Meet Florida's 2026 Inductees to American Institute of Certified Planners College of Fellows

The highest honor the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) bestows is election to the College of Fellows (FAICP). This prestigious recognition is reserved for planners who have demonstrated extraordinary and sustained contributions to the profession and have been AICP members in good standing for at least 15 years.

Nominees for Fellowship must show exemplary achievement across multiple areas, including professional practice, teaching and mentoring, research, leadership, and public or community service. Fellows are distinguished by their exceptional leadership, innovation, and commitment to advancing planning. Their work leaves a lasting legacy—improving communities, strengthening the profession, and elevating planning’s role in society.

By inducting these individuals into the College of Fellows, AICP honors them as model planners who have significantly shaped both the field and the communities they serve.

Meet the Inductees

On behalf of APA Florida, and your colleagues across the state and nation, thank you, Florida Class of 2026, for inspiring us. Your dedication pushes us to aim higher, contribute more, and continue advancing the planning profession. Through your leadership and example, you show what is possible when passion and purpose meet.

Let’s take a closer look at the exceptional accomplishments of the 2026 Florida Class of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Wiatt Bowers, FAICP

Wiatt is a renowned transportation planner, APA leader, mentor, and community volunteer, whose foundational belief in repairing the world is woven throughout his over 30-year career. Wiatt’s professional practice has yielded transformational safety, trails, and other public realm improvements throughout Florida. His strength in community advocacy has led to significant changes in the urban environment and infrastructure in his Jacksonville community.

Wiatt’s decades of APA Florida’s leadership and commitment to enabling professional development, culminating as Chapter President in 2021-2022, resulted in key legislative victories and conferences that attracted more than 12,000 attendees and provided over 2,000 CM credits.

I knew from an early age that I wanted to be an urban planner. I joined APA as an undergraduate student in 1993 and became a certified planner in 1998. I have been dedicated to advancing planning efforts and enhancing Florida communities ever since. This recognition is incredibly meaningful to me, and I am honored to join many friends and colleagues in the AICP College of Fellows. - Wiatt Bowers, FAICP

Dr. Maria Elisa (Lisa) Colmenares, FAICP

Lisa has led planning initiatives across South Florida and South America that transform how people move through cities. With 30 years of experience, she advances accessibility-focused, multi-modal transportation solutions rooted in implementation, innovation, and impact. From launching international best practices like the Caracas Metrocable to delivering Miami-Dade’s first countywide transportation master plan, her legacy is visible in transit corridors, safety programs, and regional coordination frameworks. She has built systems that connect communities and driven measurable outcomes that center people — especially those historically underserved. Her leadership has driven national best practices in stakeholder engagement, accelerated project delivery, and intergovernmental collaboration.

Through her career, Lisa has provided exceptional commitment to her academic and professional practice, contributing her skills, dedication, innovation and passion to mentor hundreds of emerging planners. A mentor, strategist, and advocate, Lisa’s legacy is defined by systems that endure, professionals she’s elevated, and communities made more accessible through planning.

Humbled and honored to be included in the 2026 College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners. I have always looked up to FAICP as the brave leaders of our profession, who focus on how to make our communities better. I am grateful to all my colleagues, mentors, community members, dear family and friends who have contributed to my professional development. As a fellow, I want to continue being a change agent to help our communities shine bright through regional thinking and consensus building. - Dr. Lisa Colmenares, FAICP

Marilyn Mammano, FAICP

Marilyn has dedicated 50+ years of professional talent, consensus building skills and limitless determination to balance growth, conservation, and community participation. She has been a leader in authoring studies that resulted in; a new Greenbelt Park on Staten Island, in public access to waterfronts neighborhoods in New York City and in regulations for adult entertainment uses that contributed to the revitalization of Times Square.

She is known for teaching and leading community engagement to successful outcomes in South Florida. Her career will continue to have a lasting impact on the places where she lived and worked.

I am so thrilled that my colleagues at the APA Florida Chapter nominated me for this recognition and the Members of the Fellows have accepted me into this truly exceptional group of professionals. I have another 50 years to give. - Marilyn Mammano, FAICP

Dennis J. Smith, FAICP

Dennis has led innovation across the public sector, private consulting, and academia for more than thirty years. From developing Florida’s share-of-damage funding formula to advancing the state’s Local Mitigation Strategy and influencing national resilience policy, his work has reshaped how communities prepare for and recover from disasters. In government and professional practice, he helped refine evacuation and recovery frameworks; in academia, he directs an award-winning studio program that bridges theory and application. Throughout his career, he has paired policy innovation with sustained mentorship, strengthening both communities and the profession itself.

Election to the College of Fellows is a meaningful professional honor. It is not a finish line, but a charge to continue advancing the profession through thoughtful innovation, applied practice, and sustained mentorship of emerging planners. - Dennis Smith, FAICP

Vivian Young, FAICP

Since 1984, Vivian has devoted her career to promoting more livable, sustainable, and fiscally sound communities and protected historic, natural, and agricultural resources across Florida. She has served as a "translator," taking technical, complex planning subjects and distilling them for citizens, policy- and decision-makers, and professionals. She served as Florida’s first State Main Street Coordinator and the Historic Tallahassee Preservation Board’s first professional planner. With 1000 Friends of Florida since 1996, she has launched and coordinated free planning webinars reaching more than 50,000 attendees, the grassroots legislative advocacy platform, landmark Florida 2070 studies and rural conservation planning with the University of Florida Center for Landscape Conservation Planning, and more.

I’m truly humbled to be accepted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners. It has been an honor and a pleasure to spend my career promoting fiscally sound and sustainable planning to preserve Florida’s unique historic resources, distinctive natural and agricultural landscapes, and vibrant communities. - Vivian Young, FAICP