Donovan Finn joined LEAM in the spring of 2004 where his work focuses on the practical applications and uses of LEAM for planners and community stakeholders. He has worked to illustrate how communities can continue to grow while conserving scarce resources through the use of sustainable planning techniques, including a multidisciplinary studio course that applied these techniques to a site in the St. Louis Metro East region. He is currently involved with the LEAM Legacy Planning project [http://www.leam.uiuc.edu/legacy], developing a system for using existing community plans in conjunction with LEAM. His research interests include sustainability, community planning and urban geography and theory.

Donovan has a Masters Degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois (along with a few transfer credits from the Department of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College [http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/urban/] in New York City) and a Bachelors degree in English from the University of Kansas [http://www.ku.edu/]. His previous career was as a project manager in the entertainment industry and he has also published magazine articles on themes including architecture, music and culture.

In his free time, Donovan is active in Planners Network and enjoys cooking, carpentry, traveling and drinking way too much coffee.