Principal

Heather Worthington is a principal at Urban3.  She brings 25 years of leadership experience in local government organizations, most recently as Director of Long Range Planning in Minneapolis, where her team led the creation, engagement, and policy adoption of the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan.  Heather has been a proponent of fiscal transparency and visualization of municipal finance since her work in Ramsey County, but brought Urban3 to Minneapolis to provide data visualization in conjunction with the Minneapolis 2040 Planning process, as well as to address deep historic disparities caused by redlining, zoning and land-use policies through data visualization of municipal finance and planning.

Heather was the first Deputy County Manager appointed in Ramsey County, Minnesota where she led the Economic Growth and Community Investment service team and led the restructuring of the County into Service Teams.  She led the cleanup and redevelopment of the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP), the state’s largest Superfund site; she also led the redevelopment of the former West Publishing site in downtown St. Paul.  Heather served as the City Administrator of Falcon Heights, MN and Assistant City Manager of Edina, MN, where she worked on a broad range of policy issues including economic development, human resources, and organizational development.  As Adjunct Faculty in the Hamline University School of Business, she teaches in the Center for Public Administration and Leadership program and also teaches Administrative Law in the Masters in Public Administration program.  Heather is past-president of the Minnesota City/County Management Association, and was one of the first Credentialled City Managers in the state.

Heather is committed to seeking authentic community engagement and leading efforts to strengthen communities that are experiencing change related to population shifts, racial disparities, displacement and disinvestment.   She holds a master’s degree in public administration from Hamline University, a BA in History/Historic Preservation from Michigan State University, and attended the State and Local Executives Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government on the ICMA Scholarship.