Amber Hawkes is Principal and Co-Director of HERE, an interdisciplinary urban design and planning practice. She is also Co-Director of PebbleXR, a new mobile app that uses Augmented Reality to help engage communities around urban planning and mobility topics.  Amber leads a diverse portfolio of precedent-setting projects – from large-scale open space concept planning and streetscape design, to strategic planning surrounding first mile / last mile and new mobility solutions. Amber uses out-of-the-box strategies to design and test urban improvements, including “tactical urbanism,” pilot projects, and arts-filled pop-ups. Amber has led vision and master planning projects for cities and clients throughout the US, for example in Hawaii, Texas, and California, always with a focus on creative problem solving and community engagement through in-the-field training, walk and bike audits, consensus-building, and design charrettes. For over a decade, Amber was an instructor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs in the Graduate School of Urban Planning, and she speaks at conferences, forums, and universities about urban design-related topics.