PEER EXCHANGE: Jobs & Community Resilience:

Moving from Planning to Action HUD Sustainable Communities Initiative

October 23-24 2014

Grantees

Baltimore, Maryland

Omaha, Nebraska

Fremont County, Idaho

San Francisco Bay Area, California

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Jobs & Community Resilience: Moving From Planning To Action

A HUD Sustainable Communities Grantee Convening

DRAFT AGENDA October 23 -24, 2014

The California Endowment (TCE) Greater Bay Area Regional Office 1111 Broadway, 7th Floor – Eastmont Room

Oakland, CA 94607 BONUS OPPORTUNITY: Wednesday, October 22* If you are a Bay Area resident or arrive before Wednesday afternoon, you are invited to attend a rousing keynote by Angela Glover Blackwell, Founding CEO of PolicyLink, about the importance equity in economic growth and development. The official release of the National Equity Atlas will immediately follow. 3:00 pm Keynote Address Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and CEO, PolicyLink Jennifer Tran, Senior Associate, Policy Link

Location: The California Endowment Conference Center, Laurel Room Thursday, October 23, 2014 8:30 am Registration & Continental Breakfast 9:00 am Welcome from CBI Implementation Team

Agenda review and context setting

9:30 –11:00am LIVE STREAM: Opening Session Good Jobs & Resilient Communities: New Approaches, New Opportunities, New Partners Moderator: Dwayne Marsh, Senior Advisor, HUD Office of Economic Resilience

• Dr. Sandra Witt, Director, Healthy Communities North, The California Endowment

• Virginia Hamilton, Regional Administrator, US Department of Labor, Region VI

• Martha Hernandez, Managing Director, Talent Management Initiative, The Good Jobs Fund/ICA Advisors

• Jack Madans, Government Partnerships, Code for America 11:00 – 11:15 am BREAK 11:15 – 12:15 pm LIVE STREAM: Baltimore & Bay Area Share Accomplishments & Lessons

• Lyn Farrow Collins and Team (The Opportunity Collaborative, Baltimore Metropolitan Council) Workforce Development Plan

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• Egon Terplan (SPUR) and Kirsten Spalding (San Mateo Union Community Alliance) Bay Area Economic Prosperity Strategy

12:15 pm Around the Room Introductions 12:30 pm LUNCH

Lunch provided by La Cocina, a San Francisco-based social enterprise offering incubator and support services to low-income food-based entrepreneurs. lacocinasf.org

1:30 – 3:15 pm Sharing Local Wisdom Breakout sessions with local and regional experts

Grantees will have access to national and regional experts in workforce development to ask specific questions and share ideas in a fast-paced conversational format (20 mins each group, followed by whole-group debrief). *Note: Subject to change based on interest/energy of the group.

• Transit-Oriented Development: Maximizing the Economic and Social Impact of Investment in Transit Infrastructure Elizabeth Wampler, Great Communities Collaborative, San Francisco Foundation

• Using Data to Promote Equity in Economic and Workforce Development Planning Victor Rubin, Vice President for Research, Policy Link

• Career Paths for Low Income Workers (focusing on Tech jobs across sectors) Luther Jackson, Workforce Development Manager/Labor Market Intelligence, NOVA

• Strategies for Creating Quality Jobs and Improving Career Mobility for Low and Moderate Income People and Families Kirsten Spalding, San Mateo County Union Community Alliance and key partner in the development of the Bay Area Economic Prosperity Strategy.

3:15 – 3:45 pm BREAK (Walk outside if weather permits) 3:45 – 4:45 pm Team Time: Reflection, Moving to Action Grantees will work in teams or cohort small groups focused on key questions:

• What did we hear that we can learn from or would like to pursue? • What are the first steps we should take? • Who should take them?

