Ariel H. Bierbaum is the Program and Operations Director at the Center for Cities & Schools. Ariel serves as liaison to key national, regional, and local government agencies; school district; and university partners. At CC&S, she oversees the graduate student fellows program for the PLUS (Planning and Learning United for Systems-change) Leadership Initiative, working with 6 cities and their school districts in the inner Bay Area on a range of collaborative projects. Ariel works on CC&S' research efforts with regional partners, local city agencies and districts, and the California Department of Education on issues of school siting, cross-jurisdictional collaboration, and other educational impacts of regional and local planning policies. She also coordinates the Youth, Schools, and Planning Initiative, which examines expanding stakeholder participation in public planning practice to include youth, families, and schools. Ariel brings over eight years of academic and professional experience in city and regional planning, city government, strategic planning and communications, community engagement, and university-community relations. Ariel holds a Master in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.