Joel Howrani Heeres, Principal

Rooted in Detroit, Growing Resilience Everywhere

Inspired by my life here in Detroit—gardening, raising bees, biking through nature—I bring that same patient, systems-thinking approach to my consulting work.

I help organizations understand what they have, identify what they need, and build the internal capacity to plan strategically, engage meaningfully, and operate more effectively. I bring deep expertise in climate resilience and sustainability when that is central to the work — and the same rigorous methods when it is not.

Every successful gardener knows that you need to understand what the plants need and what your garden can provide and how you can help provide what’s missing. I take a similar approach with organizations to understand their assets and challenges and work with them to develop the internal capacity to address those.

A family of four posing in front of a waterfall, with mist and rocky cliffs in the background. The woman and man are standing behind two young girls, all smiling and dressed in casual outdoor clothing.

Professional

timeline

  • Led climate and sustainability work through facilitation, strategic planning, funding guidance and climate resiliency planning.

  • Established staff culture and expectations for the first office of sustainability for the City, built relationships, and developed the first Detroit sustainability strategic plan through extensive engagement, data driven analysis, and responding to the needs of Detroiters.

  • Developed and implemented the Open Data strategy for the City by working with city departments to develop better data management, sharing, and collaboration by leveraging the Portal, ArcGIS Online, and ETL tools

  • Supervised 12 individual contributors responsible for developing dashboards of daily indicators, workload planning, and scheduling company generated work. Contributed to the first Corporate Sustainability Report for the Company. Developed and implemented metrics based continuous improvement plans and a collaborative problem solving culture with service centers throughout the state using dashboards of daily Key Performance Indicators.

  • Lead Sustainability and Climate Action Planning Processes in 10 communities in Southeast Michigan over 3 years, including community engagement, metrics development, and strategic planning. Organized and managed development of the Detroit Environmental Agenda.

Certification

American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP)

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

Certified Data Management Professional

LEED AP

Certifications

Organization

American Planning Association

Project Management Institute

American Society for Quality

DAMA

Green Building Certification Institute

Year

2025

2016

2017

2014

2012

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