Grace Dyrness
Grace Roberts Dyrness is a community development consultant and professor. She has taught at the University of Southern California, Azusa Pacific University, and Fuller Theological Seminary, as well as institutions in Philippines, Indonesia and Kenya, with a focus on public service in an urban setting, social context of planning, community and transformational development, and sustainable tourism. Her approach has been to use advocacy planning and participatory approaches to engage people in communities in order to envision their own future and chart a path towards it.
She has a graduate degree in urban anthropology from the Ateneo de Manila University and a doctorate in urban planning and development studies from the University of Southern California. Her doctoral work focused on the growth of the informal sector of the Los Angeles economy, particularly on a project with the city’s street vendors.
Grace has had many years of experience working in the nonprofit sector in developing nations and inner cities within the United States. For eight years she lived in Manila, Philippines where she lived among urban squatter women in order to better understand how they cope with life at the margins. For the past 20 years she has been engaged in participatory action research and development in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Djibouti, Argentina, Mexico and Philippines. It has been through these international and local experiences that she has gained a deeper understanding of what conditions are needed in order for communities to thrive and forge a sustainable future for the next generation.