Boston’s next Commissioner of Parks and Recreation will be Diana Fernandez Bibeau, a 35-year-old West Roxbury resident who currently works in the Boston Planning Department. Bibeau, who will succeed interim Commissioner Cathy Baker Eclipse when she assumes the role on June 1, will also serve as Deputy Chief of Open Space for Mayor Wu.
Eclipse, who has served as the department’s interim leaders since Ryan Woods, left in October 2024, will stay on in a new role.
Bibeau is currently the Deputy Chief of Urban Design at the Planning Department, where she also provided a key role in designing and facilitating the White Stadium public design processes.
In an interview with The Reporter, Bibeau said she is ready to tap into her landscape architect roots as head of open space.
“I think it’s time for the parks to have a really exciting agenda,” she said.
“I’m so privileged and excited for this opportunity. This is a huge personal passion of mine and I’m still pinching myself to believe that I’ll have this opportunity. I don’t want to take this lightly. I want to make sure we do big things. Let’s finish Olmsted’s legacy; let’s finish Olmsted’s work.”
In announcing the appointment, Mayor Wu said, “Diana brings years of experience as a dynamic problem solver and visionary designer, grounded in deep personal connection to the communities we serve and the role of public spaces in connecting us all. Her leadership will build on Boston’s legacy stewarding the nation’s oldest and most beautiful park system. I am deeply grateful for the leadership of Interim Commissioner Cathy Baker-Eclipse over the last year and look forward to our continued work creating beautiful, welcoming, and resilient open spaces where every resident feels at home.”
The Parks Commissioner has oversight of more than 300 full-time staff and 2,200 acres of open space. As Deputy Chief of Open Space, she will serve as “the primary strategic convener for open space policy, facilitating alignment across City cabinets, departments, and external stakeholders. Bridging city, state, federal, and private entities, this new role will ensure a cohesive and equitable vision for Boston’s public realm,” read a city-provided description of the job.
She said one task will be to catalogue all of the resources available. She said so many departments deal in open space singularly, including Boston Housing Authority, Boston Public Libraries, Boston Public Schools, and even Boston Centers for Youth and Families (BCYF), but there is no coordination of all of those open space resources. She hopes by getting a better understanding of everything available, they can provide the “clearest picture of what needs exist and how we can fill those gaps.”
Bibeau found her love of parks early on growing up in rural Dominican Republic, where her family had very little – no electricity or running water – but were intensely connected to the land. Upon moving to the Queens in New York City as a young girl, she found solace at Flushing Meadows Park.
“I felt so at home there,” she said. “I remember thinking to myself as an ambitious little immigrant girl that I wanted to do great things for the world and create spaces like that so everyone no matter what background they are from has access to places like that.”
Her family later moved to New Jersey in the Greater Philadelphia area, and she attended college at Temple University. While studying architecture, she was introduced to landscape architecture.
“Once I learned about it, I never looked back,” she said.
After a first job in Philadelphia, Bibeau was recruited to Boston by Sasaki Landscape Architects around 2015, and worked on projects around the country, including working with municipalities in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and beyond. She was brought in to work for the city in 2022 when former Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) Director Arthur Jemison came on board. Bibeau was seen as a great re-organizer and a design specialist who would help retire the BPDA and establish a new Planning Department. She supervised 40 designers, architects and frequently spoke her mantra of “there’s a design solution for everything.”
However, she soon found herself pulled into the White Stadium design process, and then later leading public workshops tasked with listening to public input and incorporating that into the final product. The White Stadium project, currently in construction, is the $325 million public-private stadium project in Franklin Park that will be occupied next year by a women’s professional soccer team and some Boston Public Schools sports teams.
The meetings were often contentious, and there were great challenges, but she said she focused on trying to provide good design and stay “aligned with the Franklin Park Action Plan and being sensitive to the landmarked and historic landscape.”
“I ended up playing a pretty important role in addressing community concerns,” she noted.
In her personal life, she is a mom to two boys and a daughter, and has been married to her husband, Devin Bibeau, for 10 years. In fact, their marriage journey began in a Boston park.
“My husband actually proposed to me in the Public Gardens, so that holds a very special place in my heart,” she said.
With two boys very much into sports like soccer and baseball, their family uses many parks in the area but live near the Allendale Woods trailhead and spend a great deal of time there and in the neighboring Arboretum.
She concluded by saying she wants to forge a great relationship with the parks maintenance staff that works hard to keep the parks looking great.
“I have a deep connection to the parks maintenance staff because I was a laborer and come from a family of laborers,” she said. “I know what it was to put in that hard work. I’m going to make sure we strengthen the maintenance operations and have resources for them.”
