cityLAB is a tiny organization that benefits from all of the people involved in our projects. See our staff, our board, and our past volunteers—our thanks to them and to our generous partners.

Abe Taleb was a volunteer at our recent brainstorming event.

Adam Nelson, founder of Obscure Games.

Adam Paulisick is a Chief Product Officer at MAYA, a BCG Company and the president of cityLAB. Adam helps to create the Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable (MAYA, for short) products and services in a user-centered world. For large, often industry-leading, companies the number of up and coming challengers combined with talented but over committed teams lead to a constant need for better proof of concepts (PoCs) and minimal viable products (MVPs) before making major strategy changes or investments. My focus is on helping companies assess what platforms, people, and products they already have and using those building blocks with today's best technology and techniques to design AND build working prototypes that more often than not integrate back into legacy systems. Working in an agile manner, the design-build-test approach continues to prove that human-centered organizations return better for shareholders and create cultures that deliver value instead of simply managing it.

Adrienne Wehr is a multi-disciplinary performing artist and producer. Recent film acting credits include Unstoppable, Riddle, Warrior. Recent stage acting credits include the world premieres of Take a Letter, Gravity + Grace, and regional premieres of The Mercy Seat, Chicks with Dicks. Producing credits include the award-winning indie feature The Bread, My Sweet which remains in successful worldwide distribution, the upcoming short film Lightweight, a decade as the Associate Producer of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and just completed art directing the new indie feature A New York Heartbeat. She's been a board member for the American Federation of Television and Performing Artists (AFTRA), the founding chair of the Pittsburgh Film and Media Association (PFMA), and currently serves on the board for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). She is also a visual artist, writer, and educator.

Albert Cisneros is a second-year architecture student at Carnegie Mellon University. He is originally from Southern California, but has come to love Pittsburgh with all of his heart. He has become fond of the Pittsburgh landscape and sees much potential for urban growth and design in Pittsburgh’s surrounding neighborhoods. Albert is also obsessed with Brazilian culture and Disney. He hopes one day to study Brazilian life and architecture In Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. When at home in Southern California Albert makes sure to go to Disneyland as many times as his wallet can handle. His favorite ride is Pirates of the Caribbean.

Alex Ritscher is an Urban Studies major with a concentration in urban planning at the University of Pittsburgh. As a child his favorite video game was Sim City and that aspiration to become a city planner still continues today. Amazed by the unique neighborhoods of Pittsburgh and how the city has reinvented itself Alex is excited to work with CityLAB and their experiments. He is looking forward to seeing the city from another perspective while gaining knowledge in the process.

Alexi Morrissey is an artist who lives and works in Pittsburgh. He has exhibited nationally and internationally. Primarily a collaborator, he has worked with individuals, collectives, institutions, and governments leading him to investigate technology, public space and the function of language. Next spring, Six Gallery Press will publish transcriptions of his and artist Tony Allard’s 2002, and 2006 performances, Möbius Text. Morrissey’s original work for the stage “Take A Letter” is currently being co-produced by the New Hazlett Theater for 2010.

Alise Kuwahara is a fifth year architecture student at Carnegie Mellon University. Through her work with the Urban Design Build Studio and the people of Homewood, Ms. Kuwahara has become an advocate for a participatory design process in which the residents are able to voice their opinions about the changes they would like to see in their own community. She is currently working on her thesis, which she will complete this May. After graduation, Ms. Kuwahara hopes to find a job with an architectural firm or other organization that shares her interest in the relationship between social issues and the built environment. She is originally from Kent, Washington.

Allen Hahn, The Secret City.

Allen Kukovich is the executive director of the Regional Visioning Project Power of 32, a 30-county, 4-state civic engagement initiative to create a shared vision for this region’s best future. His inclusive nature and consensus-building approach are considered invaluable tools in achieving the project’s goal of including more people than any previous visioning project.
Throughout Mr. Kukovich’s more than three-decade public service career, he has served in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, and as the director of Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell’s southwest regional office. He was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and a member of the Pennsylvania Senate.

Amanda Markovic, Edge Studio.

Amanda Parks is an eco-entrepreneur, consultant and activist. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, she returned to the city to start a socially and environmentally responsible enterprise with her family. The decision to locate in Pittsburgh was based on the desire to feed from the city's rich environmental and labor history while building support of the grassroots movement for environmental justice and fair trade.
In 2005 she co-founded Equita, a principle-driven, independent, family-owned company committed to pragmatic solutions that support environmental stewardship and sustainable development. The company has a brick-and-mortar store and webshop specializing in design-conscious, green, fair trade and socially-conscious products. In addition, Equita also offers green consulting and design services.
An environmental scientist by training, Amanda graduated from the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment with a degree in Environmental Policy and specialized emphasis on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development. She has more than 17 years experience working with environmental and human rights organizations around the world.

Andrew Macurak is a Pittsburgh native with experience ranging from the foundation sector to the tech start-up community. Andrew's work has focused on the intersection of real estate, finance, economic development, and community capacity-building. Andrew is particularly interested in how public-private partnerships and entrepreneurship can seed self-sustaining urban economies. He believes that Pittsburgh's unique sense of place is one of its greatest and most untapped economic assets. Andrew will graduate in May 2011 with an M.S. in Public Policy & Management from Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College. He completed his bachelor's degree in Urban Studies, History, and Public Service summa cum laude at the University of Pittsburgh. You can view his portfolio at www.andrewmacurak.com.

Angela Gonzalez, Architecture Student.

Anne Chen, AIA, LEED AP, is a principal of EDGE studio, an architecture firm established in Pittsburgh in 1995 and recognized with over 30 design awards and national publications. Specializing in higher education and cultural/public projects, her firm’s list of notable projects include projects for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Erie Art Museum, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Anne is also a member of the Advisory Committee for the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, a board member of the Pittsburgh Glass Center and the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Institute for Architects.

Anne J. Swager, Executive Director of AIA Pittsburgh, A Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, has always aspired to be part of the design process, instead of just a consumer of the finished product. At the AIA she uses her financial management and non-profit skills to represent architects, who are the place makers in our lives. Before joining the AIA, she managed Mt. Lebanon's economic development corporation, Uptown Mt. Lebanon, and was the Executive Vice President of the South Side Development Corporation
Her civic life is also rich, including appointment to the Riverlife Task Force and co-chair of the Pittsburgh Gaming Task Force, where she helped ensure that Pittsburgh’s concerns were represented in the process the State of Pennsylvania undertook to award slots licenses. Finally she is a founding member of the Civic Design Coalition where she collaborates on how to ensure that good design and planning are the cornerstones of economic development in the city.

