Anita Hairston   Chief of Staff  Anita M. Hairston, AICP, has served as the chief of staff at the Washington DC Office of Planning since 2007. At OP she leads the agency’s external operations in the areas of legislative coordination and media/communications, as well as its internal operations relating to strategic planning and human resource development.  She has also managed several interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder projects, including the Potomac Park Levee Improvement Project, the DC Base Realignment and Closure Impact Study and OP’s Healthy by Design Initiative.  Anita also manages the agency’s activities related to a partnership between OP and the National Building Museum for the CityVision program.  Anita has been with the OP since 2003, first as a comprehensive plan coordinator and then as the Ward 4 neighborhood planning coordinator. Prior to joining OP, she served as a planning consultant in California on general plan, community participation, and environmental review projects throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, which included a regional planning project for 9 counties in northern California - an effort recognized with an award in 2003 from the Congress for New Urbanism.  Anita is a frequent speaker at the American Planning Association’s national conferences and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP).  She holds a master's degree in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley.