Managing Director

Lake Institute on Faith & Giving

Elizabeth Le‘anani Coffee is Managing Director of the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, where she works at the intersection of faith, generosity, and civic life. Her work focuses on equipping leaders, convening across difference, and shaping the ecosystems that influence how resources are understood, stewarded, and shared. She holds an M.A. in Philanthropic Studies from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Drawing on more than 15 years of experience in the religious and nonprofit sectors, and her journalism training, she brings a deep commitment to ethical, place-based storytelling. Her work has supported faith leaders, artists, and community organizers in sharing stories of resilience, belonging, and repair.

A Native Hawaiian, her leadership is informed by relational responsibility and a long-view commitment to collective well-being. She lives in San Antonio, a city she often describes as helping her make sense of the world.

Vice President

National Civic League

Matt Leighninger is the Vice President of the National Civic League, and directs the League’s Center for Democracy Innovation. NCL was founded in 1894; it maintains the Model City Charter, organizes the All-America City Awards, and supports communities in their work to renovate local democracy. Over the last 30 years, Matt has worked with democracy-building efforts in over 100 communities in 41 states. Matt’s first book, The Next Form of Democracy, is a firsthand account of the wave of democratic innovation that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s. His second, Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy, with Tina Nabatchi, is a guide and textbook that surveys the role and potential of democratic engagement. The Center's “Better Public Meetings” project is helping communities change the typical (broken) format of their official interactions with residents, and the “Healthy Democracy Ecosystem Map,” is a dataset of organizations in America working to improve democracy.

Vice President, Field Engagement and Innovation

Purpose Built Communities

Ben Lewis is Vice President of Field Engagement and Innovation at Purpose Built Communities, where he leads strategies to bring its model to more neighborhoods. As project lead for Network+, he is extending the model beyond the formal Network through statewide technical assistance in Maryland and the Neighborhood Academy. He has led and contributed to field wide projects including leading a national initiative with Blue Meridian and Ballmer Group to build the place-based partnerships field. Ben previously led a STRIVE Prep high school in Denver, raising it two tiers on Colorado’s state assessment, and earlier taught and led schools in Philadelphia. An Aspen Pahara Fellow, Ben has received Harvard’s Education Entrepreneurship and Krinsky Fellowship awards, and Philadelphia regional finalist honors for the Sue Lehmann Award for Excellence in Teaching. He holds a Harvard doctorate in educational leadership and a masters and bachelors from the University of Pennsylvania.

Managing Director

Gehl

Matthew is a Partner and Managing Director at Gehl. He leads work on public life, design, and place for cities, developers, corporations, and foundations. For more than twenty years, the aim has been the same: making places for people that are vital and resilient.

Social infrastructure is at the center of his work: the spaces, programs, and practices that help people build trust and feel they belong. He thinks cities should take joy more seriously. He is also interested in who looks after public life, and the new civic, philanthropic, and corporate roles emerging to do it.

He lives in Brooklyn, where he often serves as craft studio assistant to his creative 11-year-old, and plays guitar like no one is watching (no one is watching).

Managing Director, Baltimore Grantmaking

The Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation

Sarah Manekin joined the Weinberg Foundation in 2023 as a program director for U.S. education and became managing director for Baltimore grantmaking in 2026. She leads the Foundation’s Baltimore strategy and key regional collaborations and grantee relationships.

Previously, Manekin was managing director at the Abell Foundation, overseeing research, communications, grants administration, and support for its education portfolio.

Manekin earned her bachelor’s degree with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She later earned a doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a fellow at the Center for Teaching and Learning. Her dissertation on the expansion of U.S. education policies and practices in the late 19th century earned the History of Education Society’s prize for outstanding dissertation.

She is secretary of the Board at Chizuk Amuno Congregation and serves on the Board of the Hackerman Foundation.

Senior Advisor and Vice President

LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corporation)

Mona Mangat is Senior Advisor and Vice President of Safety & Justice at LISC, bringing enterprise leadership and expertise in community safety and justice. As Senior Advisor, she advances organization-wide priorities and strategic initiatives across LISC.

As Vice President of Safety & Justice, Mangat leads national efforts to reduce crime and help communities become safer and stronger. She oversees a portfolio providing technical assistance, training, funding, and resources to strengthen locally led approaches to community safety. Her work brings together community organizations, government, philanthropy, researchers, and partners to advance practical solutions grounded in local needs and experience.
Her work spans urban and rural communities nationwide, building local capacity and partnerships that strengthen community safety. Mangat holds degrees in Policy Studies and Anthropology from Syracuse University and a Master of Governmental Administration from the University of Pennsylvania. She brings a community-centered perspective to conversations about safety, opportunity, and neighborhood vitality.

Founder and President

Strong Towns

Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.

