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CTAQC Staff

Ms. Grimshaw develops the Center's capacity to engage in research, conducts air quality modeling, GIS mapping, community economic development, and community involvement. She organized a Citizens' Leadership Commission charged with developing public policy consensus in support of less-polluting transportation options. Her current initiatives are: Chicagoland Transportation & Air Quality Commission; Intermodal Freight Initiative; Transit Oriented Development Projects; Pedestrian Users Groups-Walkers Win!; clean air and health initiatives; and reauthorization proposals for the national transportation legislation-TEA 21. She serves as the Chairperson of the Transportation Research Board's Environmental Justice Task Force's and the Vice President of the Congress for New Urbanism.

Ms. Grimshaw has consulted on the following projects: FHWA Task Orders-Public Involvement & Environmental Justice; NSAS/Georgia 400 Study-Atlanta, GA; Environmental Justice Guidelines- Georgia Dept. of Transportation; Northeastern Indiana Regional Planning Commission's FTA Environmental Justice Challenge grant; Plan 8 Project-St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; and the National Training Institute Public Involvement & Environmental Justice Training Course. She is also a former member of the President's Council for Sustainable Development's Energy and Transportation Task Force and Illinois Growth Task Force.

Ms. Metzger is responsible for the day-to-day operations of CTAQC, a coalition of over 190 organizations and municipalities dedicated to improving transportation/land use planning in the northeastern Illinois region. Ms. Metzger directed the development of Changing Direction: Transportation Choices for 2030, the new plan reflecting public priorities in transportation investment as of 2002. The plan is based on an extensive public outreach process, the Connecting Communities, developed and managed by Ms. Metzger.

Ms. Metzger has overseen development of, edited or co-authored several other publications including: Developing Stories: Homegrown Innovations on Growth; Regional Reports and Plans for Northeastern Illinois - 1992 to Present; The Key to Better Living: A 12-Step Program to Reduce Car Dependency; summit reports, caucus reports and monographs for CTAQC's Connecting Communities public outreach project.

Before joining the CTAQC team in 2002, Ben Helphand was a Visiting Scholar at the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, received his Masters of Arts at the University of Chicago Divinity School in History of Religion and obtained a B.A. from Wesleyan University in Religion. He has worked on Barack Obama's 2004 Senator campaign and is a founding board member of the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail. His past media experience includes: inthefray.com, WNUR 89.3 FM, Troika Magazine and The Aspen Times. His interest focuses on making Chicago more pedestrian-friendly.

Zoe Heller joins the CTAQC team in 2006 following an internship at the Center for Neighborhood Technology where she worked on Economic Development through transit-oriented and cargo-oriented development. She has also worked on a number of different Geographic Information Systems (GIS) projects for the Center. She received her Masters of Public Administration and certification in GIS from Roosevelt University in Chicago and received her B.A. in Environmental Policy from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL.