RED BRIDGE TEAM

Cathie Barner, AIA, President, Team coordinator, strategic park planning and design

Cathie is trained as an architect with three decades experience managing park landscape and building projects across the country. She is skilled at developing public- private partnership teams to plan, design and transform landscapes. Cathie believes that civic projects should be publicly driven and has developed successful techniques for engaging communities in the planning and stewardship of their parks. A creative team builder, Cathie brings the right mix of talent and expertise to each project. She develops effective planning processes that organize and advance complex projects. Cathie directed the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy Project Office from 1996–2018 with a team of planners, designers, biologists and project managers. 

Key accomplishments: While working at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, Cathie managed widely enjoyed projects such as the Golden Gate Bridge Plaza Welcome Center, Lands End Lookout Visitor Center, Fort Baker Cavallo Point reuse plan, Crissy Field and Golden Gate’s park-wide Trails Forever initiative. As president of Heritage Partners (now Red Bridge), she directed a team of over 50 individuals and firms to fulfill critical planning, design and implementation needs for National Park Service projects, primarily in the Northeast Region. National Park projects included plans at over 40 parks including work at Statue of Liberty, Acadia, Boston, Governors Island and Weir Farm. Additionally, Cathie and Red Bridge successfully managed the execution of two federal park planning Indefinite Quantities Contracts. 

Cathie Barner’s Resume
Learn more about Cathie Barner

I have made a career of creating parks and public spaces from neglected urban sites and former military bases. I’m inspired by the potential in these places and i’m motivated by the public benefit achieved in their transformation.

Naomi Porat, Executive Vice President

Naomi contributes 35 years of experience as a social entrepreneur with a portfolio of ventures throughout the U.S. focusing on affordable housing, the redevelopment of former military bases, adaptive re-use for National Parks, modular housing production, and economic development.

As the Executive Vice President of Red Bridge Group, Naomi is currently formulating housing development strategies for ten National Parks in partnership with the National Park Foundation.  She recently completed a strategic plan for developing new modular workforce housing for Yosemite National Park and the Yosemite Conservancy.

In prior work, she was the real estate and land use economics strategic advisor for ten years with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, in addition to providing strategic planning for other national park units throughout the country. She conducted the visioning and reuse planning, market analysis, financial feasibility assessment, business plans and solicitation/evaluation of private partners for the redevelopment of Fort Baker. Naomi provided similar advisory services for five other National Parks including Acadia National Park, Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, Ellis Island National Monument, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, and the Presidio of San Francisco.

During the past 15 years, Naomi contributed to the founding and management of several venture capital financed social impact companies focused on innovative construction technologies to reduce carbon emissions associated with housing development. Most recently, she contributed to the founding team of Factory_OS, which has built thousands of affordable modular multifamily housing units to address workforce, student, and formerly homeless housing needs. She also founded ZETA (Zero Energy Technology & Architecture), which built net zero energy modular housing, schools and public facilities. With Global Homes International, Naomi led a team of building scientists, architects and engineers to create an innovative indigenous material block system for very low-income housing in developing countries.

Naomi earned her MBA from Yale University, master’s in city and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley, and BA from Stanford University.

Naomi Porat on LinkedIn

Liz Pittinos, Project Manager

Liz has 14 years of direct experience managing projects and relationships with the National Park Service and non-profit partner organizations. She has a rich history of community building and outreach as an outdoor leader for adventurers of all abilities and backgrounds and as the co-founder of a public music festival in San Francisco.

Key accomplishments: At the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy at Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Liz supported communications, planning, events and fundraising for the Trails Forever initiative and the Golden Gate Bridge 75th Anniversary, among other projects. From 2015 to 2017, Liz was half of the duo that brought SF Porchfest, a free outdoor music festival, to the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District. In 2019 Liz coordinated logistics across a three-state team of artists and makers to bring a large-scale art installation, Chroma Commons, to Burning Man in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

Liz Pittinos’ Resume

Joanna Julian, Workforce Housing Development Project Manager

Joanna Julian is currently the Program Director for Education Housing Partners, Inc (EHP), a nonprofit public benefit corporation affiliated with Thompson | Dorfman Partners, LLC. At EHP she is responsible for overseeing project feasibility analyses, managing entitlements and project approvals, supervising and coordinating design and consultant teams, and financial pro forma underwriting for workforce housing developments. Joanna’s consulting work also includes multi-family asset management services and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting.

Previously, she was a Development Associate with Trammell Crow Residential, where she managed architecture and engineering teams for ground-up multi-family developments in the Bay Area and assisted with the pursuit of new development business, market research, due diligence, and financial underwriting.

Ms. Julian has also worked for Westlake Urban on several multi-family entitlement projects throughout the Bay Area. She began her career at BlackRock providing asset management for multi-family, retail, and mixed-use properties throughout the western U.S. Joanna earned her Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment (formerly the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies), where she studied land use planning and sustainable urban development.

Dov Pope, Project Manager

Dov spent over a decade in Yosemite serving as a supervisory park ranger in the Protection Division. She was responsible for managing the Yosemite Medical Clinic and the park-wide ambulance service and medical program. Throughout her tenure, Dov worked in partnership with surrounding counties, local medical facilities, and UCSF Fresno Medical Center. She assisted in developing and managing the Preventive Search and Rescue Program aimed at providing park visitors with information to allow safe exploration of Yosemite’s majestic landscape. After leaving Yosemite Dov continued to engage in park-related projects such as illustrating the book Big Walls, Swift Waters: Epic Stories from Yosemite Search and Rescue by Charles R. “Butch” Farabee and providing illustrations for park interpretive exhibits.

Beginning in October 2021, Dov began working as a project manager in collaboration with Yosemite National Park staff and Yosemite Conservancy on the Mist Trail Corridor Project, an ongoing effort to improve visitor experience and safety within the most popular trail network in Yosemite. In May 2023, Dov joined Red Bridge Group’s design and engineering team to continue this work as it completed pre-design leading into schematic design.

Currently, Dov and her husband own and operate Folio Glass, a Bay Area construction firm specializing in the supply and installation of contemporary, large format glass in the residential market. Folio completes projects throughout California, Nevada and Hawaii.

Joy Marschall, Project Manager

Joy is a project manager with Red Bridge Group assisting with the ongoing Mist Trail safety and visitor experience project. Through her well-developed professional and personal connections, she is effective in collecting and analyzing data, making recommendations and maintaining important relationships.

Prior to joining Red Bridge, Joy worked as a ranger-naturalist for four seasons in Yellowstone National Park and for over a decade as a preventive search and rescue (PSAR) ranger and park medic in Yosemite National Park. In collaboration with colleagues in the Division of Interpretation, Joy started a popular PSAR blog detailing recent search and rescue incidents on the Yosemite National Park website. Having formally left her PSAR post in February 2021, Joy remains involved with park operations, serving intermittently as a park medic and helicopter crew member.

Joy helped coordinate the Mist Trail visitor behavior trail study, a collaborative effort resulting in two peer-reviewed academic publications and notable trail engineering safety mitigations. Joy assisted in forming the Half Dome Corridor Safety Review group, an interdivisional collection of park managers who hiked the corridor trails with georeferenced accident data; the group ultimately recommended the Half Dome Corridor Rehabilitation project. While working in Yosemite, Joy received the Outstanding Service Award (2013) and the Unsung Hero Award (2017). Joy is the co-author of Yellowstone Trails: A Hiking Guide, a comprehensive guidebook to hiking and backpacking in Yellowstone National Park.