Sara C. Bronin is a Mexican-American architect, attorney, George Washington University professor, and changemaker whose interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places. She wrote Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World, and she founded and leads the National Zoning Atlas and the National Preservation Atlas, which illuminate land-use rules that influence our economy, society, health, and happiness. She also served in a Presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed role, chairing the federal historic preservation agency.

Bronin chaired the planning and zoning commission of Connecticut’s capital city for seven years, leading its nationally recognized efforts to overhaul its zoning code and to adopt a new decennial city plan. In that role, she also spearheaded the city’s first climate action plan and helped create a City Sustainability Office. In 2020, she founded DesegregateCT, a pro-homes grassroots coalition that successfully advanced the first major statewide zoning reforms in several decades. 

Bronin was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by unanimous consent of the U.S. Senate in 2022 to serve as the 12th Chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the independent federal agency charged with preserving the country’s historic places.

Bronin was also appointed by President Biden to serve as a Trustee of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. 

Sara holds a J.D. from Yale (Harry S Truman Scholarship), M.Sc. from the University of Oxford (Rhodes Scholarship), and B.Architecture and B.A. in Plan II from the University of Texas. A seventh-generation Texan, Sara is a native Houstonian.

This event is co-sponsored by the Corcoran Center for Real Estate and Urban Action.