BETH DUFEK

ARCHITECT &  CIVIC ENGAGEMENT SPECIALIST

Beth’s 25-year career has been dedicated to the health, complexity, and vitality of cities. She led strategic planning and business development with BDS Planning & Urban Design and managed multi-million dollar public-private community development programs. Prior to community development, Beth was a non-registered architect focused on projects that promote local stability and prosperity. After a gap year to enhance her global perspective, she started Individual B, an independent consulting firm that encourages organizations focused on the built environment to cultivate relationships and build a communications database to achieve growth goals. Clients include architecture, planning, and landscape architecture firms and neighborhood-focused organizations.

Beth moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Seattle in 2011 to lead the Only In Seattle initiative for Impact Capital in partnership with Seattle’s Office of Economic Development. She carried out her vision for Only In Seattle, growing it into a comprehensive method for building neighborhood-level leadership capacity where meaningful relationships and coordinated resources improve outcomes for the neighborhood as well as the individual. She led Seattle’s Lake City neighborhood in receiving a Wells Fargo Foundation planning grant to identify gaps in and reduce barriers to economic opportunity, affordable housing, education, healthcare, food, public space, and each other.

After receiving an Urban Land Institute (ULI) Center for Leadership certificate, she joined ULI’s Center for Leadership planning task force to ensure Seattle’s land use leaders are culturally competent and aware of existing leadership structures in neighborhoods when writing policy and developing real estate in communities at risk of displacement.

In 2011 Beth was named one of the Milwaukee Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 for her deep commitment to civic engagement and natural ability to build trust with communities, public officials, and funders, improving Milwaukee’s urban quality of life.

Beth has served on committees and task forces moving the needle forward in neighborhood revitalization, including urban agriculture, neighborhood safety, sustainability, small business assistance, and distressed commercial districts. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Architectural Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering and studied abroad in the Czech Republic.

Beth lives in Vancouver, Washington, surrounded by the beauty of the Columbia River Valley.