As President of Community Partners Consultants, Inc., Adele Fleet Bacow has extensive expertise in community development, urban planning, community cultural development, design, and the arts. Over the past thirty years, she has brought the public and private sectors together in unlikely collaborations to revitalize communities around the country. Her clients include public agencies, cities and towns, foundations, cultural, and community-based organizations. Many of these lessons are presented in her book, Designing the City: A Guide for Advocates and Public Officials.

Currently Ms. Bacow is coordinating the Artists Space Initiative for a new national initiative, Leveraging Investments in Creativity, created to provide support to artists around the country. This work includes research on projects integrating the arts and community development, establishing a national online clearinghouse of related information on models, policies, and technical assistance, and creation of collaborations encouraging development of affordable space for artists to live and work. She also is working on other projects integrating the arts and community development, such as advising the National Park Service on conversation of the former North Truro Air Force Base into the Highlands Center at Cape Cod National Seashore into a center for the arts, sciences, and environment.

Previously Ms. Bacow served as Director of Design and Development for the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, creating a new program to improve the quality of design and planning in the state. In this capacity, she created and managed programs in community design, bridge design, highway landscape design, innovative state design policies for public finance and development agencies, and the Governor's Design Awards Program; she received a Federal Design Achievement Award for this work. She also has significant experience in public development from her work as Deputy Director of the Massachusetts Government Land Bank.

Ms. Bacow holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Urban Design from Wellesley College where she graduated as a Wellesley Scholar, and she earned a Masters Degree in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She and President Bacow have two sons who work in New York City: Jay, at Goldman Sachs, and Ken, at Deutsche Bank.