Housing Alliance. She went on to get her MPA at the Evans School at UW, spending many of the intervening years bartending at one of Seattle's most esteemed dives. Rebecca can be found most weekends at that same dive and other assorted venues supporting Seattle's robust local and DIY music scene. An advocate for plentiful housing choices for all types of households, she lives in Crown Hill with five housemates, two perfect cats and two less perfect dogs.

McCaela is an urban planner whose career has spanned the public, private, and nonprofit sectors with an ever-increasing focus on building thriving and equitable communities through partnership and collaboration. She joined the Commission to work alongside fellow Commissioners to ensure that Seattle remains a vibrant, resilient, and welcoming place for all for years to come.

McCaela has held positions with organizations that finance, build, or support affordable housing for over a decade. She works for King County's Department of Community and HumanServices as lead staff for the King County Affordable Housing Committee, an effort to advance regional solutions to address the housing affordability crisis. She previously worked for Capitol Hill Housing where she staffed the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict, a community-driven effort to promote equity,environmental resilience, and cultural space in the neighborhood. McCaela co-chairs the Seattle Central College Citizens Advisory Committee and mentors emerging planning professionals through the University of Washington's Master of Urban Planning Professionals Council. She holds a Bachelor of Environmental Policy and Planning from Western Washington University and a Master of City and Regional Planning from Rutgers University.

Raised in Tacoma, McCaela is a long-time resident of Capitol Hill. When she's not working, she can be found cooking, enjoying the great outdoors, and exploring the city on foot.

Andrew Dannenberg is a physician who holds faculty appointments in urban planning and in public health at the University of Washington where he teaches courses on Public Health and Built Environment and on Health Impact Assessment that regularly attract urban planning students and public health students into the same classroom.  He co-edited a textbook (Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Well-being, Equity, and Sustainability, 2022) and has published numerous papers related to public health, community design, equity, housing, transportation, and land use.  He believes policies and programs developed in Seattle to increase affordable housing and transportation and improve social equity could influence planning decisions made throughout the country.  

Prior to moving to Seattle in 2011, Andy served as a medical epidemiologist for 15 years at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta where he developed and led the agency’s Healthy Community Design Initiative. He served on the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board from 2018 to 2022.  He added an accessory dwelling unit to his house in 2017 in part to add a reasonably priced unit to the area’s housing stock.  He lives in northeast Seattle and uses walking, bicycling, and transit as his primary means of transportation.

Amir Ehsaei is a civil and environmental engineer with more than 16 years of experience at the intersection of infrastructure, sustainability, and public policy. Throughout his career, he has worked on large-scale infrastructure and capital programs for public agencies and private organizations, with expertise in climate resilience, decarbonization, and sustainable development. As the founder of Zamin Consulting and former sustainability leader at Amazon and AWS, Amir brings practical experience implementing complex infrastructure projects. He is committed to helping Seattle achieve thoughtful, equitable, and resilient growth through long-term planning and collaborative decision making.

As an architect and urban designer with Perkins Eastman, Dylan has worked in Seattle for 17 years to enhance the city's urban experience. Dylan's professional experience includes high and mid-rise mixed use, multi-family projects along with city-scale light rail alignment studies, Transit Oriented Development (TOD) policy research and zoning studies along the Roosevelt light-rail corridor, and light rail station location analysis for both the Seattle Center and CID stations.

He was vice chair of the Citizen's Advisory Committee for Swedish’s Cherry Hill Medical Center Master Plan update, which focused on creating a 20-year vision for a major hospital expansion in collaboration with adjacent single-family neighbors, the City of Seattle and Swedish Hospital. The resulting plan ensured a 40% reduction in single-occupancy vehicle commuting to the campus by 2034. Dylan also serves on the AIA Seattle Board of Directors, Public Policy Board and Comprehensive Plan Workgroup.  He spent 6 years as co-chair of the AIA Seattle Urban Design Forum.