Anthony E. Harbour (cityLAB intern, 2010) earned his B.A. in Political Science and African American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Transitioning from Southern California, by way of Washington, D.C., he is serving as a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs where he is committed to economic development in underserved communities. He plans to attend business school where he can focus on socially innovative approaches to develop wealth and leverage the human capital that exist in these communities. Anthony has a peculiar fascination with experiential learning and experiences. He was very excited during his internship to help cityLAB push the envelope of what can be accomplished from a grassroots level.

Aradhna Dhanda is the president and CEO of Leadership Pittsburgh, a creative and innovative leadership training program for senior leaders. Pioneered here in Pittsburgh, their program has since been used as a model for similar programs around the country.

Arthur Azoulai, Architecture Student.

Since 2007, Audrey Russo has been serving the technology business sector for Southwestern PA as President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Tech Council (PTC), the oldest (1983) and largest technology trade association in all of North America. In order to ensure the original vision of a vital innovation and technology ecosystem, Audrey has used her role to facilitate strong interaction across all business sectors of the regional economy who will only succeed and grow through technology innovation and commercialization. With a background in information technology, operations and finance, Audrey previously worked for large multi-national Fortune 500 companies (Alcoa, Reynolds Metals), as well as at MAYA Design, and in an adjunct faculty and project role at Virginia Commonwealth University. Audrey believes that vital cities are the moral imperative in achieving competitive, diverse and vibrant economies, and the complexity of Pittsburgh’s physical, literal and metaphorical terrain, has been added to her list of loves over the past ten years.

Ayanah Moor'’s work addresses contemporary popular culture through an interrogation of vernacular aesthetics and gender identity. Recent print, performance, and video exhibitions include, Forja ArteContemporáneo, Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, The Pittsburgh Passion Women’s Football Project, SPACE Gallery, Wexner Center for the Arts, Ice Box Project Space, and The Print Center. Her work has been addressed in publications such as: What Is Contemporary Art? (University of Chicago Press) Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism (Indiana University Press); Black Women, Gender and Families (University of Illinois Press); Critical Inquiry (University of Chicago Press); and Home Girls Make Some Noise: A Hip Hop Feminism Anthology (Parker Publishing). Moor completed a BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University and MFA at Tyler School of Art. She is currently Associate Professor at School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.
Photo credit: T. Foley

B.J. Leber is President of the Western Pennsylvania Hospital Foundation, which supports the work of the Western Pennsylvania Hospital. She recently completed an $8 million capital campaign to update the School of Nursing at the University of Pittsburgh, and her current projects include the development of a Simulation Center and the construction of a sibling play area in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Previously, Ms. Leber served as the Interim President and CEO of the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh and as Chief of Staff to Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O'Connor. She spent 11 years in senior management at WQED Multimedia, Pittsburgh's public broadcast company. While there, Ms. Leber oversaw a financial, operational and programmatic turnaround that resulted in a transition from bankruptcy to financial solvency and a return to community relevance. She sits on numerous boards and is a member of the adjunct faculty at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

Babs Carryer is a serial entrepreneur and active in multiple entrepreneurial activities. She is Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at CMU, Embedded Entrepreneur for Project Olympus, working with faculty to commercialize innovations, and Innovation Advisor at the Institute for Social Innovation. Since 1994, Ms. Carryer has been president of Carryer Consulting which provides strategic business planning services to technology companies in the software and life sciences sectors. She co-founded, was past president, and still serves as Board Director of LaunchCyte, a development company with five life sciences portfolio companies. In 2009, one LaunchCyte company announced a strategic partnership with Philips, including a five figure investment, to develop a diagnostic device for sepsis; in 2010, another LaunchCyte company announced a $345M deal with Biogen to develop and commercialize a new drug for the treatment of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Barbra Labbie, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

Ben Self is a founding partner of Blue State Digital, a consulting firm that specializes in creating web strategy and technology for political organizations, candidates, and non-profits. Blue State Digital's software and strategy powers the online presence of the largest and most prominent Democratic candidates and progressive organizations (Barack Obama, the DNC, the DCCC, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Howard Dean) as well as numerous non-profits and corporations (AT&T, Alliance for Climate Protection, Jolie-Pitt Global Action for Children, Live Earth).
Blue State Digital was founded in 2004 by four of the individuals responsible for Howard Dean's use of the Internet during his presidential campaign, and now has offices in New York, Boston, Washington, DC, and Lexington, KY.

Bev Smith began her television and radio career in 1971 when she was named Pittsburgh’s first African-American Consumer Affairs Investigative Reporter for WPXI Television. In 1975, she was named News and Public Affairs Director for the Sheridan Broadcasting and hosted a lively talk show on Sheridan's flagship station, WAMO. Since then, Bev Smith has taken her “fire brand” style of talk shows to KDKA and WTAE Radio in Pittsburgh, WNWS in Miami, WKIS in Orlando and WRC in Washington DC.
Never afraid to tackle issues, she has lived with the homeless, walked the streets investigating prostitutes, raised money for babies with AIDS, talked with inmates on death row, and learned to shoot a gun with the FBI. She has interviewed personalities such as Bill Cosby, Vice President Al Gore, Senator John Kerry, Dick Gregory, Patti Labelle and a host of other guests.
Bev Smith was selected by Talkers Magazine in 2005 and 2006 as one of the “Talkers 250, Featuring the Heavy Hundred” – and is recognized nationally as one of the most important radio talk show hosts in America.

Bill Cornell is a psychotherapist in private practice with offices in Lawrenceville. He is a widely-published author in his field and a consultant to psychotherapy training programs around the world. After raising his family in an 1825 farmhouse north of Pittsburgh, Bill decided to move into the city, purchasing a house on Penn Avenue so as to participate in the revival of the Penn Avenue/Garfield corridor. He has served on the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation's Board of Directors since 2006 and was elected President of the BGC board in 2010.