4:45 – 5:00 pm Wrap-Up, instructions for Friday morning 6:30 pm Group Dinner, TBA

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Friday, October 24, 2014 8:30 am Coffee/Gathering *Note: We will leave TCE approximately 9:00am 9:30-11:30 am Field Trip to Impact Hub! 2323 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94612 (510) 858-2323 Hosts: Lisa Chacon, Co-Director/CFO/PhD Chemist & Jean Russell,

Author/COO, Leola Group/Facilitator, Entrepreneur Guest appearances by select Impact Hub social business leaders,

changemakers, and enterprises. 12:00 – 1:30 pm (WORKING) LUNCH (TCE Conference Center) Debrief: What was learned? Action Planning: Team-based Action Planning Updates Reflections: Dwayne Marsh *Note: We will leave TCE approximately 1:30pm 2:00 pm Field Trip! Reinventing Local Manufacturing at The Crucible 1260 7th St, Oakland, CA 94607 (510) 444-0919 Host: Carla Hall, Youth Program Director

Guest appearances by Crucible entrepreneurs and artists. 3:00 pm BREAK & Return to TCE 3:15 – 3:45 pm Final Report Out & Closing Jobs & Community Resilience: Moving from Planning to Action is hosted by the Social Policy Research

Associates, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Strategic Economics, Inc.

Thank you to The California Endowment for hosting this event.

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WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS AND SESSION SPEAKERS

Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, started PolicyLink in 1999 and continues to drive its mission of advancing economic and social equity. Prior to founding PolicyLink, Angela served as senior vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation. A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Oakland (CA) Urban Strategies Council. In 2013, Angela and PolicyLink collaborated with the Center for American Progress to write and release All In Nation: An America that Works for All.

Lyn Farrow Collins is the Project Manager for The Opportunity Collaborative, an initiative of Baltimore Metropolitan Council. The Collaborative is a 25 member consortium that will write a 20 year Regional Plan for Sustainable Development. Previously, Lyn served as the Grants Coordinator for the City of Annapolis, where she managed the City’s Community Grants program and worked to ensure that all grants to the City were implemented effectively. Lyn is a graduate of Widener University and holds a Master of Science in Business from Johns Hopkins University.

Catherine Cox Blair is a Senior Advisor with NRDC’s Urban Solutions program where she works to provide communities, cities and regions technical assistance and expertise with a focus on green, sustainable and resilient neighborhoods. Catherine comes to NRDC from Reconnecting America where she worked with a diversity of partners in cities and regions to provide a range of tools to strengthen their role in planning and implementing sustainable communities around transit systems. Catherine launched the City of Denver’s transit-oriented development program under then Mayor Hickenlooper where she managed efforts to build the city’s capacity to leverage public investments in transit for creating sustainable communities. She has a Master’s degree in Urban and Environmental Planning from the University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Urban Affairs and Planning from Virginia Tech.

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Sasha Forbes is a Policy Advocate on the Urban Solutions team at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Sasha provides capacity building and technical assistance support to communities focusing on sustainable, equitable and green revitalization strategies. Previously she worked for Reconnecting America focusing on federal, state and local policy solutions for integrating land use, transportation, housing, and community development. She has also worked as a land use planner for a private land use firm in the South Florida region. Sasha has a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Florida.

Virginia Hamilton serves as the Regional Administrator for the Employment and Training Administration at the U.S. Department of Labor. Her office oversees the Workforce Investment Act, Job Service, Unemployment Insurance, Trade Act, and discretionary grants. Earlier in her career, Virginia ran the Job Training Partnership Program, a billion dollar federal job training program, for the Governor of the State of California. Hamilton has also spent 15 years studying, practicing and teaching facilitation and participatory methods of engaging people to talk together, reach consensus, and move to action.

Martha Hernandez leads ICA's Talent Management Initiative, which supports the continued growth of entrepreneurs and small businesses by offering tailored tools and resources that help them hire, retain and develop good people, especially those with higher barriers to employment. Martha has over 10 years of experience in strategic workforce development and human capital initiatives in the private and public sector. Martha currently serves on Chabot Community College’s Entrepreneurship Center Advisory Council. Luther Jackson, a former journalist, serves as a Labor Market Analyst with the NOVA Workforce Board in Silicon Valley. He conducts research and forges partnerships intended to help workers and employers understand and navigate a fluid economy driven by rampant technological advances and globalization. Among his most recent work is an analysis of career mobility for low-income workers in the technology sector.

