Maitreyi Roy

Senior Director of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s
Philadelphia Green program.

Maitreyi Roy serves as a Senior Director and Landscape Architect at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, overseeing its nationally recognized urban greening program, Philadelphia Green. Maitreyi co-leads the work of Philadelphia Green in utilizing horticulture to build community and improve the quality of life in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods and downtown public spaces. In this capacity, she manages and develops staff and programs that focus on the PHS’s mission to build community through horticulture.

Program areas include parks revitalization, public landscapes, community gardens, urban tree canopy restoration, vacant land management, stormwater management projects, and open space planning. Maitreyi leads these key urban greening strategies working in partnership with community-based organizations, local residents, civic organizations, the City of Philadelphia, and state and federal agencies using open space revitalization and greening as a community-building tool.

Maitreyi was selected as a 2007 Eisenhower Fellow to travel to urban centers in Spain, Germany, Belgium, France and Ireland in spring 2007 to study best practices in urban open space policies, planning standards and landscape design. On her fellowship she examined sustainable development strategies and successful open space revitalization models in older cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Berlin, Lyon, Munich and Frankfurt. The focus of her fellowship was on understanding redevelopment and transformation strategies; understanding policies, ordinances and practices to develop and maintain sustainable open space systems, best practices in stormwater management and urban reforestation; and the nature of public/private and non-profit partnerships that have emerged to support open space infrastructure in its design, planning, implementation and stewardship.

Maitreyi also worked with the City of Boston's Parks and Recreation Department from 1988 to 1993, to plan and implement a citywide capital investment initiative focusing on revitalizing and restoring neighborhood parks across the city.

Throughout her career, Maitreyi Roy has been instrumental in the creation and preservation of green space and in the field of community-based design as a landscape architect for about 20 years. Starting as an architect in India, her interest in open space issues took her to the School of Design at Harvard University where she graduated with a Masters in Landscape Architecture in 1988.

FOR PRESS INFORMATION, CONTACT:
ALAN JAFFE, email or call 215-988-8833
LAURA BEITMAN, email or call 215-988-8836