Dylan has a particular interest in mapping and assessing Seattle's neighborhood centers as a means of identifying a network of neighborhoods to establish a framework for shaping Seattle into a 15-Minute City and has been actively involved in related advocacy work with Seattle's current comprehensive plan update. Dylan has lived in Seattle since 2004 and currently resides in the Central District, where he spends his free time exploring Seattle neighborhoods and the vast mountain wilderness of our beautiful state. 

A relatively new Seattle resident of about 7 years, Rose is excited to give back to our community and to collaborate on our collective vision for an equitable, inclusive, and eco-conscious Seattle. Rose nurtures a wellspring of passion for doing right by both people and the environment, shaped by their heritage as the mixed Chinese-Caucasian child of an immigrant; lived experience as a "third culture kid" and environmentalist activist blossoming into an equity-focused and intersectional environmentalist; and learned knowledge of Seattle and the contemporary and historical land use issues affecting our Indigenous, Black, and other minority communities. They also bring professional knowledge of land use policy as a biologist at Jacobs Engineering, with 9 years of environmental investigation and permitting experience for projects ranging from small residential improvements to public transit expansions, and most recently, large bridge replacement and fish passage barrier correction projects. Always learning, always growing, and not afraid to admit when they are wrong, Rose's approach is to listen first, digest by contemplating and asking clarifying questions, and then collaborate on solutions.  A personal note: District 5 residents, please do not hesitate to reach out! I will do my best to bring the North Seattle perspective to our reviews and to support inclusive policies for Seattle as a whole.

Dhyana Quintanar Solares is WSP's Strategic Solutions Leader and Senior Project Manager. She brings 16 years of experience to the Seattle Planning Commission in infrastructure, public space, land use and environmental planning and project management in the public, non-profit and private sectors. Dhyana relocated to Seattle in 2019 to join WSP, where she brings social impact ideas to deliver complex urban projects that can maximize public benefit. She is passionate about social justice and believes systemic challenges can only be met through collective efforts and cross-collaboration of leaders working to elevate and co-power communities.

Prior to joining WSP she led the Authority of Public Space of Mexico City, where she was responsible for the transformation of 125 acres into more livable, equitable, safe and iconic places. Other previous roles in Mexico City included leading the City's Transportation Planning and Roads office and serving as Mexico City's first bicycle coordinator where she implemented ECOBICI, the first automated public bikeshare system in the Americas. She holds a Master of Environmental Management degree with a focus in transportation and urban development from the Yale School of the Environment.

Dylan Stevenson (Prairie Band Potawatomi descent) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington where his research examines the relationships among Indigenous Planning, Historic Preservation, and Environmental Planning. He’s specifically interested in restoration and how it informs our collective responses to climate change, land ethics, and Indigenous cultural revitalization. As the field of planning continues to develop approaches so that communities can live more ecologically in the face of climate impacts, he believes it needs to centralize Indigenous worldviews to foster better relationships with the land while promoting Tribal sovereignty and self-determination. Some of his previous research has explored how governments (Federal, State, and Tribal) normalize cultural values within their water planning activities and has published work analyzing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within planning educational programs. His current work focuses on the role of intangible cultural heritage (language, cultural practices, etc.) within environmental and indigenous planning practices.

Before coming to Seattle, Dylan obtained his Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning and has obtained his AICP certification through the American Planning Association. He additionally holds a Masters in Planning from the University of Southern California, a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics from the University of California, Davis, and an Associate of Arts in Liberal Arts from De Anza College. Dylan has lived in Seattle since 2022 and currently resides in the Belltown neighborhood.

T.J. Stutman is a public finance and budget professional. An urbanist enthusiast, he has volunteered with neighborhood advocacy groups in support of affordable housing, denser urban development, and public transportation. He joined the Planning Commission to play a more critical role in local planning decisions, helping to influence and shape our city in ways that make for livable communities while welcoming future neighbors.

T.J. works in the King County Executive Office. He provides independent oversight for Metro Transit’s $4 billion budget, develops policy tools that comport with the Executive’s priorities, and advises policymakers on the economic and revenue impacts of state and local legislation. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands and his master’s degree from the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance at the University of Washington.

