Egon Terplan is CA FWD’s Regionalism Fellow. In that role he researches and writes about opportunities to strengthen and improve California’s system of regional economic development and planning. He has served as an advisor and consultant to CA FWD since 2022. He is concurrently a Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies where he studies and writes about the future of transit, downtowns, and cities. He continues to maintain a portfolio of external clients focused strategy and policy advisory services.

Prior to 2022, Egon was the Senior Advisor for Economic Development and Transportation within the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research and the California Strategic Growth Council. In that role he helped launch and manage “Regions Rise Together” a Governor’s initiative which resulted in the creation of the Community Economic Resilience Fund (now California Jobs First) and the Regional Early Action Planning Grants 2.0. He also led interagency efforts around the future of regional planning and transportation investment.

Prior to joining the Governor’s office, Egon was the Regional Planning Director at San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR), the Bay Area’s urban policy think tank. While at SPUR, Egon authored or co-authored dozens of reports and policy studies on the intersections of economic development, regional planning, workforce preparation, land use, transportation, and governance.

Egon also spent more than five years with ICF International managing regional economic development strategy projects and advising cities and regions throughout the world on economic development and competitiveness.

Egon received a Master of City Planning from UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He has been a visiting professor and lecturer at UC Berkeley, Stanford University, the University of San Francisco, and San Jose State University. From 2021 to 2023 he held the Robert S. Cornish Endowed Chair of Regional Planning and Lecturer in City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley.