Maja Viklands Harris is a writer, policy analyst and facilitator. A native Swede who immigrated to the United States in 2003, Maja is journalist by trade who nowadays spends most of her time in the political and philanthropic arenas. She is a director of the Hormel Harris Foundation, whose initiatives include support for affordable housing, criminal justice reform, food security, mental health and substance abuse treatment and services. She is also an active member of the philanthropic organization ninety-nine girlfriends in Portland and SW Washington. In her previous community of Lincoln, NE, Maja served as a planning commissioner and board chair of both the library and the zoo and has been involved in mayoral, city council, and state legislative races. Ongoing consulting and advisory engagements include initiatives to democratize the public input process and to draft and implement equitable, people-centered urban planning policy.

Why this board?

Few public investments can deliver as much bang for the buck as parks. The public health and environmental benefits of parks, along with parks’ contributions to livability, urban design and general quality of life, are hard to beat. Jane Jacobs, the mother of modern urban planning, said that people must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. To me, parks are perfect examples of all of us taking that responsibility to care for each other and our shared environment, and then directly experiencing the positive results of that collective impact as we enjoy all that parks have to offer.

If you could be a Portland Park, which one would you be and why?

Right now I would choose Peninsula Park because it’s my children’s favorite, and I wish I could bottle up the joy that they experience there.

What do you hope to accomplish while serving?

Both maintaining and improving access to the parks system are priorities for me. As a parent of elementary school children I am very interested in the importance of play to children’s development, and parks have a huge role to play in offering those benefits to all children equally.