CDD Leadership Announcement – Iram Farooq leaving the City to take position as Managing Director of Campus Planning at Harvard University
Dec 11, 2024 – Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang sent out the following announcement today:
Dear all,
I wanted to let you all know that after twenty-five years of dedicated service, Iram Farooq, our beloved Assistant City Manager of Community Development, is leaving the City to join a well-known local organization in our community as the Managing Director of Campus Planning at Harvard University.
I’m filled with a lot of emotions: gratitude for all that Iram has contributed, sadness that she will no longer be a colleague, excitement for her new adventure, and appreciation that she will remain very much a part of the Cambridge community.
Iram has been a key leader and voice in so much of the incredible growth, development, and transformation in Cambridge over the last decades. She shaped the creation of Kendall Square, Cambridge Crossing, and Alewife, where we now see vibrant mixed-use communities and thousands of new homes. She has been a leader of our climate work on green buildings and green zoning, the development of the Net Zero Action Plan, the passage of BEUDO 1.0 in 2015 and 2.0 in 2023, and creation of our Resilient Cambridge roadmap. She guided the creation of the Affordable Housing Overlay 1.0 and 2.0, and she is now coordinating the policy development of Multi-Family Housing. And if that’s not enough, she has also overseen our investments in small businesses, our recent work on Supplier Diversity, planning for our transportation future, reimagining our open spaces, and much more.
Through all of this work, Iram has partnered with stakeholders across the City, creating space for honest and difficult conversations, worked closely with the City Council on the details of policy and the challenges of hard negotiations, and made investments in Community Development to make it a stronger, efficient, and inclusive department. Iram is leaving an amazing legacy across our community and within the City. Her last day in the office will be January 24.
Melissa Peters, who is currently our Chief of Planning Strategy, will serve as Acting Assistant City Manager of Community Development while we conduct a search in the new year. Melissa has been with the City for the last ten years and has led some of our largest planning initiatives including Envision Cambridge and the re-zoning of the Alewife Quadrangle. I’m grateful for her leadership during this transition period.
I want to thank Iram for her leadership and partnership over the past two and half years, and we will have the opportunity to gather and celebrate Iram’s achievements in the coming month. I hope you will join me in congratulating Iram on her new role and thanking her for her many contributions!
Thank you all,
Yi-An