Jane Ellison Usher served as the President of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission from October 2005 until her resignation in December 2008.
She had previously worked for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and as a senior advisor to City Attorney Carmen Trutanich from 2009 to 2013.
Jane Usher began her career as an attorney in 1980 with the Los Angeles law firm then known as Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg & Tunney.
As Commission President, she championed smart growth, elegant density, mixed uses, affordable housing, and the end of visual blight and mansionization.
Usher garnered fans among the residential neighborhoods of Los Angeles and critics among supporters of the density bonus ordinance as enacted by the City in 2008.