Chicago, September 30: At a meeting on September 30, 1999, the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission named Ronald Thomas as its new executive director.

Most recently Thomas comes from Sustainable Racine, where he was founding executive director. Sustainable Racine is a non-profit organization founded by a public/private partnership of civic leadership to plan, advocate, and facilitate the creation of the greater Racine region as a model of sustainable development including neighborhoods, downtown, suburban, rural, and environmental areas. He planned, organized, and launched this two year visioning, goals setting and community action planning program.

Thomas has directed major projects in communities from large urban areas to rural towns across the U. S. such as Washington, D. C., Houston, Savannah, and Richmond. He has worked with regional planning programs in Seattle, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles. His international work includes projects in India, Africa, Egypt, and Israel.

Thomas has developed award-winning national program models for community building such as the White House Urban Policy Report, the Urban Environmental Design Program of the National League of Cities, the Mayors' Institute for City Design, the Arts Edge Program of the national Endowment for the Arts, the Design for Transportation Program for the Department of Transportation, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He has created programs as national models based on successes in local community-building and place-making projects. He has written and lectured extensively on these topics, including a recent publication for the American Planning Association on using electronic town meetings in planning.

Thomas fills a vacancy created when Phillip Peters resigned last December after 6 1/2 years as NIPC's director. During the past nine months the Commission has conducted a comprehensive nationwide search for a replacement for Peters. Thomas was selected from the nearly 90 applicants for the position.

NIPC President Herbert Schumann said that "The NIPC staff is well known for its technical expertise. We wanted a communicator that would raise the Commission's visibility in the regional community. We expect that Ron Thomas will spend a lot of his time working with our partners in regional planning in northeastern Illinois."

NIPC is the regional planning organization for the six-county Chicago metropolitan area. In addition to planning, NIPC provides technical and research assistance and reviews federal grant requests for local governments. As executive director, Thomas will be responsible to the 34 member NIPC board, most of whom are elected officials from local governments. He will oversee the Commission's $4.3 million budget and direct a 45 member staff.

Thomas, 56, lives in Racine, Wisconsin with his wife. He received a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Oklahoma in 1967 and a master's in management from Antioch University in 1995.

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