Biography

Through her planning and design efforts with Concordia, Ms. Hill works with communities to help them realize their potential through consensus building and collaboration. She is committed to public scholarship by helping communities become healthy civil societies that are interconnected – not homogeneous – but integrated.

To expand on her knowledge of community planning, Bobbie has participated in a Women’s Leadership Journey in South Africa led by internationally known author and leadership development consultant, Margaret Wheatley. Wheatley writes about radically new practices and ideas for organizing in chaotic times. Bobbie’s learning and experiences on this trip and subsequent learning journeys have greatly informed Concordia’s ongoing participatory planning and design work in New Orleans post Katrina and other urban and rural communities.

Bobbie’s project experience includes managing community engagement for the Unified New Orleans Planning project during which she provided coordination and oversight services for the city-wide New Orleans recovery plan. Additionally, she has led process design for the LASAFE National Disaster Resilience Competition grant awarded to the State of Louisiana by HUD.

Other project work has taken her to the Waianae Coast of Ohau, HI; inner city neighborhoods of Philadelphia; the school district of Camden, NJ; Los Angeles and Oakland, CA; rural Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin; among many other places. While this work provided engagement, leadership, capacity building, and planning for these cities, our work there has taught us so much about the richness and resiliency of our people and our communities.

Bobbie recently presented at the Impact Alpha Conference at Stanford University to discuss the benefit of crowd-co design through robust community engagement. She also participated in research to study Public Participation Law and Policy conducted by the Kettering Foundation.

Bobbie is the oldest of 7, born in New Orleans and grew up in Central Louisiana. After graduation from Tulane University, she was part of a group that bought land in West Virginia in the mid 70’s. As present, 15 family households collectively own over 900 acres of beautiful woodsy land in the hills of WV. This is where her roots of community building are planted and continue to be at the core of her passion and commitment to making the world a better place.