Sarah Hayosh is the Director of Land Use and Design at Detroit Future City (DFC). In this role, Sarah leads a team focused on advancing open space land transformation in support of building thriving, resilient neighborhoods. Her work primarily supports DFC in increasing positive environmental impacts, including climate resiliency, and supporting community leaders in advancing the transformation of vacant, blighted land into productive, community open spaces. Sarah also helps strategize and conduct research and data analysis for reports and toolkits to advance issues related to open spaces and green stormwater infrastructure.

Prior to joining DFC, she was a designer and project manager at the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, where she developed landscape strategies for public spaces through community-engaged design processes. She also served as a co-founder and designer for Keep Growing Detroit. In this role, she helped steward Detroit residents toward building a food sovereign city. Additionally, Sarah served as an open space program coordinator and project manager for The Greening of Detroit, where she led a pilot program that supported the maintenance and recreational programming of three greenways and led the design and installation of greenspace projects on 160 vacant lots.

Sarah has extensive experience with community-centered processes for design, development, and management of landscape strategies, particularly around integrating green infrastructure into urban environments. She serves as an Advisory Panel member for the Detroit Land Bank Authority’s Strategic Planning Initiative and a member of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments Healthy Climate Task Force. Sarah was also previously the board vice president of the North Corktown Neighborhood Association and in her tenure there, spearheaded an initiative to support and sustain neighborhood greenspaces.

Sarah has a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree in economics and environmental studies from the University of Michigan.