The Chicago Advisory Board hearts Chicago.

The Chicago Advisory Board is a group of regular people from around Chicago who care about their neighborhoods. They have fresh ideas for making their neighborhoods better places for everyone to live.

Anna Barnes
Logan Square, Chicago
Anna Barnes has been involved broadly with the local sustainable food movement in the US for the past four years. After graduating with a BA in Anthropology from the University of Rochester, she has worked with various non-profits focusing on urban ecology, community gardens, urban land trusts, youth development and environmental education. She currently teaches teens how to live healthier lifestyles and be advocates for positive social change. As a native Chicagoan, she is proud to works towards making Chicago a just and liveable city.

Mandy Burrell
Member, National Board of Directors
Lakeview, Chicago
As a former community journalist in Chicago, Mandy has come in contact with many organizations and individuals doing work to improve their immediate neighborhoods, the city, and the region. In her current professional role, she handles media relations for a nonprofit that creates, promotes and helps communities implement balanced development policies. She’s also worked in direct services, as an outreach caseworker to troubled high school students. From one-on-one counseling and relationship-building to mass marketing, Mandy has cultivated a wide range of skills in order to help people put their passions into practice and make their neighborhoods better places, one project at a time. Mandy has a bachelor’s degree in journalism, with an adjunct major in gender studies, from Northwestern University. She serves on the Erie Neighborhood House Strategic Communications Steering Committee, and is a member of Publicity Club Chicago. She also occasionally freelances for Chicago-area publications.

Lee Crandell
Lakeview, Chicago
Lee has lived in Lakeview since 2002 and likes to advocate for walkability at community meetings. He enjoys exploring the city on foot, eating out, and managing carfreechicago.com. Lee works at the Congress for the New Urbanism as the membership and chapter coordinator. He's previously worked as communications and development associate at Illinois Action for Children, as an editor at PR Newswire and an event coordinator at the Department of Culture in Neuss, Germany. He has a BA in English from James Madison University.

Brendan Crain
President

Wicker Park, Chicago

Brendan is a recent transplant to Chicago from Milwaukee, where he earned his bachelor's degree in English in 2006 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is currently serving for a year in the Americorps*VISTA program at the Youth Job Center of Evanston, where he does "marketing and communications stuff." Brendan grew up in the suburbs -- an experience to which he had an adverse reaction that led to his long-running interest in the urban environment. He writes about urbanism and related issues regularly at his blog, Where , which he probably spends too much time on. (It is a labor of love).

Ariel Diamond
Lakeview/Uptown, Chicago
Ariel Diamond grew up in rural Vermont eating food grown in her own backyard and in a house that was both radically efficient and historically appropriate. Nurtured by this environment, she went on to earn a BA in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Policy and Economics from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. A year spent in Melbourne, Australia, motivated Ariel to work towards developing livable, sustainable urban environments in the US, with a focus on feeding cities. After moving to Chicago, she worked for the City of Chicago Department of Environment, splitting her time between the downtown offices and the Chicago Center for Green Technology. After moving to Chicago, she worked for the City of Chicago Department of Environment, in the downtown offices and the Chicago Center for Green Technology, as well as for the sustainable agriculture nonprofit The Land Connection. Wishing to keep her hands as deep in food as possible, Ariel is currently employed as a chef in a small locally-owned restaurant. She spends her time tending her worm bin, turning her compost, chatting up her neighbors, gardening, biking and cooking delicious local and organic food.

Ariel is the co-leader of the Food & Liquor Project and is responsible for organizing a cooking class featuring healthy, inexpensive meals featuring ingredients bought at local stores.

Katheryn Hayes
Member, National Board of Directors
Old Town, Chicago

Skills
Media relations
Marketing
Communications
Video production
Writing
Coalition building
Organizing
Organizational development

Education
A.B. Harvard University

Laura Lassiter
Lakeview, Chicago
Laura Lassiter lives in the northeastern area of Lakeview and has lived in many other neighborhoods throughout the city. While she grew up in the western suburbs, she feels much more at home in Chicago. She has a passion for community building and the use of public participation for impacting the surrounding environment. This was fostered through her experiences in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest Urban Studies Program in 1999. After completing her BA in sociology from Beloit College in 2000, she worked as a community organizer for the Near Northwest Neighborhood Network, where she worked to organize and create block clubs, organized the youth of the area, and worked with several schools in the Humboldt Park area. Laura then went on to work on her Master of Urban Planning and Policy at UIC. She is currently working as a planner for an urban planning firm in the northern suburbs. She is the Project Leader for an ongoing effort that will help determine the most important places and spaces in the neighborhoods throughout the city based on participation within the Neighbors Project blog.