Chair Emeritus & Founder
A retired Deputy Director of Planning for Baltimore County, Maryland, she now serves as Chair of the US Africa Collaborative, where she guides a global brain trust advancing equity, innovation, and sustainability in housing and human settlements.
With deep roots in community development and international policy, Elizabeth is revered for her ability to convene diverse stakeholders—governments, grassroots organizations, educators, creatives, and investors—around shared solutions.
Whether leading the Pan African City Symposium, shaping G20 policy dialogues, or mentoring emerging leaders through the Women’s Leadership Forum, she brings unmatched wisdom, integrity, and clarity of vision.
Her advocacy is rooted in her ancestral legacy as a descendant of the Limba people of Sierra Leone, and her work is animated by a commitment to justice, memory, and the future. She is a poetic storyteller, a strategic planner, and a compassionate listener—equally at home in policy chambers, design studios, and village councils. She champions smart villages, circular economies, indigenous design, and women-led settlement development, believing deeply in the power of communities to build their own futures.
Elizabeth is also a beloved elder, cultural steward, and mentor to many—offering guidance with grace and fierce purpose. She embodies what it means to build across generations and geographies.
Elizabeth Scott Glenn doesn’t just build houses or programs—she builds hope, she builds legacy, and she builds the connective tissue of global community.
Elizabeth Scott Glenn is a creative, innovative, thoughtful, passionate, culturally competent, effective communicator, with a depth of experience grounded in evidence-based best practices, data analysis, strategic planning, sustainable development, affordable housing, housing and human settlement policy development, and community organizing. She is a builder of principled and ethical relationships, and her superpower is the ability to infuse love in everything that she does. She is a teacher, a lifelong learner, and an avid gardener. She brings the principles of gardening into her work by planting seeds, cultivating growth, and harvesting the fruits of her endeavors. She is a proven expert in the delivery of integrated, holistic, and responsible approaches in the delivery of programs, policies, and financial services that enhance, preserve, and stabilize communities.
Elizabeth Scott Glenn is a disruptor, an instigator, and an innovator. She is a 2025 Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award winner, a two-time winner of the Maryland Daily Record’s Top 100 Women, the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials’ Outstanding Professional of 2021 and their 2017 International Research and Global Exchange Award winner. She is currently serving on the board of directors of Homes for America and Housing And, Inc. She was recently appointed by Governor Wes Moore to serve on the Interior Design Certification Board and the Building Rehabilitation Code Advisory Council.
Elizabeth Scott Glenn served on two US Delegations to the United Nations Habitat II and III Conferences and served as a UN Policy Expert on Urban Services and Technology in the development of the New Urban Agenda, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2016.
She has given presentations on affordable housing, cultural competency, and human centered design in Australia, China, South Africa, France, and throughout the United States. She has led the organization of 3 Pan African City Symposium and Expositions and will be hosting the 2026 Pan African City Symposium and Exposition in South Africa. Elizabeth Scott Glenn has recently been appointed to the G20 Workgroup 7, on Sustainable and Resilient Communities and Disaster Risk Reduction.
Elizabeth Scott Glenn’s educational background includes a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and studies at the University of Baltimore, Virginia Polytechnical Institute, and the University of Maryland’s Global Campus. Elizabeth Scott Glenn is happily married with children, grandchildren, and a great grandson who is the apple of her eye.
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