The Village Project is a non profit organization with a small, working board of directors.

Please feel free to e-mail any of us if you have any questions or would like more information.

Sarah Bruce (Board Chair) received a graduate degree in City and Regional Planning from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2004. She also has a BA from UNC-Chapel Hill in Interdisciplinary Studies: Environmental Aesthetics, a self-developed curriculum focusing on the interrelationship of culture and ecology. Sarah is Executive Director of the Upper Neuse River Basin Association (www.unrba.org). She has held numerous volunteer positions locally, including intern with the Environmental Advisory Board of Carrboro; and secretary, political chair, newsletter editor, and chair of the Orange-Chatham Group Sierra Club. Sarah specializes in hazard mitigation planning, environmental policy, and watershed management.

James Carnahan (Board Vice Chair) majored in Architecture (and minored in Art History) at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1960s. He served on the staff at urban designer Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti Project from 1972 to 1977. He moved to Chatham County, North Carolina in 1978 and established Matrix Design, doing architectural design and model making, designing and building furniture, cabinetry, and designing sets for theater. Prior to the Village Project his work in urban design included production of “Alternatives to Sprawl: Welcome the City,” an exhibit of transit-oriented designs for three sites in the Triangle region (1998), and “Design Scenarios for Downtown Carrboro”(1999), co-produced with Giles Blunden, Architect. He currently is Chairman of the Planning Board of the Town of Carrboro, NC.

Jennifer Rogers (Board Secretary) moved to Orange County in 2003 to work in RTP as a software engineer. Since moving to North Carolina, Jenny has become involved with the organizations that promote social equity and environmental protection. She is a graduate of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, focusing on transportation and land use. She is interested in shaping policies that promote local and global environmental protection and sustainability.

Ben Haven (Board Treasurer) is a Chapel Hill resident who has worked for several non-profit agencies both in Florida and North Carolina. He currently works for the Department of Sociology at UNC-CH and is pursuing a certificate in Nonprofit Management at Duke University. He is interested in social equity, environmental justice, and transit-oriented development. Most recently, to promote a move away from car-reliant commuting, he helped to establish Connect Carrboro, a group advocating for a seamless bus connection between Carrboro and the rest of the Triangle.

Patrick McDonough (Board Member) is a Carrboro resident employed as a Transit Service Planner for Triangle Transit Authority. In 2004, he completed a Master’s degree in Transportation and Land Use Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill. His Master’s Thesis received the 2004 Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Institute’s Young Researcher Award, given to the best research in the TDM field conducted by a scholar under the age of 30. Prior to joining the Village Project, Patrick was a member of the citizen group Forsyth Coalition for Responsible Growth in Winston-Salem, NC, and participated in the peer review process for the Transportation Research Board. His key interest is re-connecting multimodal transportation planning with land use planning in American cities and towns.

Allan Rosen (Board Member) is the Village Project’s main liason with the Orange County Comprehensive Plan Coalition. He has a BA in Economics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and did his graduate work in regional planning at UNC-Chapel Hill. Allan’s main civic interest is in affordable housing and other issues of social equity. His first job in the field was as Construction Coordinator for Greater Birmingham, AL Habitat for Humanity. He worked at Self-Help Credit Union in Durham and Passage Home Community Development Corporation, before going out on his own as a residential developer working on his first neighborhood project in Orange County.