Will Allen
Project Director
Will is serving as a Project Director for LegacyWorks Group with a focus on enterprise planning efforts for Sentinel Landscapes, the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative, and the Zion National Park Regional Recreation Initiative.
Will is a seasoned professional with more than 25 years of experience in data analysis, land suitability assessment, conservation planning, environmental stewardship, structured decision making, and climate solutions. Will served as the lead project manager, co-author, and/or lead geospatial analyst for well over three dozen strategic conservation plans across the United States, including the Upper Neuse Clean Water Initiative Conservation Strategy 2015-2045, Southeast Cook County Illinois Land Acquisition Plan, the Nashville: Naturally Open Space Plan, the Forests for Indy Urban Forest Protection Plan, and the Los Angeles County Expanded Emerald Necklace Forest to Ocean Vision Plan. He recently served as the Senior Vice President of Strategic Giving & Conservation Services at The Conservation Fund in Chapel Hill, NC and formerly served as the Fund’s director of enterprise geospatial services and as an instructor for green infrastructure and conservation GIS training courses at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV.
Will is the co-author with Dr. Kent Messer of the Cambridge University Press book The Science of Strategic Conservation: Protecting More with Less. He served as co-editor-in-chief and managing editor of the Journal of Conservation Planning from 2005-2017, was a co-founder of the Society for Conservation GIS, and has published in the peer reviewed journals Landscape & Urban Planning, Ecological Informatics, Environmental Practice, Ecological Economics, BIOECON, Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, and the Journal of Soil & Water Conservation. Will and his team have received planning and mapping awards from Esri, multiple American Planning Association chapters, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the Friends of the Chicago River. Will holds a B.A. in Urban Studies from Stanford University and a Masters in Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
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