Bill Isler, president and CEO of Family Communcation, Inc. (FCI), is a longtime professional educator and advocate for children. His career spans teacher, administrator, Commissioner of Basic Education and Senior Program Advisor for Early Childhood Education for the PA Dept of Education. In 1984 he joined Family Communications and in 2005, became the inaugural Executive Director of The Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media at Saint Vincent College. Under his leadership, FCI continued to produce the award-winning Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, longest running program on PBS, while expanding into the development of training materials for individuals who work with children.
Bill’s civic service is long and varied and includes membership with organizations such as the Pittsburgh School Board, the Council of Great City Schools and the National League of Cities Council on Children, Youth, and Education, He received The Pittsburgh Foundation’s Isabel P. Kennedy Award for child advocacy and was named “Person of the Year” in 2007 by the Mentoring Partnership of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

As a city Councilman, Bill Peduto has taken special interest in green issues, innovation in e-government and campaign finance reform, to name a few. He also authored the first public document on city-county consolidation. He presently chairs the Council's Finance and Law Committee and will be working to create a new five-year plan in 2009.

Bomani Howze is a program officer for The Heinz Endowments’ Innovation Economy Program, which is dedicated to capitalizing on the research strengths of the region’s universities, medical centers, corporate and government laboratories. He also serves on the Foundation's Civic Design Team, which promotes quality planning and design in the region.

Brian Bronaugh is the president/executive creative director at Mullen, Pittsburgh.
This is Brian’s bio:
i believe
everyone contributes to the creative process.
hire great people and let them be great.
leading by example.
in exercising the mind and body.
agencies need to evolve into connectors.
you have to get out there to do the work in here.
ideas sell. ideas win business.
not everyone will be happy.
in good storytelling.
laughter is key.
the cup is half full.
in hard, intelligent work.
a time clock does not measure productivity.
in relevant, honest dialogue.
in the community.

Candi Castleberry-Singleton is the Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). She has developed UPMC’s inclusion strategy, including its Health Care Dignity and Respect Campaign and oversees progress toward system-wide goals involving all 50,000 employees. In 2008, she launched the Center for Inclusion in Health Care.
Ms. Castleberry-Singleton’s successful inclusion initiatives have also been implemented at Motorola, where she was Vice President of Global Inclusion and Diversity, and at Sun Microsystems, where she led the Global Inclusion Center of Expertise. She created the Integrated Inclusion Model TM, a model that shifts the responsibility for achieving an inclusive culture to every employee. The model will be featured in Crossing the Divide: Intergroup Leadership in a World of Difference (Harvard Business School Press, August 2009).
Ms. Castleberry-Singleton received an MBA from Pepperdine University, a bachelor’s degree in legal studies from UC Berkeley, and also has a degree from Stanford University.

Carey Harris is the Executive Director of A+ Schools, an independent advocate for improvement in public education. Under her leadership the organization has grown to reach and mobilize tens of thousands through its publications, events and community discussions. Some of the more visible programs and publications include the “Report to the Community on Public School Progress,” the nationally recognized Board Watch program and School Works action research program. A+ Schools also runs Students Engaged in Leadership and conducts research for the purposes of defining the issues the community can act upon.
Prior to joining A+ Schools in 2003, Ms. Harris was the executive director of South Side Local Development Company and a community organizer at the Mon Valley Initiative. She serves on the board of the Birmingham Foundation and resides on the South Side with her husband John Werling and their three children Audrey, Lillian, and James – all of whom are students in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

Carol Coletta is president and CEO of CEOs for Cities and host and producer of the nationally syndicated public radio show Smart City. Previously, she served as president of Coletta & Company in Memphis, and has served as executive director of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Conference of Mayors and American Architectural Foundation.
Carol was a Knight Fellow in Community Building for 2003 at the University of Miami School of Architecture and is currently a candidate for a Master of Design Methods at the Institute of Design at IIT. She is frequently interviewed as an expert on urban issues by national media and is an active speaker on the success formula for cities and creative communities. This year she was named one of the world’s 50 most important urban experts by a leading European think tank.

Catherine Mott is a founding partner of BlueTree Capital Group and BlueTree Allied Angels in Wexford, PA. Starting as an individual ‘angel’ investor herself, and with 18 months of research on similar investment strategies under her belt, Catherine joined forces with Tom Jones in 2003 to start Western PA's first "business model" angel network – BlueTree Allied Angels. She is now sole owner and CEO of both companies.
Previously, Catherine had founded Synergetics Sales Performance Group and Indigo Capital Development, LLC. She has been featured as entrepreneur of the month by the National Education Center for Women in Business, and in 2002 was recognized as one of Pennsylvania's 50 Best Women in Business. Prior to forming her own businesses, Catherine worked 17 years in corporate banking management where she served in senior management roles for investment sales/wealth management, commercial lending, business development, and retail expansion.

Ambassador Ries joined the RAND Corporation as a Senior Fellow in February 2009. He is lead author of Improving the Energy Performance of Buildings, Learning from the European Union and Australia (RAND, 2009), and is specializing in international economics and security studies. Immediately prior to joining RAND, Ambassador Ries served as Coordinator for Economic Transition at U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where he was responsible for oversight and coordination of U.S. assistance and economic policy initiatives in Iraq.
Mr. Ries served as U.S. Ambassador to Greece (2004-07) and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (2000-04), in the latter capacity overseeing the U.S.-European Union relationship, economics, energy, and public diplomacy. Mr. Ries had earlier assignments in London, Brussels (U.S. Mission to the European Union), Ankara and the Santo Domingo. He was detailed to USTR as Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for North American Affairs and was a member of the NAFTA negotiating team. At State Department headquarters, Mr. Ries worked on international energy and G-7/G-8 Summits, among other issues.
Ambassador Ries is the recipient of the State Department’s “Cordell Hull” Award for Senior Economic Officers, “Rockwell Schnabel” Award for Contributions to U.S.-EU Relations, the Distinguished Honor Award, Presidential Meritorious Service Award, and several Superior Honor Awards. For his service in Iraq, he was awarded the Department of the Army’s Outstanding Civilian Service Medal. Mr. Ries holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from the Johns Hopkins University.

Charlie Humphrey is executive director of Pittsburgh Filmmakers, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and the Pittsburgh Glass Center. Pittsburgh Filmmakers, which he has headed since 1992, is one of the oldest and largest media arts centers in the United States.
Before joining Filmmakers, Humphrey was editor and publisher of In Pittsburgh, an alternative weekly paper. He has been a radio producer and announcer, and still does occasional voiceover work for film and other media.
Humphrey sits on the board of directors at the Andy Warhol Museum, Quantum Theater, the New Hazlett Theater, Squonk Opera and GPAC. He is past co-president of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture and past chair of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Alliance. He has served on the boards of Silver Eye Center for Photography, The Mattress Factory, funding panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, The Heinz Family Foundation and the Heinz Endowments’ Small Arts Initiative.
Charlie graduated from Whitman College in 1981 with a degree in philosophy.

