Director of Storytelling

H. E. Butt Foundation

Elizabeth Le’anani Coffee has lived in San Antonio her whole life and loves it like a sibling. While her formal training is in advertising and public relations, her work experience reflects a decade working alongside religious non-profits and leaders through community engagement predominately in San Antonio and South Texas. She
holds a Master of Arts in Philanthropic Studies from Indiana University through the Lilly School of Philanthropy. She previously worked as a research associate for the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving engaging with American patterns of giving and gathering for religious causes. She also serves on the Advisory Council of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity School and as the chairs the board of The Impact Guild.

Founder & CEO

Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL)

As the Founder and CEO of the Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL) in Dallas, Alan Cohen is dedicated to breaking intergenerational poverty and promoting economic mobility. At CPAL, he employs a range of cutting-edge tools and techniques, including data analysis, innovation, and design, to develop local strategies that address issues such as housing, safety, health, criminal justice, and neighborhood resourcing. Cohen's work at CPAL is focused on finding innovative solutions that will help break the cycle of poverty and empower individuals and families to achieve greater economic stability and success.

Before his current position, Cohen made significant contributions to the field of early childhood education. He is widely recognized for his role in revisioning early childhood education at Dallas ISD.

Cohen's expertise in problem-solving and honest brokering has earned him various appointed positions, including Co-Chair of the Dallas Mayor's Task Force on Safe Communities and a member of the Mayor's Steering Committee on Workforce Development. He is also actively involved in several advisory and governing boards, including United To Learn, Dallas Thrives, Groundwork Dallas, and the Commit Partnership.

Cohen holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a BA in Sociology from Tulane University.

Emma Bloomberg Professor in Residence of Urban Planning and Design

Harvard Graduate School of Design

Maurice D. Cox is Emma Bloomberg Professor in Residence of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Prior to joining the GSD faculty, Cox was Director of Planning and Development for the City of Detroit between 2015-2019 and Commissioner of Planning and Development for the City of Chicago between 2019-2023, where he focused on the adaptive challenges facing contemporary urban revitalization.

Cox is an urban designer acclaimed for his ability to merge architecture, design, and politics in pursuit of design excellence and the equitable development of cities. His professional biography aspires to present a very different model for what a designer in society can be, demonstrating that planning, architecture, and design operate within a sociopolitical sphere.

To that end his career spans public service, private practice, and higher education, including his tenure as mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia; as Design Director for the National Endowment for the Arts under two presidents; and as tenured faculty member at the University of Virginia and at Tulane University. At Tulane, Cox served as Associate Dean for Community Engagement and Director of the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, Tulane School of Architecture’s community design center. There he operated at the intersection of design and civic engagement pursuing projects for the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

In his public sector leadership roles, Cox is known for his design-centered approach to urban planning, incorporating active citizen participation into the public process while simultaneously achieving the highest quality of design excellence. In Detroit, Cox built a new interdisciplinary Planning Department that co-authored a series of awarding-winning neighborhood framework plans to grow Detroit’s population for the first time in 70 years. In Chicago, Cox developed a groundbreaking approach to neighborhood revitalization, INVEST South/West, which seeks to reimagine the public realm and civic life of 10 neighborhoods on the South and West sides by commissioning catalytic mixed-use affordable housing developments to fill vacant gaps in disinvested commercial corridors.

Cox has taught at Syracuse University, the University of Virginia, Tulane University, and the Illinois Institute of Technology, in addition to having held visiting professorships at University of Maryland and Harvard GSD. His pedagogical approach marshals the rigor of academic learning and a pursuit of design excellence to foster productive dialogues among the public and private sectors, universities and non-profits, developers, and the public. The goal is to build non-traditional, mutually beneficial partnerships with communities where the city is a living laboratory for participatory design. This often requires the integration of different voices and cultural influences and necessitates crossing socioeconomic and institutional boundaries into marginalized communities.

Cox practiced architecture and urban design for ten years in partnership with his wife, architect Giovanna Galfione, while teaching as an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University in Florence, Italy.