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Vinz Koller is the Director of Training and Technical Assistance at Social Policy Research Associates. Mr. Koller’s expertise lies in using engaging and innovative training and collaborative design methods to advance the work of workforce agencies and collaboratives as well as their funders. He has worked on sustainable community themes throughout his career and lent his expertise to local communities, state and federal agencies as well as tribal governments.

Jack Madans’ work with CfA’s government partners ranges broadly from innovation policy and open data efforts to change management and community organizing. He cut his teeth as a community organizer early on when he founded the pilot project, FoodCycle, while studying at the London School of Economics. While interning at the White House, Jack assisted with policy production in the Office of Urban Affairs and outreach to the nation’s Mayors in the office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Jack earned a degree in Political Science from UC Berkeley.

Dwayne S. Marsh, Senior Advisor to the HUD Office of Economic Resilience (OER), works with the agency to advance sustainable planning and development through interagency partnerships, departmental transformation, and funding initiatives. He is the principal coordinator for OER grant programs and is working with the staff team to develop the capacity building resources that reinforce the work of the grantees to coordinate housing and transportation investments with local land use decisions and reduce environmental impacts to nurture healthier, more inclusive communities which provide opportunities for people of all ages, incomes, races, and ethnicities. Before working at PolicyLink, Marsh worked for eight years at The San Francisco Foundation. Dwayne recently happily celebrated his second wedding anniversary, and he and his wife are the proud parents of a 1-year old urban garden.

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Kalima Rose, Senior Director of the PolicyLink Center for Infrastructure Equity, works with diverse leadership to steer resources for transportation, housing, water, parks, and cultural amenities to communities of opportunity. She leads the organization’s sustainable communities work, helping implement regional equity, fair housing, and new infrastructure investments that strengthen economic resilience. Kalima led the organization’s Gulf Coast recovery work to shape a more equitable post-Katrina rebuilding of New Orleans and Louisiana. With three decades of economic, housing, and land-use policy expertise, she created the PolicyLink Equitable Development Toolkit, an online resource that highlights best social equity practices. Kalima has a degree in narratives and culture from the University of California, Berkeley.

Victor Rubin is Vice President for Research at PolicyLink. He has written several reports in recent years documenting the evolution of efforts across California to improve community health through a focus on the built environment, including health impact assessments, health elements in general plans, and coordination between planners and public health leaders. Previously, he was Director of the HUD Office of University Partnerships. He was formerly Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, the department where he earned his MCP (1975) and PhD (1986.)

Kirsten Spalding serves as Executive Director of the San Mateo County Union Community Alliance (SMCUCA). In addition to work with SMCUCA, Kirsten is a Director for Ceres, a non-profit that works with investors worldwide to improve corporate strategies and public policies on climate change and other environmental and social challenges across the global economy. Kirsten is also an Episcopal Priest in the Diocese of California. Prior to starting her church work and social justice consulting practice, Kirsten served as Chief Deputy Treasurer for the State of California under Treasurer Phil Angelides. She was also Director of the Treasurer’s environmental financing authorities. Kirsten holds a Bachelor of Arts from Yale College in music, a Juris Doctor from Hastings College of Law and a Masters of Divinity from Church Divinity School of the Pacific.

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Sujata Srivastava is a Principal at Strategic Economics. She specializes in economic development, real estate market analysis, and fiscal impact analysis, with a particular focus on the economics of TOD and infill development. Her recent projects include a TOD market study for the Knowledge Corridor; an economic development plan for the East San Francisco Bay Region; and a neighborhood economic revitalization strategy in New Orleans. Ms. Srivastava holds a Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.

Egon Terplan is SPUR's regional planning director. He has authored or co-authored numerous reports and policy studies related to regional planning, economic development, transportation and government reform, including the first-ever report on the Northern California megaregion and a 2011 report on land use planning and high-speed rail in California. Prior to joining SPUR, Egon spent more than five years with ICF International advising cities and regions throughout the world on economic development and competitiveness. Egon earned a Master’s degree in city and regional planning from UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. Jennifer Tran, Senior Associate, conducts research on equitable economic growth, and also contributes data and mapping analysis to many PolicyLink projects. She has a background in urban planning, regional equity, immigrant integration, environmental justice, and economic development. She works closely with the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity to develop data indicators to track equity and growth in regions. She holds a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.

is a senior planner at the Metropolitan Therese Trivedi Transportation Commission (MTC), the transportation planning, coordinating and financing agency for the San Francisco Bay Area. She manages a suite of transportation & land use programs focused on implementing regional goals and objectives to enhance livability in the Bay Area, improve the quality of development patterns & promote alternatives to auto travel. She has an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a Masters of Public Administration from San Francisco State University.

