Every other week, I highlight a local altruist who is exploring how purpose to a cause fits with their life. Was this email forwarded to you?
Table of Contents
"I don't have to do this full-time anymore. I don't have to do it on the clock."
Altruist Spotlight: Jonathan Pacheco Bell
The Altruist: Jonathan is an urban planner with 20 years across the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. In the 2000s, working as a zoning enforcement planner in LA County's Florence-Firestone neighborhood, he originated "Embedded Planning" — the idea that planners should work from the street, not from a desk, meeting people where they already are: homes, churches, businesses, bus stops. The praxis has since grown into a movement studied and taught nationally and internationally. Today, he holds down a traditional planning job with Riverside County and sits on a nonprofit board serving Florence-Firestone in his personal time. He previously taught urban planning as adjunct faculty at Cal Poly Pomona and Pitzer College. As of late, he runs a small paid consulting practice helping other jurisdictions adopt Embedded Planning.
The Squeeze: For most of his career, advocacy shaped his entire life. Full-time advocacy jobs, nonprofit executive leadership, teaching, unpaid organizing, public speaking — all stacked on top of each other, with no edges between them. That intensity eventually collided with institutional resistance. Department leadership was uncomfortable with him advocating the redistribution of authority to communities through Embedded Planning. He says the pushback got serious enough that staying wasn't sustainable, and he moved on. He never faced that kind of resistance from the communities he served, only from the people managing him.
"If it's for Florence-Firestone, it'll never turn off, and I'm okay with that... I will always advocate. It's just kind of innate for me."
That's the tension underneath the squeeze: the cause was non-negotiable, but the format was.
The Action: Instead of quitting advocacy or grinding until it broke him again, Jonathan divided it into three parts. A traditional planning job at Riverside County gives him job security, technical skills he'd never fully built, a supportive team environment, and, critically, an off switch at the end of the day. His nonprofit board seat in Florence-Firestone, pro bono and personal, is where his real advocacy still lives; it's the one thing he says he'll never stop doing, regardless of what job he holds. And his newest lane, consulting on Embedded Planning for other cities and states, public talks, and workshops, lets him get compensated for the thing he invented… on his own terms.
His advice for readers who care but don't know where to start:
"Really, that's what it is. You investigate: what do I truly, deeply care about in my heart? You should be able to come up with one or two things that can focus your time, and maybe attract resources and funding to do the work."
Takeaway: Jonathan didn't resolve the tension between purpose and stability by choosing one: he resolved it by refusing to let either one occupy his whole life. The job pays the bills and stays in its lane. The board seat is where his advocacy lives, unpaid and untouchable. The consulting is new proof that the thing he built out of necessity can also build income. Twenty years in, his realization was that caring doesn't have to be a 24-hour job to be real.
Jonathan Pacheco Bell, MAUP, MLIS, is a practicing urban planner and the originator of Embedded Planning, a praxis now taught and studied internationally. Jonathan proudly serves as Co-President of the nonprofit Florence-Firestone Community Organization in South Central LA. He previously taught urban planning at Cal Poly Pomona and Pitzer College and has held leadership roles with the American Planning Association. Connect with him here: c1typlann3r.blog
Photo credits: Jonathan Pacheco Bell
Jonathan Pacheco Bell
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