Brittney Drakeford is a believer in FATE – the practice of combining faith, arts, and technology to energize communities to create equitable places for generations today and tomorrow. She is a current PhD student in the Urban and Regional Planning and Design Program at the University of Maryland College Park; an alumna of Wake Forest University (M.S. in Management 2011) and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (B.A. in African American Studies and B.S. in Journalism and Mass Communications 2009).
Her research and practice centers on the legacies of post-reconstruction African American communities; the ways in which the built environment and public infrastructure hold the memories of discrimination; and how the intangible cultural heritage of the marginalized can be leveraged to establish shared leadership and collective action. Drakeford is currently working on an archival content-analysis of flooding occurrences in North Brentwood, Maryland, the first African American incorporated community in Prince George’s.
Drakeford is a sixth-generation native of Prince George’s County, where she currently works for the County’s Planning Department as a Senior Planner, working on the Department’s effort to comprehensively update the County’s land-use regulations to support sustainable development and inclusive resident participation. Drakeford is a 2017 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leader; a 2019 cohort member of the William Averette Anderson Fund Fellowship; a Senior Fellow for the Environmental Leadership Program, and a Master Watershed Steward.