Grace Tilghman, a sustainable planning & urban design major from Washington D.C., graduated the University of Colorado Boulder's School of Environmental Design with a Bachelors of ENVD. She also earned an urban design & studies certificate from Columbia University GSAPP’s Shape of Two Cities program.

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She has been heavily influenced by the writings and theories of the western philosopher and author Henri Lefebvre as he claims that “space is not a scientific object removed from ideology or politics… in its pure form, such as we determine it, is a social product.” She is interested in the purely human behavior aspect of planning; the way a city is moved through, its created experience, and social space. Through this she found similar thinking in the studies of Lefebvre, as he claims that space is “a social product,” which makes it essential to design for the beings occupying a space, not simply by preference. Space is meant to be designed by patterns of the people and things of which it encompasses. Within the Environmental Design program at CU Boulder and her other studies, she has been able to take part in many projects that keep this thinking in mind.