 Currently adjunct Professor in the School of Community
and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia
in Vancouver, Dr Wendy Sarkissian is passionate about
our future: the future of work, of housing, of communities
and of citizen participation. She is committed to finding
spirited ways to nurture and support an engaged citizenry.
Her successful career as consultant and academic in Australia
and overseas has provided firsthand knowledge of many
contexts, from developers’ boardrooms to low-income
housing estates.
Qualified
as an educator, she holds a Masters of Arts in Literature,
a Master of Town Planning and a PhD in environmental
ethics.
Building a career as a social planning consultant
when there was no such discipline, she has pioneered
innovative planning and development approaches in an
astonishing variety of contexts. This work has earned
her forty professional awards. She has worked with
senior managers and advisors to government departments
and private enterprise, primarily in the urban, community,
housing and development sectors.
Much of Wendy’s work has involved working with
artists and using art and community cultural development
modalities in community engagement and staff development,
working to heal rifts in conflict-ridden communities
and organisations. She has pioneered innovative community
visioning approaches in a wide range of contexts and
this work has won her many professional awards.
Widely regarded as a leader in her profession and acclaimed
as a humorous and thought-provoking speaker, Dr Sarkissian
is a Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia and
a Member of the International Board of Global Urban Development.
She has served on Boards in South Australia and Queensland
and is the award-winning author and co-author of several
books on housing and community engagement.
Wendy Sarkissian lives in an intentional ecological
community in northern New South Wales, Australia.
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