Allison DeJong, AICP is a planner for the Water Institute of the Gulf, where she supports people and communities adapting to climate change using frameworks and approaches from urban planning and economics. She has over ten years of experience in planning and policy advocacy, working across disciplines to achieve material gains for coastal residents, businesses, and communities.

DeJong joined the Institute after three years as Senior Water Manager for Propeller in New Orleans, where she worked with small businesses in the coastal and storm water sectors to define their market opportunities, increase revenue and contracts, and grow their social and environmental impact. Prior to that role, she spent nearly six years as a planner at GCR, Inc., in New Orleans, where she was a key member of the community resilience team that worked with states and municipalities to secure $240 million in funding from HUD’s National Disaster Resilience Competition. She developed benefit-cost analyses for those proposals and created analyses of demographic and labor statistics for a wide range of plans and studies, including public transit, economic development, and small area plans. She also co-authored and developed facilitation plans for the City of New Orleans’ first-ever economic development strategy, ProsperityNOLA. She began her career in New Orleans supporting nonprofits with database management and policy advocacy work in food systems.

DeJong holds a bachelor’s in economics from University of Notre Dame and a master’s in business administration from Louisiana State University. She is certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners.