Julie Donofrio

Julie Donofrio is an urban planner and designer with experience developing plans and policies at a variety of scales, and specializes in developing equitable processes for community engagement. She has been responsible for leading planning projects ranging in scale from regional and city plans, to public space and parks planning, using humanistic, qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques. Throughout her work, she is committed to the equitable transformation of practice and place through thoughtful collaborations, purposeful, and sustained community partnerships, and overcoming systemic inequities through wealth building and leadership development.

Currently, Julie is a Planning Associate and the Co-coordinator of OLIN Labs at OLIN in Philadelphia, where she leads planning projects and research initiatives focused on equitable community development, decarbonization and climate action.  Prior to OLIN, Julie served as the Managing Director of PennPraxis for seven years, and was a member of the multidisciplinary planning and design firm WRT in both Philadelphia and San Francisco. 

In addition to teaching in the Department of Historic Preservation at Weitzman, Julie was a faculty member in the Department of City and Regional Planning, where she taught and coordinated Planning Workshop/ Studio for eight years, and co-developed and taught the first course solely dedicated to community engagement, Social Impact in Practice.

Selected Work

Humanities in Action: A National Perspective (2021)

Infill Philadelphia: Sacred Places/ Civic Spaces (2019)

Penn’s Landing Civic Engagement Project (2019)

Civic Infrastructure Research and Summit (2018)

Neighborhood Preservation Toolkit (2018)

Pennovation Historic Resource and Interpretation Strategy (2017)