Chas Wagner is a second year MBA student at the University of Pittsburgh concentrating on entrepreneurship and mobile/web technology. In the fall of 2010, he started his own mobile applications company called Fanattix Media. The company is building Iphone and Android apps to make it more fun and competitive for sports fans to root for their favorite college or professional team.
Mr. Wagner believes that through the technological advances of smart phones, everyday fans can act as broadcasters and sports journalists using the powerful photo/video capabilities of their own phone. Just as ESPN revolutionized sports in the TV age, Mr. Wagner believes that Fanattix can do the same in the digital age.
Mr. Wagner's entrepreneurial aspirations don't stop there. Obsessed with good food, he plans to open a line of mobile food carts in the Pittsburgh area focusing on exquisite soups. Bisque, gumbo and chowder are the first items on the list.

Rep. Chelsa Wagner was elected to her first term in the Pennsylvania State House in 2006, becoming one of the two women to be elected for the first time for a full term in the State House from the City of Pittsburgh. Approximately two-thirds of Rep. Wagner’s district is in the City of Pittsburgh, with the other one-third spanning suburban communities to the city’s south.
In the House, Rep. Wagner’s committee assignments include Transportation, Judiciary, Education and Commerce. She also concentrates much of her policy work and advocacy in the areas of urban renewal and community development. Rep. Wagner holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago, and is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh Law School.

Chip Walter is an author, future trends consultant, filmmaker and former CNN bureau chief. He has published three mainstream science books: Thumbs, Toes and Tears – And Other Traits That Make Us Human; I’m Working on That (written with William Shatner); and Space Age for Random House. He is now working on his fourth book about the ways primal drives shape nearly everything each of us feels, thinks and does.
You can read about Chip’s thoughts on transportation in Pop City’s feature “Transportation Key to World Class Pittsburgh”.

Chris Ivey is an award-winning filmmaker who has received recognition for his short films at the Tokyo Video Festival, Carolina Film Festival and the Cin(E) Poetry Festival. He has won an Addy Award for the Best Broadcast Campaign for commercials he directed for Jones Soda Co. and the Washington Wild Things baseball club. One of Mr. Ivey's passions is to use his talents as a commercial director to help artists and small businesses drive their success. Through style and innovation, he proves that big budgets are not necessary to create memorable works. He is the Executive Producer of East of Liberty, a documentary series about East Liberty.

Our moderator, Chris Potter is the editor of Pittsburgh City Paper. Born and raised in the People's Republic of Upper St. Clair, he renounced Reaganism at an early age, and has gone on to become one of the school district's most disappointing alumni. A graduate of Allegheny College, Potter has been published in various local and national publications, a few of which went out of business shortly thereafter. Among the awards and recognition he has received over a 13-year journalistic career, he treasures most of all a letter from Cyril Wecht accusing him of being in league with the terrorists. Potter enjoys canoeing, long walks on the beach, and writing brief biographies about himself. This is his first appearance on a Pittsburgh stage, and he wishes to thank all those wonderful people, out there in the dark, who made it possible.

Christine Bethea is on the board of Friendship Development Associates. She is the founder and Director of GA/GI Festival, Pittsburgh's eco, art and technology event which programs the April "Unblurred" gallery crawl each year in the Penn Avenue Arts District. Ms. Bethea also runs an antique, art and collectibles shop, ARTica, and is an award-winning fiber artist and quilt historian, archived with the Senator John Heinz History Center, a Smithsonian affiliate.

Christine Madrid French, an advocate for the study and preservation of American modern buildings, was born and raised in Los Angeles. She graduated from the University of Utah in Architectural Studies in 1992 and later moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the National Park Service as an historian. After four years documenting historic resources in the parks of the mid-Atlantic and western states, she left government service to earn her master's degree in Architectural History from the University of Virginia. She is also a writer and photographer, with her work appearing in U.S. News & World Report, Virginia Living, Modernism Magazine, and Landscape Architecture. In 2000, Ms. French co-founded the Recent Past Preservation Network and served as the president for nine years. She is currently the Director of the Modernism + Recent Past Initiative with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and also serves on the 20th-Century Heritage Committee for the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).

Connie Cantor is a Pittsburgh based artist with a long interest in urban and neighborhood issues. An avid preservationist, she also rehabilitates small houses as live/work space for artists and other "creatives" drawn to Pittsburgh's affordability and quality of life. Cantor, a 4th generation Pittsburgher, believes that integration of young and older populations in distressed neighborhoods can create a radical new paradigm for social-urban discourse.

Connor O' Doherty is a Business and Computer Science student at Carnegie Mellon University, currently in his sophomore year. Prior to working with cityLAB, Connor worked on SEO development and marketing at STACK Media. Connor recently co-founded "Project Flow," an early-stage crowdsourcing start-up. Outside of work, he tries his best to travel to every music festival he can, and will take every opportunity to eat odd foodstuffs (calf heart for the win).

Constance Vale, Architectural Designer at EDGE Studio.

Craig Rosman, Architecture Student.

Cristina Shin is currently an Industrial Design major at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design. Residing permanently in New York City, she quickly became drawn to urban and community design. She loves to surround herself around various, aesthetically pleasing, and well-formed designs. Cristina is grateful to have this opportunity to utilize her design skills, assisting with cityLAB’s experiments. She is eager to see how the various projects she will be working on will help grow and shape an urban city like Pittsburgh.

Dan Barie is a native son of Pittsburgh, originally from Brookline. He's lived the past five years in Highland Park and Bloomfield and considers himself solidly an East Ender. He is an Urban Studies major at Pitt with a hybrid concentration in planning and social justice. Dan's excited to intern with cityLAB and blog about its grassroots approach to neighborhood revitalization as his academic interests lie in urban development that is socially just and environmentally sustainable. He's been known to eat an entire package of Oreos in one sitting, but makes up for this by eating lots of kale the rest of the time.

Dana Bishop-Root, Co-founder of Transformazium, Braddock, PA.

Darija Wiswell is the project manager for the Allegheny County Health Department’s Safe and Healthy Communities Program. This program seeks to improve land use, zoning and community design to enhance the health and safety of Allegheny County residents. Ms.Wiswell brings her experience in health and nutrition to the subject of the built environment to make healthy lifestyle choices easier. She believes strongly that improving access to non-car transportation could make some of the greatest strides in preventable chronic diseases such as heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes and obesity. Ms.Wiswell strives to incorporate walking, bussing and biking into her regular routine. She has a B.S. in Nutrition from Bradley University in Illinois and is a registered dietitian.

