Where Pathways Meet is led by Valerie Beirne, a landscape architect by training with over 20 years of experience working at local, regional, and national levels in the urban regeneration sector.

Her work focuses at the meeting point of cities, nature, and communities across the fields of strategic placemaking, green infrastructure, landscape strategy, urbanism, active travel, healthy streets and economic development.

Valerie specialises in a multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach, crafting place-based visions, programmes and projects that spark interest and imagination, supporting positive environmental, social, and economic outcomes. Valerie is an Affiliate Member of the Landscape Institute, a Fellow of the Institute of Place Management and the RSA. She currently lectures on the MA Landscape Architecture, and MA Landscape and Urbanism courses at Kingston University.

In previous roles, Valerie led the innovative Bankside Urban Forest partnership at the pioneering business improvement district Better Bankside. There she worked with a range of local and regional agencies, design practices and communities to shape and deliver a diversity of public space and urban greening improvements to the Bankside neighbourhood.

At Better Bankside Valerie nurtured the Low Line from its initial conception by a local resident, into the award-winning multi-million programme and partnership it currently is.

Prior to working at Better Bankside, Valerie worked for Thames Landscape Strategy, shaping place projects across the historic river landscapes of south-west London. At Groundwork UK, Valerie delivered the Department for International Development’s Global Learning for Local Regeneration programme and managed the evaluation of the London Waterways Partnership. She has worked in local government at London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, and also has experience of working for small environmental charities including the Thames Explorer Trust.

Valerie has presented practice-based papers at national and international conferences including the European Forum for Urban Forestry, Urban Design London, and New London Architecture. Projects she has led on have been featured in Monocle’s Urbanist podcast, the BBC and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Valerie sits on the Quality Review Panels for London Borough of Havering, Harlow and Gilston and Epping Forest district councils in Essex, Thanet District Council in Kent, and Urban Design London’s Design Review Panel for Streets and Public Spaces. She is an RHS London in Bloom judge, and also contributes to the Advisory Panel for Greenspace Information for Greater London.  She is an experienced fundraiser for place and green infrastructure projects having secured seven figure contributions for multiple projects from sources including the public, private and philanthropic sectors.

Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, Valerie is currently based in London having lived in Nice, Florence and San Francisco. She holds a BA (Hons) and Diploma in Landscape Architecture from Kingston University, and a Diploma in Environmental Resources Management from Dublin Institute of Technology (now Technological University Dublin).