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Elizabeth Wampler is the Associate Initiative Officer of the Great Communities at the San Francisco Foundation, focusing on efforts to create equitable access to great communities near transit, including affordable housing, safe streets and sidewalks and open spaces, and good jobs. Before coming to TSFF, Elizabeth worked for Reconnecting America where she was deeply engaged in transit and TOD-focused technical assistance projects at the regional and the corridor scale in the San Francisco Bay Area, Denver, Los Angeles and Twin Cities. Prior to Reconnecting America, Elizabeth worked on the southwest side of Chicago with local nonprofits on pressing community development issues. She attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate, and received a Masters of City Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.

Sandra Witt joined The California Endowment in August 2011 as director of Healthy Communities North. Witt is responsible for advancing the vision and strategic direction as well as helping achieve established goals and outcomes. Prior to joining The Endowment, Witt served as the Deputy Director of Planning, Policy and Health Equity for the Alameda County Public Health Department. She earned Dr.PH. in Maternal and Child Health from the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

Kristin Wolff has worked in the social change space for over 15 years. She currently serves as an adjunct researcher for Social Policy Research Associates. Kristin has been applying emerging social innovation and design methods to sustainable community development and making information exchange simpler and more transparent in the government and community change sectors. Kristin makes her home in Portland, Oregon where she and her partner Robert compost, ride bikes, and drink amazing coffee.

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PEER-EXCHANGE PARTICIPANTS Katherine Bell Consultant CoLab Bay Area, California katherine@colabconsultants.com Janice Brown Special Projects Manager Western Greater Yellowstone Consortium Fremont County, Idaho jabrown@co.fremont.id.us Shonna Dorsey Managing Director Interface: The Web School Omaha, Nebraska shonna@interfaceschool.com Lorraine Giordano Initiative Officer The San Francisco Foundation Bay Area, California lgiordano@sff.org Alyson Greenlee Managing Director CoLab Bay Area, California alyson@colabconsultants.com David Harris Chair, Equity & Engagement Heartland 2050 Omaha, Nebraska davidallenharris@cox.net David Jaber Principal inNative Bay Area, California djaber@innative.net Allison Lasser Executive Director Congregations Organizing for Renewal Bay Area, California allison@corcommunity.org

David Le Program Coordinator San Pablo Economic Development Council Bay Area, California davidl@sanpabloedc.org Shelia Ann Little Supervisor Howard County Office of Workforce Development Baltimore, Maryland slittle@howardcountymd.gov Brian McDermott Director Teton Valley Business Development Center Fremont County, Idaho tetonvalleybusiness@gmail.com Vu-Bang Nguyen Program Officer Silicon Valley Community Foundation Bay Area, California vnguyen@siliconvalleycf.org Brittany Skelton Planning Administrator City of Victor Fremont County, Idaho brittanys@victorcityidaho.com Mary Sloat Assistant Director, Workforce Operations Mayor’s Office of Employment Development Baltimore, Maryland msloat@oedworks.com Therese Trivedi Senior Transportation/Land Use Planner Metropolitan Transportation Commission Bay Area, California ttrivedi@mtc.ca.gov Nancy Williams Chief Information Officer Boys and Girls Club of the Midlands Omaha, Nebraska nwilliams@bgcomaha.org

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Peter Wolcott Chair Dept. of Information Systems & Qualitative Analysis Omaha, Nebraska pwolcott@mail.unomaha.edu

Vivian Wong Program Coordinator San Pablo Economic Development Corporation Bay Area, California vivianw@sanpabloedc.org

