Board Member Feature: Lindsay Brugger

We were proud to see our own board member, Lindsay Brugger, take the stage at The Vision is Yours conference last month, moderating Water Shapes Place: Creative, Community-Led Resillience.

She spoke alongside NDC’s Jenny Smeltzer, Town Administrator for Edmonston, Rod Barnes and the Mayor of Mount Rainier, Celina Benitez.

As former VP of Urban Resilience at the Urban Land Institute, Lindsay brought a national lens to one of our most local priorities: building communities that are designed to withstand and adapt to climate change. Her work has spanned everything from cloudburst infrastructure to resilient retrofits to creating thriving, climate ready places - and she brings all of it to NDC’s table.

It’s national work (and increasingly, global work), but Lindsay has always had a sharp eye for how big-picture thinking translates to real, on-the-ground change.

Lindsay came to the Neighborhood Design Center board because she saw a clear alignment between her resilience work and NDC’s environmental and community design programming.

She’s been true to that mission. Lindsay served on NDC’s Strategic Planning ad hoc committee when the organization first launched its Theory of Change process - something she was passionate about because she believes deeply in the power of organizational storytelling. “I don’t want it to be some big secret,” she said of the Neighborhood Design Center’s impact. “There’s so much good work.”

Throughout her career, she’s seen how stories that start small can scale — and she sees NDC as exactly that kind of catalyst.

We’re grateful to Lindsay’s service over the last 6 years.

As she steps into an exciting new chapter as Director of Public Policy at IBHS, we wish her all the best on this next venture. We know she’ll bring that same passion for resilience and community to everything ahead.