Greetings and Salutations, Savarese here with his first blog posts since those age-old LiveJournal.com days. Why a blog? Like most of my generation (elder millennial / baby Gen-Xer / overlooked) I am anxious to share my point-of-view. While I love LinkedIn, and will often cross-post there, I am hoping to spend more time curating my ideas and generating content. Time spent on Reddit or Facebook reaches a broad network, and you can find anything there if you are willing to dig, but missives lost in a string require something more. I believe that ‘something’ is careful writing about subjects you care about. That is what I am hoping to add here – to both make public my point-of-view and hopefully to create useful, quality content.

My objectives with this blog

I promise to constantly revise and expand on what I share here based on feedback from cross-postings. I would also love to correspond by mail if anyone is feeling retro, so we can reach out we can start chatting. While I have more than 10 years’ experience as an analyst/planner/consultant, and I also have my own niche and much to learn. My mother used to say ‘Shift Happens’, and it is important to help me broaden my perspective. Recommend books and articles. Correct me on minor and major mistakes.

Much of this website shares my professional background, but it is hard to understand what an analyst/planner/consultant actually does. I would like to share my narrative quickly as many of my posts will tie back to my personal experiences, not just my professional ones. I am from a lovely Irish-Italian family that almost en masse moved from Queens, NYC to Florida (as we do).

My sister has a developmental disability which has empowered me to better understand how public policy impacts families. I was one of the over-achiever types in High School, who during the first week of Political Science college classes switched over to sociology. I had a series of mentors, whom I am anxious to discuss and celebrate in a future post, but throughout my excellent undergraduate education at New College of Florida that eventually let me to graduate study at the New School back in New York City.

My Professional Background

Over the course of my education, I had numerous opportunities to study areas of interest in a professional setting. These opportunities included positions where I practiced Community Action Research, urban policy analysis, city planning, and boots-on-the-ground operational management. After graduation, I worked at Business Improvement Districts and moved to Washington, DC. In DC, I weathered the recession as a consultant for excellent small companies throughout the Northern Virginia Area. During this time my mentor at Jacobs Engineering found me a full-time position supporting the senior federal sales team with Market Intelligence.

After talking with the Jacobs Advance Planning Director in the elevator, I joined the international planning team. As part of the planning team I worked on a series of interesting projects. This culminated in a long-term program position with Jacobs Joint Venture in Saudi Arabia. From there, I moved to our FEMA team back in the United States. It is great to be home and I am looking forward to the next exciting opportunity.

In future posts I will discuss how these roles influenced my perspective while I became an AICP Certified Planner. Always wanting to be ahead of the curve, I am also excited about chewing on ideas that will influence what comes next and what needs to be done to make vast, incremental improvements in our spaces, places and communities.

Reach out!

Once again, welcome to my blog. If I am wrong, correct me. If we need to take ideas further, let’s do it together.