Chad Manley holds a Bachelor of Community Design with an Honours in Environmental Planning from Dalhousie University (accredited urban planning degree, 2008), and a Masters of Architecture from the University of British Columbia (accredited), receiving the Outstanding Thesis Prize for his graduation work (2011). He holds a Professional Specialization Certificate in Ecological Restoration from the University of Victoria. As his work and professional practice is rooted in critical and adaptive meanings of place, Chad maintains a small nursery, A Cascadian Trust, where he grows, tests, and propagates a diverse collection over 300 species of plant-kin from the Cascadian cultural-bioregion for use in landscape practice, transitive ecological recovery and climate-crisis adaptation. 

Chad is an Associate with the British Columbia Society of Landscape Architects, an Intern Architect with the Architectural Institute of British Columbia, and is a qualified Type II NWCG Wildland Firefighter (2025).

He has taught interdisciplinary design studios at the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and served as the 2022-2023 Fellow and Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville. He continued to teach across both curricula in landscape architecture and architecture as a lecturer in Tennessee until 2025, and remains a friend of the school.