Co-Founder

Sand Mountain Cooperative Education Center

Daniel Marshall is co-founder of the Sand Mountain Cooperative Education Center, where he helps people solve problems with cooperatives in urban and rural Alabama. He is a founding member of the Iron Hills Folk School and chair of the board for the Alabama Center for Employee Ownership. For his day job, he works remotely as the Sr. Manager of Communications and Ownership for Ginkgo Bioworks, a worker-owned biotech company. Daniel lives in Birmingham, AL.

Coordinator

Community Renewal International

G. S. “Mack” McCarter is the Founder and Coordinator of Community Renewal International (CRI). A Shreveport native, Mack earned a BA from TCU and a Master of Divinity from Brite Divinity School before spending 18 years pastoring churches in Texas. In 1991, he returned home to launch CRI, pioneering a scalable model to rebuild civil society by restoring the relational foundation of communities.

Under his leadership, CRI has gained worldwide recognition for transforming whole cities through intentional relationships. On behalf of the CRI team, Mack has received numerous honors, including Social Entrepreneur of the Year from The Manhattan Institute, National Citizen of the Year, and the prestigious $1,000,000 Opus Prize Laureate in 2022. He is also the author of How to Remake the World Neighborhood by Neighborhood (2022).

CEO

National Coalition for Community Capital

Chris Miller is CEO and a founding board member of the National Coalition for Community Capital (NC3), a 501c3. Among NC3’s goals are empowerment of ordinary citizens and strengthening local economies through community investment and ownership.

Chris has been working on community and economic development for over 20 years as an elected and appointed official, as an on-the-ground economic developer, and as a community investment innovator operating on a national level.

In 2013, Chris led the creation and passage of Michigan’s investment crowdfunding law which became a national model. Chris is an EDA Economic Innovation Fellow, and created NC3’s Community Capital Accelerator. The accelerator brings together an innovative set of strategies and expertise that enables NC3 to co-create a unique pooled investment fund embedded into local communities, which is open to all and designed to be an engine for local economic resilience.

CEO and Partner

Empower Schools

Alyssa Morton is a dedicated advocate for educational equity and innovation. As CEO and Partner at Empower Schools, she leads our team of experts collaborating with state agencies, policymakers, public school districts, institutions of higher education, and community champions across the United States to design, launch, and sustain innovative schools and school systems that help students achieve long-term economic mobility. Before joining Empower Schools, Alyssa supported public education organizations at Bain & Company and advanced school and system human capital strategy as an Education Pioneers Fellow in New Orleans. Today, Alyssa is proud to give back by serving on the Board of Directors for Education Pioneers.

Alyssa holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Alyssa serves on the Boards of Directors at Thinkery, Education Pioneers, and Degree Partners. She lives in Austin, Texas.

Professor

Columbia

Jeremy Ney is a leading voice on inequality and opportunity in America. A former economic policymaker at the Federal Reserve, he writes the bestselling Substack American Inequality and teaches at Columbia Business School. His writing has appeared in Time, Business Insider, New America, and other outlets. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Executive Director

Better Block

Krista Nightengale began her career in journalism before stumbling into the fascinating world of urban design. Today, she serves as Executive Director of Better Block, an international nonprofit that helps communities turn civic engagement into visible action by testing ideas in the real world. Over the past decade, Krista has worked alongside neighbors in more than 145 communities to rethink streets, transform underused spaces into places people want to gather, and remove the barriers that keep communities from making the changes they want to see. The work has helped calm traffic, strengthen local economies, and, in some cases, reduce crime—but the outcome she cares about most is turning strangers into neighbors.

President & CEO

The Rippel Foundation

Becky is a public health and philanthropy leader with more than 25 years of experience advancing health equity and building unlikely coalitions. She is President and CEO of The Rippel Foundation, a national foundation that is committed to a future where all people and places thrive together, with no exceptions. During more than 20 years in a variety of leadership roles at the CDC, she designed and launched large-scale initiatives spanning global health security, chronic disease, adolescent health, health equity, and public-private partnerships. Becky holds degrees from Tulane University and Michigan State University and enjoys running, travel, and family time.

Founder & CEO

Act (Advocates for Community Transformation)

J. Reid Porter is the Founder and CEO of Act (Advocates for Community Transformation), a Christian, place-based, justice organization that makes neighborhoods safer and stronger by empowering residents to fight crime on their streets, through shutting down drug houses. Act takes existing civil laws to bring legal action on behalf of concerned residents against the owners of the drug houses to get an injunction forcing the owner to cease the illegal activity.

Reid holds a J.D. from St. Mary's University School of Law where he was an editor on the law review and received a B.A. in history and minor in Spanish from the University Of Texas at Austin. He is a Manhattan Institute Civil Societies Fellowship Alumnus, a Stand Together Foundation Catalyst Partner, and a Praxis Fellow. Reid lives in Dallas, Texas with his beautiful wife and four amazing children.