Wanda Mills-Bocachica

Project Manager - Wanda Mills-Bocachica joined the Sonoran Institute in January 2015. She is a Project Manager for the Sonoran Institute’s Sun Corridor Legacy Program based in the Phoenix office. With backgrounds in urban planning and architecture, Wanda enthusiastically lived, worked, and studied in the Phoenix metropolitan region during the mid to late 1980s, a pivotal period in the Valley’s development history. She pursued graduate studies in Environmental Planning at ASU and later a Master of Urban Planning degree from the University of Puerto Rico. She was honored with the “1995 Urban Planning Student of the Year” award for her research and advocacy work on behalf of two ecological communities that are also renowned places of memory in Ponce and Loiza, Puerto Rico. Both award winning projects were implemented by the Government of Puerto Rico. While at UPR, she also observed the closing of the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Naguabo, Puerto Rico (1995) and later the closing of the eminent HOVENSA oil refinery in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands (2012). After receiving a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Policy Development from Rutgers University, she received a most rigorous immersion in “real world practice” as a policy maker and independent consultant. She returns returned to Arizona with a renewed zeal to “make sustainable communities (and economies) happen!”