Joyce Pan Huang, the City of Cleveland's planning director who helmed the backbone of the Bibb administration's recent slate of projects aimed at modernizing the city, will be leaving by the end of the year for a new job as Chief Impact Officer for the Cleveland Foundation.
A city spokesperson confirmed the news on Wednesday, which was first reported by Crain's Cleveland.
According to the Foundation, Huang's hiring is a part of the nonprofit's goal of rethinking community philanthropy as it applies to city building.
Huang's progressive planning philosophy, which rested heavily on promoting contemporary zoning and transit-friendly policies in Cleveland, had ushered in a suite of changes in recent years.
Huang will "will lead efforts to create a unified vision and direction that will elevate the Foundation as a trusted partner and catalyst for transformative change in Cleveland," the Cleveland Foundation wrote in a statement on Wednesday.
Huang and Cleveland Foundation CEO Lillian Kuri did not respond to requests for comment by Scene on Wednesday afternoon. A city spokesperson declined to comment on a timeline to appoint Huang's replacement.
Hired by Bibb to lead the department in early 2023, Huang oversaw many of Cleveland's big-picture projects aiming to grow its aim for walkability and connectivity, and often spoke in attentive tones about planning's overall goal of bettering city life for all parts of the social strata.
She oversaw the birth of Cleveland's first-ever waterfront development group, along with James Corner Field Operation's designs for the lakefront north of Huntington Bank Field. Huang was an outspoken advocate for pedestrianizing streets -- like Market Avenue and West 29th -- just as she was urging City Council to pass legislation for 15-minute city legislation, including Cleveland's first form-based planning code and policies backing transit-oriented development.
In an interview with Crain's, Huang said nothing about City Hall drove her choice to depart, instead pointing to Kuri and her open-eyed philosophy on how to best steer the Foundation's $2.8 billion annual endowment fund -- more specifically, it's roughly $131 million a year in grants.
"The priorities [Kuri] has put forward, they tackle these critical systemic issues that are impacting our communities," she told Crains, "everything from reversing redlining to getting our region to grow again."
Huang will start as CIO in January.
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