Heather Flynn is a longtime Anchorage civic leader and local philanthropist. A former school teacher, she arrived in Alaska in 1968, helped write the city charter in the early '70s, worked on the city's first comprehensive plan, served two terms on the Anchorage School Board, 10 years on the Anchorage Assembly and ran for mayor in 1994. She is the former director of the AWAIC shelter for abused women, and in 2010 received the lifetime Achievement Award presented by the ATHENA Society of Anchorage.