Project Team and Experts

Project Team Catherine Cox Blair Senior Advisor, Urban Solutions Natural Resources Defense Council Denver, Colorado ccoxblair@nrdc.org Sasha Forbes Policy Advocate, Urban Solutions Natural Resources Defense Council Washington, DC sforbes@nrdc.org Vinz Koller Director of Training and Technical Assistance Social Policy Research Associates Bay Area, California vinz_koller@spra.com Sujata Srivastava Principal Strategic Economics Bay Area, California ssrivastava@strategiceconomics.com Kristin Wolff Adjunct Researcher Social Policy Research Associates Portland, Oregon kwolff@thinkers-and-doers.com

Capacity Builders Angela Glover Blackwell Founder and CEO PolicyLink ablackwell@policylink.org Lyn Farrow Collins Project Manager, The Opportunity Collaborative Baltimore Metropolitan Council Baltimore, Maryland lfcollins@baltometro.org Virginia Hamilton Regional Administrator US Department of Labor, Region VI Bay Area, California hamilton.virginia@dol.gov Martha Hernandez Managing Director Talent Management Initiative Bay Area, California martha@innercityadvisors.org Heather Hood Director of Programs, Northern California Enterprise Community Partners Bay Area, California hhood@enterprisecommunity.org Luther Jackson Labor Market Analyst NOVA Workforce Board Silicon Valley, California ljackson@novaworks.org

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Jack Madans Government Relations Manager Code for America Bay Area, California jack@codeforamerica.org Dwayne Marsh Senior Advisor HUD Office of Economic Resilience Washington, DC dwayne.s.marsh@hud.gov Victor Rubin Vice President for Research PolicyLink Bay Area, California vrubin@policylink.org Kirsten Spalding Executive Director San Mateo County Union Community Alliance Bay Area, California kss@well.com Egon Terplan Regional Planning Director SPUR Bay Area, California eterplan@spur.org Stephen Levy Director and Senior Economist Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy Palo Alto, CA slevy@ccsce.com

Kalima Rose Senior Director Policy Link Bay Area, California krose@policylink.org Orissa Stewart-Rose Program Associate, Northern California Enterprise Community Partners Bay Area, California o-stewartrose@enterprise.org Brett Schwartz Program Manager National Association of Development Organizations Bay Area, California bschwartz@nado.org Jennifer Tran Senior Associate PolicyLink Bay Area, California jtran@policylink.org Elizabeth Wampler Associate Initiative Officer The San Francisco Foundation Bay Area, California ewampler@sff.org Sandra Witt Director Healthy Communities North The California Endownment Bay Area, California switt@calendow.org

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Resources & Background Materials

We hope you are as inspired as we are by the people coming together next week for the Jobs & Community Resilience SCLN Grantee convening in Oakland. In order to help you prepare, we’ve assembled this brief collection of resources to provide context for the speakers and experts and their ideas and perspectives. It’s not all reading – there’s some video too. Happy perusing. The Jobs & Community Resilience Team __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A remarkably bold effort to transform challenged communities and offer new paths to social and economic well-being for residents, Building Healthy Communities is a ten-year, $1 billion initiative of The California Endowment. Dr. Sandra Witt serves as the program’s Director for the Northern Region where she brings a relentless focus on equity in an effort to realize the promise of this major transformation effort. WeArePubliHealth captured a taste of her wisdom in this recent interview.1 Virginia Hamilton (USDOL, Western Region), known for encouraging innovation and inspiring greatness on the part of everyone around here, always sees opportunity in change. So when a colleague suggested to her that the first major workforce legislation to emerge out of the federal government in 16 years was just a reauthorization, she begged to differ, and penned this piece in California’s own Fox and Hounds.2

At the recent Code for America Summit, founding Executive Director and recently returning White House Fellow Jennifer Palhka, announced new focus areas for the fellows program going forward: once of them is economic development. Jack Madans (Code for America) will share information about this new

direction and about the organization’s specific efforts to work with communities of all sizes and their citizens in order to solve urgent and important problems together. The video of Jennifer’s announcement is here.3

1 http://wearepublichealthproject.org/interview/sandra-witt-drph/ 2 http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2014/09/virginia-hamilton-next-era-job-training/ 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pekb5ZhcqKk&list=PL65XgbSILalWFStqV0z0N9pvftstJ8AAh

