Ramona Mullahey

Ramona Mullahey didn’t set out to become a planner. After earning a master’s degree in political science and briefly considering law, she found herself at a crossroads. Returning to graduate school, she explored both architecture and planning. While she was drawn to the technical intricacies of buildings, it was planning that felt instinctive. “It was like breathing,” she recalls. It was a sensation that ultimately defined her career path.

From the start, Mullahey was less interested in planning’s technical aspects and more focused on its human dimension. Early work in Kona, Hawai‘i, crystallized this approach. Helping to organize a large public forum around a proposed regional plan, she ensured residents understood how it would shape their future. The result was farmers, when made aware of proposed changes to their land, were able to clearly communicate their displeasure and demand a re-designation. The experience reinforced her belief that planning is most powerful when it centers community voice.

That principle has guided a career that focuses on planning with communities, not for. Her experience spans consulting, nonprofit leadership, and federal service. Mullahey shifted from private consulting to founding and leading educational initiatives that broadened public understanding of planning. She helped bring youth voices into national conversations and co-authored Youth Participation in Community Planning (PAS Report 496), a resource that continues to inform the field decades later.

For 10 years, she developed NEA educational grant projects and partnered with University of Hawaii to provide diverse programs to empower the average citizen and emerging professionals on decision-making and participation techniques that could transform their communities e. This also included working with a large landowner developing a ‘Second City’ to create curriculum for area Middle School teachers so children and their families understood the dynamics of planning and developing new communities’ whole cloth.’

In 1998, she joined the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, helping the Community Builders Fellowship come to fruition in Hawai‘i. Then, together with her first recruit class cohorts established it nationwide. The role expanded her reach, allowing her to work directly with communities across the country, translating local priorities into tangible strategies and actions.

Mullahey has consistently pushed to widen participation in planning, from youth to older adults. She helped lead the development of APA’s Policy Guide on “Aging in Community”. Her work on aging includes contributing to national policy guidance and helping Honolulu become part of AARP’s Age-Friendly network. At the local level, she has piloted initiatives addressing food access, healthcare, and quality of life for seniors, often through small, community-based interventions with immediate impact.

Her interests have also extended to climate resilience. She played a role in catalyzing the Center for Resilient Neighborhoods in Hawai‘i, supporting community-driven approaches to resilience on O‘ahu.

Ramona's training and education includes:

• University of Hawaii at Manoa -  Master of Urban & Regional Planning( (1976)

• HUD Community Builder Fellowship (1998) w/ HUD Community Builders Executive Education Training Program from Kennedy School of Government