2026 Top 7 Under 40: Francine St Laurent

Francine St Laurent’s strength of spirit is unmatched. This land-use extraordinaire and Air National Guard officer is no stranger to hard work and adventure. After graduating from Western Washington University, St Laurent left Washington to pursue a job in Alaska. “I was born and raised in Interior Alaska and went home hoping to find a job as an urban planner, but I landed at the largest newspaper in Alaska, Anchorage Dispatch News (now called Anchorage Daily News),” she says. “I was working as a copy editor when I got the opportunity to come back to Bellingham to work as a land use consultant for a small business, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to both be in Bellingham and work in the private sector of urban planning.”