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When the recent SOCAP conference rolled around this year, Martha Hernandez (FundGoodJobs/ICA Advisors) was not one to miss the opportunity to share the wisdom of investing in talent – human capital – when growing sustainable local business. She helps link the

work on the investor side with the work businesses do strategically and organizationally to recruit and cultivate good people. She also partners with educational institutions, workforce boards, and economic development organizations to make sure there is connection and alignment across communities and systems. We don’t know how she does it, but we’re so glad she does. Here is a summary of her SOCAP remarks.4

Last week, Luther Jackson (NOVA), gave a talk at SPUR about low-wage workers and career ladders in the tech industry – a subject about which he is deeply knowledgeable. This piece appeared in Silicon Valley Business Journal immediately afterwards.5

You may think it’s unfair to preview the talk that Egon Terplan (SPUR) and Kirsten Spalding (San Mateo County Union Community Alliance) will give us on the Bay Area’s Economic Prosperity Strategy by reading ahead. But for those of you who just can’t wait, or want to have some context to help you maximize your learning time, here it is.6

4 http://www.innercityadvisors.org/news/2014/9/12/tmis-participation-in-socap-2014-amplify-your-impact-by-engaging-a-non-traditional-workforce 5 http://m.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/10/09/closing-the-google-talentgap-pilot-program-aims-to.html?ana=e_du_pub&s=article_du&ed=2014-10-09&u=wTIRZOPh9e0lnT%2FmJZsolA05bf0679&t=1412893190&r=full 6 http://www.spur.org/publications/spur-report/2014-10-01/economic-prosperity-strategy

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And, of course, the same holds true for Lyn Farrow Collins (The Opportunity Collaborative, Baltimore), who wowed us earlier this year on a webinar during which she was right in the middle of creating the workforce development plan! The final report is hot off the presses (but we’re betting she shares it with us in Oakland). You can find the first two in the series right here.7

Not sure what Impact Hub is about? Sure, it’s co-working, but it’s equal parts incubator, space for innovation, and community of change-makers learning together – that’s the impact part. And who wouldn’t want to be part of that? Take a look, read the blog. And PS, there’s a Youth Impact Hub, too. The Crucible? Sure, it’s a terrific community asset that links manufacturing, art, and enterprise, but it’s also part of a much broader emerging skilled trades renaissance. Show us how it’s done, Oakland (in particular, Oakland industrial-arts-loving women and girls).8

7 http://www.opportunitycollaborative.org/workforce-plan 8 http://www.metropolismag.com/July-August-2013/Oakland-Made. You’ll want to check out the Makervideo, courtesy of KRON Channel 4.

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MAPS AND DIRECTIONS

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Transportation in Oakland, California

Addresses Washington Inn Hotel: 495 10th Street, Oakland, CA 94607

The California Endowment (TCE): 1111 Broadway, 7th Floor, Oakland, CA 94607 Impact Hub Oakland: 2323 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94612

The Crucible: 1260 7th St, Oakland, CA 94607

Our venues are easily accessible from both San Francisco and Oakland airports via Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) trains, which run approximately every 15-20 minutes from the airports to downtown. From San Francisco International Airport, board the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART train to the City Center/12th Street Station. Trip will be approximately 40 minutes. (Fare $8.95.) From Oakland International Airport, take the AirBART shuttle bus to the Coliseum/Oakland Airport BART Station and board a Richmond BART train to the City Center/12th Street Station. Trip will be approximately 40 minutes. (AirBART fare $3 (cash only!), train fare $1.85.) Another travel option would be taking a taxi from either airport. Uber and Lyft are not officially available. The California Endowment (1111 Broadway, 7th Floor, Oakland, CA 94607) is located right above the 12th Street/City Center BART station, on Broadway between 11th and 12th Street. The Washington Inn Hotel is just two blocks north of the 12th Street City Center BART station on 495 10th Street, Oakland, CA, 94607. For further information on public transit in the Bay Area, visit BART’s website, https://www.bart.gov/guide/airport. About the Area, Weather, Environment & other details: 1. Oakland is generally lovely this time of year, but weather can be variable. Layers are advised. http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/Oakland+CA+USCA0791 2. Dress comfortably - business casual is fine. Please wear comfortable shoes as we will be walking - let us know if you need special accommodation or assistance. (Email Sasha Forbes at sforbes@nrdc.org).