Mary Eysenbach is currently the Director of Conservatories for the Chicago Park District where she leads both the Lincoln Park Conservatory and Garfield Park Conservatory, the nation’s largest public glasshouse. She also serves as a parks and open space consultant, writing and speaking about green space planning. In 2004, she was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, studying ways to better integrate green space and nature into people's daily experiences. Prior to her fellowship, she directed The City Parks Forum, where she produced publications, a grant program, and a series of symposia that convened twenty-five mayors, their private sector park partners, and expert faculty to help elected officials and park advocates maximize the potential of their parks in creating community vitality. Before launching The City Parks Forum, Mary was the assistant director of the McHenry County Conservation District, a Chicago metropolitan open space agency. There, she directed the organization’s planning activities and helped to protect more than 4000 acres of natural areas and five countywide trail corridors in the rapidly developing region. Prior to that, she worked in a variety of park planning and management capacities in the greater Chicago area and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is currently a founding board member of the City Parks Alliance, a national coalition of public and non-profit park leaders.