A recipient of the 2024 Henry Reed Hope Award and of two honorary doctorate degrees from University of Detroit Mercy and the Illinois Institute of Technology, Cox was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2023 for lifetime achievements in architecture. Maurice has lectured extensively on design and democracy, civic engagement, and urban transformation in disinvested communities. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Cooper Union.

Cox received a Bachelor of Architecture from the Cooper Union and a 2005 Loeb Fellowship from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

President and CEO

Communio

JP De Gance is the founder and president of Communio and the co-author of the book, Endgame: The Church’s Strategic Move to Save Faith and Family in America. JP is also the author of the Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships. Communio is a ministry originally incubated as the Culture of Freedom Initiative at The Philanthropy Roundtable where he served as the organization’s executive vice president. The Initiative raised and spent $20 million over three years in three different states seeking to identify the most effective strategies to boost marital health, family stability, and church engagement. From 2016 to 2018, the experimental initiative worked with an ecumenical network of churches and drove down the divorce rate by 24 percent in Jacksonville, FL.

Today, Communio serves churches across the United States helping them evangelize by applying the learnings from their successful intervention in Jacksonville. A husband and father, JP lives in Virginia with his wife and eight children.

co- founder

CultureBanq

Penelope has spent her career at the intersection of social investment, community investment, art and culture, and the health of communities. She loves visionary work,
and is very comfortable translating a vision into a sustainable model. Penelope has spent the last several years working with others in cooperative, collaborative, distributed leadership, and solidarity models.

She works with social change movement builders and organizations across sectors including health, arts and culture, and regenerative capital. She is also a social entrepreneur and a co-founder in 2023 of culture therapy, a social enterprise that believes in the power of young people using art and creative expression for their mental health and wellbeing.

Recent and current engagements also include roles as Impact Advisor to One Nation One Project, strategic advisor to The Lewis Prize for Music, Organization and strategic advisor to The Guild of Future Architects.

From 2020-2022 she was the Chief of Strategy for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She was deeply focused on organizational culture. Among many initiatives she guided were the Artist-Led Giving Circle and the Guaranteed Income Pilot for Artists.

Douglas is the founding Director of CultureBank, a national pilot program incubated at YBCA that positions artists in community investment strategies. In 2024 CultureBanq relaunched as its own entity.

Throughout her career Penelope has performed executive roles and established networks across banking, community development finance, social enterprise, impact investing, and arts and culture. She served as the co-founder and CEO of Pacific Community Ventures, a community investment organization (CDFI). She was a senior executive and Chair of the largest impact investing conference, SOCAP.

At the heart of her work for the last 25 years is her belief in the power of cross-sector collaboration and new models of community-led investment.

Director of Training & Consulting

FCS | Focused Community Strategies

Dr. Shawn Duncan is the Director of Training and Consulting for FCS | Focused Community Strategies, a nonprofit based in Atlanta that has been doing neighborhood
revitalization work for almost 50 years. Shawn comes to FCS from the nonprofit leadership sector with research and writing focused on pedagogies for social impact. In
his previous careers he has focused on multi-sector coalition building for community impact, content and curriculum design, group facilitation, leadership development, and immigration reform advocacy. As a part of the FCS Core Leadership Team, Shawn brings a visionary voice for innovation, a strategic mind for resource development, and the leadership acumen to support and equip the team for success.

Vice President, Federal Policy

Results for America

Nichole Dunn is the Vice President for Federal Policy and Federal Practice Lead at Results for America. Nichole brings more than 20 years of public and nonprofit executive leadership, data-driven performance management, and public policy innovation experience to this role. She most recently served as Chief of Staff to U.S. Representative Ben McAdams. Prior to joining the Office of Congressman Ben McAdams, Nichole served as Vice President for Innovation and Community Impact at Results for America, where she led nonprofit and state policy, launching a fellowship for nonprofit CEOs and advancing evidence-based policy at the intersection of nonprofits and government. Prior to 2015, she served as Deputy Mayor and Chief Administrative Officer to Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams. In addition to overseeing day-to-day operations, she established a track record of increased accountability through performance management and improving outcomes through strategic initiatives (Pay for Success, criminal justice reform, collective impact projects, data-driven decision making). Nichole uniquely served as Deputy Mayor for two separate administrations, appointed first by Mayor Peter Corroon from 2009-13. Nichole was a fellow in the inaugural cohort of the Results for America Local Government Fellowship.