Darla J. Cravotta, a resident of the City of Pittsburgh, has 25 years' experience working in the non-profit and government sectors. Specific interests include project management, project development, organizing and planning. Over the years, Darla's worked on some very cool projects including the recent Green Roof on the County Office Building, the renovation and revitalization of the Carnegie Library system in Pittsburgh, trail development within the City of Pittsburgh (the Eliza Furnace Trail is considered her 2nd child), and trail projects within Allegheny County. Playgrounds, parks, communities and neighborhood development are of keen interest. Darla is a true believer in community engagement and the power of people and public libraries.

David English was a volunteer at our brainstorming event.

David Foster is currently the executive director of the Blue-Green Alliance, a strategic partnership between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the Sierra Club. He also co-chairs the Twin Cities Mayors’ Green Manufacturing Initiative. From 1990-2006, he was the director of USW, District #11, a 13-state region based in Minneapolis, with a diverse membership of 43,000.
In 2004, he was awarded the Jane Lehman Bagley Award for his work building labor/environmental coalitions. He teaches classes on unions and globalization at the Carlson at the University of Minnesota and on advocacy and political leadership in Duluth.
David Mansfield, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

De'Sean Woods is a 2009 graduate of Cornell University. During his time at Cornell, De'Sean began to strengthen his firm belief in building communities. De'Sean has honed his interests through several experiences, including interning at the US Capital and creating events aimed at increasing diversity at Cornell. After Coro, De'Sean hopes to pursue a MPP and eventually a JD to further bolster his undersanding of law, policy and public affairs.

DeAnna Davis is a Pittsburgh realtor and community activist.

Dee Briggs is a sculptor born in 1968 in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania. She received a Masters of Architecture degree from Yale University in 2002 with undergraduate studies in architecture from the City College of New York. Briggs exhibits nationally and teaches in the Schools of Art and Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. She lives and works in New York and Pittsburgh.

In July 2007, Derrick L. Lopez was appointed Chief of High School Reform for the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS). In that role, he developed a comprehensive five-year roadmap to transform the secondary schools in the city. Implementing that roadmap and attempting to re-calibrate the instructional laser for both teachers and students, he now serves as the Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools, where he supervises the comprehensive high schools, serving grades 9-12, and the thematic learning communities that he and his team have co-designed, serving grades 6-12. Mr. Lopez began his career as an educator more than 20 years ago and then chose to pursue a legal career. After his judicial clerkship and a brief foray into private practice, he returned to the field of education. Mr. Lopez received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Dartmouth College; a Juris Doctor cum laude from Cornell Law School; and a Master of Education from Marygrove College. He expects to complete a Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Policy from Michigan State University in the spring 2012. Before joining the PPS, Mr. Lopez served as the Principal of Berkley High School located in Berkley, Michigan.

Award-winning author of When Smoke Ran Like Water, Devra Lee Davis, Ph.D., heads up the world’s first Center on Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. The multi-disciplinary center includes experts in medicine, research, engineering and public policy all contributing to developing cutting-edge studies to identify the causes of cancer and propose policies to reduce the risks of the disease. Honored for her research and public policy work by national and international groups, Ms. Davis is an Honorary Professor at London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Expert Advisor to the World Health Organization.

Diana Block is young and intensely passionate about her role at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and its place in Pittsburgh’s future.

Donald F. Smith is president of the Regional Industrial Development Corporation of Southwestern Pennsylvania (RIDC), one of the region’s best known economic development agencies. Don’s career in economic development began with the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce, and the Pennsylvania Department of Commerce as lead analyst on the state's economic development strategy. After receiving his PhD on research related to venture capital, technological innovation and patterns of Japanese investment in the U.S., he worked at RAND's Critical Technology Institute in D.C. as a policy analyst specializing in the financing of new technologies and regional technology clusters. After RAND he served as director of the Center for Economic Development at Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University for seven years, during which time he has also served as president of the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse. From 2002 until he joined the RIDC, he held a joint economic development post at both Pitt University and Carnegie Mellon University known as the University Partnership.

Donele Wilkins has over two decades of experience in occupational and environmental health as an educator, consultant, trainer, administrator and advocate. In 1994, she co-founded and currently serves as the executive director of Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, an organization addressing environmental issues in the city of Detroit. Ms. Wilkins works with local and national audiences on topics of community driven sustainable development, environmental justice, and occupational and environmental health advocacy.
Ms. Wilkins is the recipient of numerous awards for her work and sits on many boards. She is also the founder and co-chair of the National Black Environmental Justice Network.

Dr. Alan J. Russell, Ph.D. is a Distinguished University Professor of Surgery and the Founding Director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Further, he holds positions as Professor in the departments of Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering and Rehabilitation Science and Technology. In addition to his appointments at the University, Dr. Russell is the Executive Director of the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative, as well as a consultant for UPMC's International and Commercial Services Division. He has founded three biotechnology companies; ICX Agentase LLC, NanoSembly LLC, and O2Cyte LLC. For the last 15 years, Dr. Russell’s work has impacted fields as diverse as chemical and polymer synthesis to tissue engineering and homeland defense. In a series of discoveries Dr. Russell’s laboratory has found how to meld the synthetic and biological worlds. Dr. Russell has given more than 250 national and international invited lecture and holds 14 patents, with 23 additional pending patents.

Dr. Jean-Jacques Sène is a Senegalese national who has studied, lived and worked in Japan, France, and the Netherlands before coming to the United States 10 years ago. His scholarly work focuses on the relations between political power and mythological thinking (political dogmatizing), sustainable development in West Africa, modern African history, and Afro-Asian relations. He is trained and weathered in the management of mass education projects in multicultural contexts. Dr. Sène teaches at Chatham University and is a research associate at Pitt.

Dr. Maria Simbra is an Emmy award-winning medical journalist, who brings a unique set of skills to her position as medical reporter on KDKA-TV. A member of the KDKA news team since 2002, this physician and formally trained journalism professional provides expert and informative reports on the health care issues that affect our hometown residents the most. Dr. Simbra has reported on a variety of timely health care topics – from new medical technology, to trends in health care, to diseases that touch our community — with both insight and empathy. She has been recognized numerous times for her work including an Emmy award in 2008 and was named on Pittsburgh Magazine’s “40 under 40″ list. Dr. Simbra has been a clinical assistant professor of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and was in private practice neurology prior to that. She also teaches medical journalism to both journalism and medical students at Pittsburgh area universities.

