Waunakee's new Community Development Director settles into new role

The Village of Waunakee was in search of a new Community Development Director at the end of 2023 after Tim Semmann retired from the role after just over two years.

Before long, village staff and Administrator Todd Schmidt found someone to step into the role in January: Lauren Dietz.

Dietz, a native of Waterloo, Iowa, holds master's degrees in public policy from the University of Northern Iowa and community and regional planning and business administration degrees from Iowa State University.

Before pursuing these distinctions, Dietz attended undergraduate school at UW-Madison.

Dietz mentioned that she was excited to return to the area she briefly called home for a time. As an avid biker and hiker, Dietz said that she has been taking advantage of Dane County's offerings since moving back.

At UW-Madison, Dietz earned her bachelor's degree in history with an emphasis on European and Mediterranean studies.

Waunakee's new Community Development Director admitted that her professional path has been an unconventional one. Dietz had been pursuing a career in sign language interpretation and speech pathology through community college courses even before transferring to UW-Madison.

Graduating amidst the aftermath of the 2008 recession is what ultimately led Dietz down the path she has embarked on up until this point.

"When I graduated from college, it was the height of the financial crisis. If you didn't have a degree in engineering or business or plans to go to med school, there wasn't a whole lot for you," Dietz said.

In the months and years following her graduation, Dietz worked different jobs in search of a way to break through. Eventually she found herself working for the city of Knoxville, Iowa, as a management fellow/intern.

There, she worked as a salaried part of staff and learned about the inner workings -- good and bad -- of municipal management. Dietz was promoted to the city's planning and zoning administrator halfway through her stay there.

Through that experience, Dietz decided that she enjoyed the planning side of municipal management and went on her quest through multiple graduate school programs to shore up her knowledge on the field.

Dietz worked full-time for a planning and engineering firm in the Des Moines area, and had a graduate assistantship with the Iowa State Extension program.

For two years of this period, Dietz wrote her thesis on the possible positive impacts that bicycle-based transportation could have on jail recidivism rates for recently released offenders.

Dietz played a large role in redesigning the outdoor visitor area for the Iowa Correctional Institute for Women, the state's only women's prison, as a part of the process.

The Iowa State team helped convert the then 12-by-12 foot concrete patio, surrounded by a 12-foot razor wire-topped fence, into a mini park. Now, the visitor area is much larger, equipped with play equipment and the security fence has been disguised.

The resulting space is one meant to hide some of the harsher realities of prison life from children visiting their parents on the inside, providing a space to cultivate familial relationships for future generations.

Dietz said that the experience had a huge impact on what she wanted to do next with her professional life.

"It completely changed the path I was on. I was going to do hazard mitigation for my thesis and ended up switching over to transportation... It was definitely a formative moment for me. When I'm dealing in public engagement, I take some of the stuff that I learned about engaging with people in vulnerable populations, or even with children, with me. It was a once-in-a-lifetime and life-changing experience," Dietz said.

After graduating with her MBA in 2021, Dietz began working for prominent Wisconsin-based planner MSA Professional Services. At the end of 2023, she fielded the call to interview for Waunakee's opening and was hired at the end of the process.

After being offered the Director of Community Development job, Dietz moved to Waunakee by the end of December and started on Jan. 8.

So far "85%" of the job has been what Dietz has expected, she said. There has been a bit of a learning curve in terms of getting to know the ins and outs of a new community, but Dietz said she's enjoying the new role and all that comes with it.

One thing that took her aback when first arriving was the competition and interest in economic development in Waunakee.

"Just the sheer amount of interest in Waunakee -- I'm used to working for communities where you kind of have to fight for economic development. Even knowing that Waunakee is one of those areas where people want to build their businesses here, people want to move here. It's not necessarily something that you understand until you're in it," Dietz said.

That excitement in the village has seemed to energize Dietz as she has come into the role.

The recent Tax Increment District #6 amendment provided her a good way to learn about Wisconsin's Tax Increment Financing system and she has been working on updating the village's sign code.

Dietz now lives in the village and said she is happy to integrate into the community and get to know everyone in town. She is in the process of turning her balcony into a gardening area, bringing a piece of her childhood vegetable garden with her from Iowa.

"It's a very different Waunakee than it was when I graduated from college in 2010. The downtown is completely changed and it seems like so many houses are going up each year. But, I think one of my favorite things about Waunakee is that you're really just a stone's throw away from Madison, but it's still geographically separated. It's not like other villages that share borders with the city and three other municipalities. There are less planning constraints that come with that," Dietz said.