Anu Natarajan joined the Greenbelt Alliance Board in 2014.
Anu Natarajan currently serves as the Managing Director, Global Housing Practice at the Global Policy Leadership Academy. Prior to that, she led the Housing Initiative at Meta/Facebook, where she leveraged her extensive background across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to guide Facebook’s housing policy initiatives, partnerships, and investment work..
Prior to joining Facebook, Anu served as the Director of Policy and Advocacy for MidPen Housing, where she worked to find solutions to build more affordable housing in the Bay Area. In her work with the American Leadership Forum – Silicon Valley, Anu focused on community engagement and outreach and built a diverse coalition of more than 35 partners from the Bay Area to solve regional challenges through civic engagement. While at StopWaste, she also worked on sustainability, the circular economy, and climate actions plans.
Anu has served a total of 10 years as the Vice Mayor and City Councilmember for the City of Fremont, and is the first Indian-American to be elected to a city council in the Bay Area.
Anu grew up in Bangalore, India, where she graduated from Architecture School. She moved to Seattle on a Rotary International Scholarship as an “Ambassador of Goodwill” and earned her masters degree in Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, Seattle.
In her spare time, Anu volunteers with community organizations and also enjoys exploring new cities and their architecture, meeting people, and reading. She and her husband are raising their daughter in Fremont.