Roberta Fennessy

Roberta Fennessy is a multi-faceted architect and urban planner with strong strategic and project management skills. Her in-depth knowledge of land use laws, zoning regulations, and approvals processes has made her a key figure in navigating projects and clients through various levels of agency and governmental approvals.

She has worked in local government as well as for world-renowned architecture firms as a development and planning consultant whose core experience comprises large‐ scale, mixed-use, urban redevelopment projects in markets such as New York City; Newark, New Jersey; Denver, Colorado; and the Central Florida Region.

While at SOM-NY, she worked on Columbia University’s Manhattanville Campus Plan in West Harlem – successfully navigating the project and client through approvals for the rezoning of 37 acres on Manhattan’s west side.

Roberta holds an M.S. in Urban Planning from Columbia GSAPP and has been an adjunct faculty member since 2013. She is a full-time faculty member at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where she resides with her family. She has been a guest critic at Rollins College and the University of Florida. She presently teaches both graduate and undergraduate planning courses and chairs the UCF Distinguished Lecture Series in Urban and Regional Planning.