Nichole earned her Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Utah, where she also received her B.S. in Behavioral Science and Health. She holds an Executive Certificate in Driving Government Performance from the Kennedy School of Government.

Architect, PhD, Founder

Neighborhood Lab

People create places, and places create people - connecting space and people is my passion. With a PhD in socially sustainable living environments, I am eager to
understand how the design of the built environment influences user behaviour and wellbeing.

This passion has led me to establish my own practise, Neighbourhood Lab, after 18 years of experience as an architect, urban designer, and researcher. Neighbourhood
Lab is a research-based laboratory for neighborhood-making. The lab specializes in socially sustainable urban transformations. The goal is to revitalize residential areas
into thriving neighborhoods, with one clear vision in mind: to improve the quality of life for all.

As a founder, I am in charge of the Lab’s strategy, portfolio, client relations, and business development. I work on projects with a wide range of clients, scales, and
topics, ranging from strategic planning, neighbourhood-making, home-making, and creative place-making. I alternate between analysis, strategy, design to establish a
clear link between the project’s burning platform and its impactful outcome. Going back and forth between strategic and physical design, I enjoy repairing, repurposing and revisioning existing urban areas to create thriving neighbourhoods. My projects tackle societal challenges such as: (1) increasing quality of life by understanding who the users are and creating inspiring everyday spaces for them, (2) combating loneliness by creating flourishing communities with strong local identity and social cohesion, and (3) promoting social justice by incorporating strategies for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In addition to Neighbourhood Lab, I teach social sustainability at the DGNB course for urban areas. I am a member of Patrizia Investor’s advisory board, where my
role is to provide input to the sustainable community, focusing on the ‘S’ in Patrizia’s ESG strategy. I volunteer in Valby’s municipal environment group, where I aspire to
strengthen social ties in the local community.

Senior Policy Advisor for Neighborhoods

City of Atlanta/Center for Urban Research

David Edwards is the Senior Policy Advisor for Neighborhoods in the Office of the Mayor in the City of Atlanta. He is also the Founder and Co-Director of the Center for Urban Research and a Professor of Practice in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the former Chief Executive Officer of Purpose Built Communities, a nonprofit focused on revitalizing distressed urban neighborhoods. Mr. Edwards also served as the Chief Policy Advisor for the City of Atlanta during the two terms of Mayor Shirley Franklin.

Chief Policy Officer and Sr. Advisor to the Mayor

City of Atlanta Mayors Office

Courtney English is the Senior Advisor to Atlanta Mayor, Andre Dickens, and Chief Policy Officer for the city of Atlanta. His policy portfolio includes some of Atlanta’s most pressing challenges, including affordable housing, economic development, youth engagement, neighborhood revitalization, and closing Atlanta's long-standing equity gaps. Courtney was the youngest Chairman in the history of the Atlanta Board of Education and currently serves on the boards of the Westside Future Fund, Star-C, Greenlight Fund, and the Fort MacPherson Redevelopment Authority. An Atlanta native, English is a former classroom teacher who earned his BA degree in political science from Morehouse College and a MA degree from Columbia University

SVP and Head of Community Development

Federal Reserve Bank of New York

David J. Erickson is head of Outreach and Education at the New York Fed where he leads the community development and economic education teams. His areas of research include community development finance, affordable housing, economic development, and institutional changes that benefit low-income communities. David has been a leader in the collaboration between the Federal Reserve and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in bringing the health sector together with community development. To date, this collaboration has resulted in 52 conferences and numerous publications. Erickson’s book on the history of community development, The Housing Policy Revolution: Networks and Neighborhoods (2009), was published by the Urban Institute Press. He also co-edited Investing in What Works for America’s Communities (2012); What Counts: Harnessing Data for America’s Communities (2014); What It’s Worth: Strengthening the Financial Futures of Families, Communities, and the Nation (2015); and What Matters: Investing in Results to Build Strong, Vibrant Communities (2017). His latest book, The Fifth Freedom: Guaranteeing an Opportunity-Rich Childhood for All (2023), has been published by the Brookings Institution Press.