Dr. Vonda Wright has gained national prominence as an expert in active aging and dramatically changes the lives of patients and athletes over 40 everyday. Her approach to living vital, active and thriving lives is praised by medical experts, fitness gurus and adult onset exercisers alike. One of only a few female Orthopaedic surgeons in the country, Dr. Wright specializes in sports medicine for athletes over 40 and is a rising star in academia and popular media. She is the creator and director of the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes (PRIMA); a one of a kind program for maximizing the performance and minimizing injury in recreational exercisers over 40 and elite masters athletes alike. Dr. Wright’s first book, “Fitness After 40: How to stay strong at any age” was enthusiastically received and sold into its third printing before reaching book store shelves.

Dutch MacDonald is COO at MAYA Design, a human-centered design and technology consultancy, where he focuses on the intersection of people, technology, and the physical world. Mr. MacDonald is a registered architect in both Pennsylvania and New York. He practiced architecture for more than 17 years, most recently as vice president at EDGE Studio, a respected Pittsburgh-based architectural practice. Along the way, he became fascinated with what sets great creative endeavors apart operationally and how business can use design thinking as a differentiator. Mr. MacDonald’s degree in architecture is from Carnegie Mellon University, where he is an adjunct associate professor. He also studied at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he lived and worked. He was a fellow at the Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh, completing executive seminars in 2003 and 2004.

Elisabeth Schroeder is Executive Director of Riverlife, established in 1999 to create a vision and masterplan for Pittsburgh’s riverfronts. Under her leadership, Riverlife is working to create a grand, urban-scale riverfront park, and through numerous public/private partnerships is moving projects forward such as construction of new riverfront trails, parks and water landings, new lighting and water transportation.

Elizabeth Duroy, Architecture Student.

Having completed a doctorate in Policy Analysis and Management, Emilie Cohen approaches problem solving as an interdisciplinary thinker with a firm grounding in the relationship between the arts, business and the environment. Since 1986 she has owned and operated Emilie Cohen Studios, specializing in fine art framing, gold leaf, and conservation services. Innovative designs are created by applying genuine gold leaf on objects hand-carved by the internationally known Wood Carvers Guild in Nepal as well as on one-of-a-kind and hand-crafted objects. In addition to numerous private clients, Emilie Cohen Studios has had the privilege of working for the finest museums and collections in the region and she teaches gilding preservation at the Carnegie Museum of Art. A recent renovation of a living/studio space in the art and design zone of Lawrenceville allowed Emilie Cohen Studios to expand in 2005.

Emily Sullivan, Point.

Emmai Alaquiva, an Emmy Award-winning producer, entrepreneur, mentor is known for his strong presence in the music and radio industries. Considered a media ambassador to national and international markets for his hometown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Alaquiva holds multiple prominent positions in the field of sound. In addition to having served as the Director of Production for 7 years for WAMO 106.7FM, Alaquiva is also the owner of Ya Momz House, LLC, a full-service recording & production facility. More importantly, he is the founder and Executive Director of The Hip Hop On L.O.C.K. Project, an arts education program for youth ages 13-18 with partnerships throughout Allegheny County such as Communities and Schools, Propel Schools, Pittsburgh Public School and The University of Pittsburgh. His great work in the community place him in the position as one of Pittsburgh Magazine’s 40 Under 40. His passion for his work, and love of the people that create art with him, will continue to inspire us all to live Alaquiva’s personal mantra, “the sky is NOT the limit.”
Additional Awards:
2009 Blazing Leadership Award Winner
2009 Excellence Award Winner
2 Time Telly Award Winner
3 Time A.I.R. Award Winner
2 Time Pittsburgh Hip Hop Award Winner

Dr. Eric Beckman, on leave from his academic post at the University of Pittsburgh, is founder of Cohera Medical Inc. Cohera is working to commercialize a biocompatible, resorbable adhesive that can be used internally during surgery. In 2003, Dr. Beckman created the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative at Pitt which serves as a focal point for research into sustainable design occurring throughout the school of engineering.

Eric Shiner is the director of the Andy Warhol Museum. He attended the University of Pittsburgh where he studied the history of art and architecture and Japanese. He attended graduate school at Osaka University in Japan, where he earned his Masters in the History of Art. Eric's love for Pittsburgh brought him back to his home town after his years in Japan. He looks to Pittsburgh as a base of innovation and industry, a canvas on which to study the melding of science and art.

Eric Singer was a volunteer at our brainstorming event.

Erik Lingren is Executive Director of Venture Outdoors, an organization of over 5,200 members and over 30,000 annual participants. Venture Outdoors offers every outdoor activity imaginable, from Kayak Pittsburgh, to Mountain Dreams portable climbing walls, to a multi-day bike trip on the Allegheny Passage Trail as well as urban food hikes, fly fishing and skiing day trips.

Evan Frazier is senior vice president for Highmark Inc. In that capacity, he oversees community affairs for Pennsylvania's largest health care insurance provider with subsidiary companies that operate across the United States. Mr. Frazier oversees activities that include Highmark's corporate giving, sponsorships, event marketing, volunteerism, select community health initiatives, and the Highmark Foundation. Prior to joining Highmark Inc., for six years Mr. Frazier served as president and CEO of the Hill House Association, one of Southwestern Pennsylvania's most important and comprehensive community service agencies. Mr. Frazier serves as a trustee of Carnegie Mellon University and Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. He also serves on the boards of the Carnegie Science Center, Hill House Economic Development Corporation, Phipps Conservatory, Power of 32, and University of Pittsburgh’s Institute of Politics. In 2008, he launched his first book entitled “Most Likely To Succeed: The Frazier Formula for Success.”

Dr. Evan Stoddard is Associate Dean of the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University, where he is also Associate Director for Community Outreach in the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology. He was co-director of Duquesne University’s Community Outreach Partnership Center. He developed and oversees the College’s first-year learning communities. His Policy Implementation course and Community and University Honors Seminar (www.duq.edu/candu) helped to pioneer service-learning at Duquesne.
From 1989 to 1993 Dr. Stoddard was director of the city of Pittsburgh’s Economic Development Department at the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh. He has been a member of the board of directors of several local public-service corporations. His Ph.D. is from the University of Pittsburgh in Public and International Affairs.

