Toni L. Griffin Appointed Adjunct Associate Professor of Urban Planning
Toni L. Griffin has been appointed Adjunct Associate Professor of Urban Planning, effective 1 July 2009. She held the position of Design Critic in Urban Planning from 2006 to 2009, during which time she taught lecture and studio courses.
Griffin has built an impressive twenty-year career in both the public and private sectors, combining the practice of architecture, urban design, and planning with the execution of innovative, large-scale, mixed-use urban redevelopment projects, and citywide and neighborhood planning strategies. In June 2007, Griffin became Director of the Division of Planning and Community Development for the City of Newark, New Jersey, where in just two years she has created an award-winning, professional office of comprehensive planning and urban design for the city. Prior to that she was Vice President and Director of Design for the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation in Washington, D.C., and from 2000 until 2005 she served as the Deputy Director for Revitalization Planning in the D.C. Office of Planning, where she oversaw large-scale redevelopment projects for the downtown, waterfront, and commercial corridors, and citywide neighborhood planning. Before relocating to Washington, she was Vice President for Planning and Tourism Development for the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation in New York City, involved in creating a comprehensive Heritage Tourism Initiative. Griffin began her career as an architect with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP in Chicago, where she became an Associate Partner involved in architecture and urban design projects. She received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Notre Dame and was a Loeb Fellow at the GSD. She has also been a design critic at the Illinois Institute of Technology and Catholic University.