David has a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College.

Senior Fellow

Linco

Anthony Flint is senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, contributing editor at Land Lines magazine, and a correspondent for Bloomberg CityLab and The Boston Globe. He is author of Mayor’s Desk: 20 Conversations with Local Leaders Solving Global Problems; Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow; Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City; This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America; and co-editor of Smart Growth Policies: An Evaluation of Programs and Outcomes. He was a policy advisor on smart growth for Massachusetts state government, and a visiting scholar and Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He earned his B.A. from Middlebury College and an M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and attended the University of St. Andrews, the Salzburg Seminar, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.

Co-Executive Director

Build Healthy Places Network

Colleen is the Co-Executive Director of Build Healthy Places Network. She brings over 20 years supporting community development strategies that advance health and racial equity. Previously, Colleen was the Director of Programs at Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the country’s largest community development nonprofit. In this role, Colleen directed multiple initiatives supporting cross-sector collaborations in community-led efforts across New York City.

Before joining LISC, Colleen worked for PolicyLink, a national organization that advances economic and social equity, and the Neighborhood Parks Council, a nonprofit advocate for parks and open space in San Francisco. Colleen also served as a Municipal Development Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala. She currently serves on the Partners for Better Health Board of Directors. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a master’s degree in Urban Planning from the University of Texas, Austin.

Founder/CEO

Here

Ryan Frederick is a global expert at the intersection of healthy longevity and place.

Mr. Frederick is an internationally recognized thought leader, speaker, advisor and innovator specializing in the intersection of healthy longevity and place, with nearly 20 years in the field. He has spoken and keynoted at dozens of conferences in fields ranging from real estate & senior living to financial services to health care. He has also advised organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to global institutional investors to leading health systems to housing developers and operators.

As Founder & CEO of Here, Mr. Frederick is amplifying the impact of his consumer book, Right Place, Right Time, to provide content, courses and coaching in Place Planning. Where we live is critical to our well-being, yet most people are not as intentional as they could be about finding the right place for each stage of life.

Mr. Frederick’s work has been cited in numerous outlets including CBS News, Washington Post, Forbes and many other media outlets. He is on the Advisory Council for the Stanford Center on Longevity and previously served on the National Advisory Board of Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and as a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center task force on health and housing.

Mr. Frederick is a Princeton University and Stanford Business School graduate and resides in Austin, Texas.

Senior Manager, Place-based Investing & Policy Initiaives

Healthcare Anchor Network

Kate Gallagher, MPH is the senior manager, place-based investing and policy initiatives at the Healthcare Anchor Network. The Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) is a national collaboration of 70+ nonprofit healthcare systems who are leveraging their economic assets to build more equitable and inclusive local economies. In her role, Kate focuses on activating the health system’s financial assets to impact the community conditions that drive health outcomes, with a particular focus on improving the built environment and increasing economic mobility in historically under-resourced communities. Kate works closely with HAN member health systems to accelerate place-based impact investing, upstream community grantmaking, and local policy advocacy to address root causes of health disparities and advance health equity in communities.

Prior to joining HAN, Kate worked as an economic development practitioner in San Diego County, where she supported research projects and designed programs focused on understanding and address economic inequities. Much of her work centered on the role of large employers in equitable economic development, for example through their hiring and purchasing practices, and in collaboration with other anchor institutions. She also worked in academia as a health equity researcher, synthesizing evidence on various health equity topics, including practices for equitable community engagement and the structural determinants of health. Kate holds a master’s degree in public health policy from Tulane University, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from University of California, Santa Cruz. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.