Eve Picker’s is the founder and past president of cityLAB. Her expertise in inner city redevelopment and regeneration has earned her broad recognition both in the Pittsburgh community at large and nationally. She has even been called a local ‘folk hero’. Committed to good design, her work consistently aims to make a positive contribution to the public realm with every project.
Eve has a background as an architect, city planner, urban designer, real estate developer, economic development strategist, publisher (founding publisher of Pop City), and co-founder of a provocative public forum for urban issues. All of these have provided her with a rich understanding of how cities work, how urban neighborhoods can be revitalized, what policies are needed to do so, and the unique marketing that creates the buzz necessary for regeneration. With cityLAB, her first non-profit venture, Eve is turning her passion for cities to broader, city-wide revitalization issues. Read more about Eve at evepicker.com, or say hello at eve@smallchange.com.

Evette is a Lead Experience Designer at BCG Platinion specializing in DesignOps and product strategy. She works with multi-disciplinary teams to launch new products and improve existing ones by defining and prioritizing customer needs, business value, and technical feasibility. She translates qualitative and quantitative research findings into customer journey maps, prototypes, and user stories that support product teams and executive leadership.
Evette's work has spanned across AdTech, MarTech, E-commerce, and Publishing. She has served as President of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators, the second-largest illustration society in the nation. Eve earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from the Savannah College of Art & Design. She currently resides in Pittsburgh with her husband and two sons.

Francisco Escalante is Vice President of Development for Rugby Realty, which owns and manages over 2.5 million square feet of commercial real estate in downtown Pittsburgh. Fran, along with a team of great mechanics and property managers, helps keep these properties running smoothly, efficiently, and cost-effectively. He has discovered through his work that green principles have considerable practical applications, and actually save money. And despite all that, he’s wondering how he fits in with such an august panel.
Fran is also on the board of the Highland Park Community Development Corporation, and the Vice Chair of the Board of the Kelly Strayhorn Theatre in East Liberty.

Franco Harris was chosen in the first round of the 1972 NFL draft the by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He played his first 12 years in the NFL with the Steelers; his 13th and final year (1984) was spent with the Seattle Seahawks. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990
In his first season with the Steelers, Mr. Harris was named the league's Rookie of the Year by both The Sporting News and UPI International. He was chosen for nine consecutive Pro Bowls (from 1972 through 1980), and was All-Pro in 1977. During His tenure as a Steeler, the team won Super Bowls in the 1974, 1975, 1978, and 1979 seasons. In 1975 he was MVP of Super Bowl IV; in that game he rushed for 158 yards and a touchdown on 34 carries.
After Mr. Harris retired from the NFL, he decided to put his Penn State University business and food services degree to use. He founded Super Bakery, later re-named RSuper Foods to make healthy “junk” food for schools and hospitals.

Franklin Krouse, Architecture Student.

Freddie Croce, RA is the Principal and Co-Founder of inter*ARCHITECTURE. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, as chair of the Land Use and Housing Committee, is overseeing the crafting of the Garfield Neighborhood Plan and Strategic Implementation Plan and sits on the Planning and Design committee of Friendship Development Associates. He is also currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Architecture department at Carnegie Mellon University.

Gabriel McMorland (cityLAB intern, 2011) is an Urban Studies major at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a non-traditional student that brings non-traditional ideas to cityLAB. Fundamentally, Gabe believes in bringing people to the streets and in the power of multi-layered thinking. Gabe is honored to be working on cityLAB and hope's his efforts invigorate Pittsburgh’s creative and entrepreneurial spirit. When he’s not wandering through the riverbanks and hollows of our city’s secret geography, Gabe is looking for new ways to reimagine how people can connect with each other and urban space.

Gary Carlough, Founder of EDGE Studio, Pittsburgh.

In his 20-plus years with Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), Geoffrey Canada has become nationally recognized for his pioneering work helping children and families in Harlem and as a passionate advocate for education reform. Since 1990, Mr. Canada has been the President and CEO of HCZ, which The New York Times magazine called “one of the most ambitious social experiments of our time.” In 2005, Mr. Canada was named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by U.S. News and World Report. He was the first recipient of the Heinz Award in the Human Condition bestowed in 1995 by Teresa Heinz and the Heinz Family Foundation. The work of Mr. Canada and HCZ has become a national model and has been the subject of many profiles in the media.
Although Mr. Canada grew up in a poor, sometimes-violent neighborhood, he was able to succeed academically. Drawing upon his own childhood experiences Mr. Canada has written two books: “Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America,” published in 1995, and “Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America,” published in 1998. In its review of “Fist Stick Knife Gun,” Publishers Weekly wrote, “a more powerful depiction of the tragic life of urban children and a more compelling plea to end ‘America's war against itself’ cannot be imagined.”

Georgia Berner is owner and CEO of Berner International Corporation and Berner Energy Recovery, Inc., both privately held, indoor-air energy efficiency and conservation companies. In 1984, Georgia took over Berner International Corporation upon her husband’s death. During her tenure as owner, the company has seen a triple digit increase in growth and profits.
Georgia is a recognized advocate for energy conservation, social programs and philanthropy both locally and nationally and for small business leadership. She created WhatIfPost.com to simplify and make sense of the health care debate in this country.
Georgia has held board positions for many organizations including the Federal Reserve Bank, the Lawrence County Economic Development Corporation, and for the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington DC and currently serves on a number of boards including Catalyst Connection, Children’s Advocacy Center, Economy League of Western Pennsylvania, Adagio Health, Women’s Campaign Forum Foundation and the Pennsylvania League of Young Voters. In 2006, Georgia ran as a candidate for Congress.

Gerald Morosco is the founder and president of Gerald Lee Morosco Architects. He has over 26 years of professional experience in the practice of architecture and the allied arts, land and urban planning, downtown revitalization and interior design. He is widely recognized for his nationally award-winning work in historic preservation.
Jerry trained as an architect traditionally, by way of apprenticeship, in the offices of Taliesin Architects, the successor firm continuing the architectural practice of Frank Lloyd Wright. His best-selling first book, How to Work with an Architect was published in May 2006.

Germaine Williams joined The Pittsburgh Foundation in September 2007 as Program Officer for Arts and Culture. Prior to coming to The Pittsburgh Foundation, Germaine served as Project Director for The Creativity Project at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. There he worked on the development of programs of support for individual artists. Germaine also worked as the Program Associate for the Rockefeller Foundation's Media Arts Fellowship program in New York City. A native of Chicago, he holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga.; and Master's degrees in Arts Management and Social and Cultural History from Carnegie Mellon University.