While East Coast born and Southern California raised, T.J. has lived in Seattle since 2001. He resides in Haller Lake, near the Pinehurst light rail station. In his free time, he enjoys day trips with his family, volunteering with his synagogue, and playing the banjo.

Margaret (she/her) is the YMCA's 2025-2026 Get Engaged commissioner for the Seattle Planning Commission. She is a third-year law student at the University of Washington School of Law where she works towards a career in environmental and land use law. Margaret's legal pursuits are inspired by her prior experiences as a transportation planner. As a planner, her work included project prioritization and community engagement in developing a five-year budget integrated infrastructure work plan. In this role she enjoyed exploring the intersection of multi-modal transportation, land use policy, and environmental justice. As a law student, Margaret's work has continued to explore these issues from a policy and legal perspective.

Margaret was born and raised in Boise, Idaho. She attended Boise State University where she earned a B.A. in Environmental Studies, B.S. in Political Science, and a certificate in environmental education. Margaret now lives in Fremont. In her free time, she enjoys rock climbing, trail running, and baking seasonal sweet treats.

Patrick Taylor is a project manager at Neiman Taber Architects, having worked in architecture for over ten years. His focus is on urban housing including ADUs, single-family homes, townhouses, micro-housing, and mid-rise apartments. Patrick is passionate about sustainable, affordable urbanism. He is active in the community, currently he is co-chair of AIA Seattle's Comprehensive Plan Work Group, as well as serving on their Public Policy Board and Housing Advocacy Committee. He served as co-chair of the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board for four years and was a board member, Events Coordinator, and occasional writer for The Urbanist.

Patrick is the fourth generation of his family to call Seattle home at least temporarily. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest, a ferry ride away. He received his undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science at Western Washington University and spent several years working in outdoor recreation and forest biology — both passions that continue —before following his love of cities to the University of Oregon where he earned a Master of Architecture. He lives in North Beacon Hill with his wife and two sons. In his free time, he can be found exploring the city by bike or on foot.

Prior to his current term, Kelabe Tewolde served the Commission as a Get Engaged member from 2020 - 2021. Kelabe was born and raised in Seattle. He attended Colgate University in upstate New York where he earned a B.A. in Political Science. Currently he is the Leadership Development Coordinator at Rainier Scholars, where he works with 6th-12th grade students. The mission of Rainier Scholars is to cultivate the academic potential and leadership skills of hardworking, underrepresented students of color. By creating access to transformative educational and career opportunities and providing comprehensive support to scholars and families, they increase college graduation rates and empower new generations of leaders. His job is to focus on facilitating Leadership Development workshops to scholars and families during their middle school and high school years. Ensuring they are prepared to be ethical leaders and community members on their path towards college graduation and beyond.

Kelabe lives in Columbia City. In his free time, he enjoys film photography, plays soccer regularly, and loves a good road trip. On weekends he enjoys eating take-out from his favorite local restaurants when he isn’t cooking for friends and family.

Nick Whipple has worked as a public sector urban planner in the Puget Sound region for over a decade, gaining invaluable experience navigating complex urban issues. As a planner in Bellevue, his work includes engaging with a diverse community of stakeholders, advising elected and appointed officials on land use and housing policy, and overseeing a team of planners responsible for developing land use and zoning regulations to advance the implementation of the City’s Comprehensive Plan, Affordable Housing Strategy, and other planning initiatives. During the yearly state legislative session, he has served as a liaison for his department, which involved collaborating on various housing, land use, and transportation bills.

Looking to the planning commission, Nick is excited to utilize his expertise and help shape a future for Seattle that reflects the needs and aspirations of our diverse and growing population. He believes in broadening pathways to our region’s prosperity, centering underrepresented communities in planning, and striving towards a city where all residents can experience a diverse and healthy neighborhood and actively participate in charting their future.

Nick is a proud resident of North Delridge, where he lives with his wife and daughter. He enjoys cycling to Bellevue for work and exploring Seattle’s neighborhoods with his toddler by bus, light rail, streetcar, and water taxi.