Internationally renowned livable city advisor and social marketing strategist, Gil Peñalosa is passionate about vibrant and healthy communities. Hoping to improve the quality of life for all residents, Mr. Peñalosa promotes walking and cycling as well as the creation and use of great city parks and trails. As Executive Director of Canadian non-profit organization 8-80 Cities and former Commissioner of Parks, Sports and Recreation in Bogotá, Colombia, his commitment to fostering healthy communities remains front and centre. He also works as Senior Consultant for the renowned Danish firm Gehl Architects, and serves on the Boards of Directors of American Trails, Ciclovias of the Americas, and City Parks Alliance.
As Commissioner of Parks, Sports and Recreation for the City of Bogotá, Colombia, Mr. Peñalosa successfully led the design and development of over 200 parks of which Simón Bolívar, a 360 hectare park in Bogotá, Colombia is the best known; they created the Summer Festival, with over 100 events in 10 days and more than 3 million people attending making it the main recreational and cultural event in the country. His team initiated the Bogotá, Colombia Ciclovia event—car-free Sundays— today an internationally recognized program which sees over 1.3 million people walk, run skate and bike along 121 kilometers of Bogotá’s city roads.
Mr. Peñalosa’s leadership and advice has been sought out by many cities and organizations. A speaker in high demand, he has presented at over 150 workshops and seminars in North America and has provided consultation throughout the Americas, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. He holds a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of California’s Anderson School of Management.

Gill Wildman is a co-founder of Plot, an innovation agency that develops creative business strategy. Gill believes organizations need to realize the value of both end-user participation and interdisciplinary collaboration to succeed with their innovation strategies and design initiatives. Plot were consultants for the 6% Place.
Wildman was a leader of the Design Council’s Humanising Technology initiative, Assistant Director of the Design, Strategy and Innovation MA at Brunel University, and has been active in shaping the definition of Service Design for the British Standards Institute. She is now an Industry board member for Innovative Product Design and Interactive Media Design and External Examiner for the MDesign at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee. Together with her partner Nick Durrant, Gill is currently Nierenberg Chair of Design at Carnegie Mellon University.

Gillian Goldberg, philosophy graduate.

Gloria Blint is the president and CEO of Red House Communications, based on Pittsburgh’s South Side.
Her early career at regional ad agencies focused on making big brands better, including Welch Foods, Apple Computer, McDonald’s Restaurants and Humana. In 1993, she struck out out on her own and founded Red House Communications. As principal, she oversees branding strategies for clients who have included Cellular One, Steak Escape Restaurants and Panera Bread, as well as not-for-profits such as Pitt School of Law, Carnegie Museum of Art, Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape/The Hero Project, and The Andy Warhol Museum. Recently, launched its integrated branding and repositioning effort: Pittsburgh. Imagine What You Can Do Here.
Red House ranks among the top 10 advertising agencies in Pittsburgh and has won more than 200 creative awards.

Grant Oliphant is vice president of programs and planning at The Heinz Endowments. He manages the Endowments' 12-member program staff and a $60 million annual grant-making portfolio encompassing five areas: Arts & Culture; Children, Youth & Families; Education; Environment; and Innovation Economy. He also works with and guides special task forces promoting civic design, school reform, and stronger links between environmental stewardship and economic development.

Harold Miller is president of Future Strategies, LLC, a consulting firm in Pittsburgh, PA, which specializes in analysis, strategy and communications. He also serves as Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University where he was Associate Dean from 1987 to 1992. He created and maintains www.pittsburghfuture.com, an internet resource on economic development issues for the region, and he writes the a “Regional Insights” column for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Mr. Miller has served as the President of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Economy League of Southwestern Pennsylvania, and as the Director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Growth Alliance.

Heather Arnet is Executive Director of the Women and Girls Foundation (WGF) and an Elected School Board Director of the Pittsburgh Public Schools. At WGF, Arnet has spearheaded efforts to increase women’s representation on the public and corporate boards of Pittsburgh and in elected office. Heather and the Foundation recently received National and International media attention for their successful “Girlcott” of Abercrombie & Fitch appearing on NBC’s Today Show, CNN, Fox News, ABC and CBS News as well as National Public Radio, and the BBC. Arnet has been identified as one of Pittsburgh’s “Top 40 under 40” by Pittsburgh Magazine, as one the “Top Twelve Noteworthy Business Leaders of 2006” by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and received the Diamond Award, for “Outstanding CEO Leadership” by the Pittsburgh Business Times in April 2008. She is an active member of NOW, The Women’s Funding Network and Women in Philanthropy and former Regional Vice President of the Pennsylvania Women’s Campaign Fund.Arnet has her BA degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Literary and Cultural Studies and Drama. In addition to her activist and philanthropy work, Arnet also writes and directs feminist theatre. Most recently Arnet’s play "Yo’Mama!" (about the challenges and joys of modern motherhood) was awarded a grant from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and the Sprout Fund and has been produced in Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Alaska.

Heather Estes, Director of Marketing at Deeplocal.

Hilary Robinson is the dean of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Trained as a painter in the 1970s, she spent many years working as an artist and as an arts administrator, critic and lecturer. She taught history and theory of art at the University of Ulster and in 1998 became research co-ordinator, helping, by 2001, to place the School in the top tier of Art and Design institutions in the UK. In 2002 she was appointed Head of the School of Art and Design. Her own research is in the field of contemporary art theory and has published numerous journal, magazine and catalogue essays, including the anthology Visibly Female in 1987, Feminism-Art-Theory 1968-2000 in 2001 and in 2006 Reading Art, Reading Irigaray: the Politics of Art by Women.
She is a board member of The Andy Warhol Museum, The Mattress Factory, Quantum Theatre, Silver Eye, and the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, as well as a member of the Programming Advisory Committee of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

Howard Russell (cityLAB intern 2011) is currently working toward a Bachelor of Architecture degree at Cornell University. His most recent academic work includes a collaborative studio to design an affordable housing community in Takoradi, Ghana and a semester studying architecture, urbanism, and socio-politics in South America. In addition to architecture, his interests include historic preservation, community design, and downtown redevelopment. Some of his most fulfilling work has been with a student-run organization called DesignConnect where he has led various teams of students working on community-based design projects in Upstate New York. Howard is delighted to be working with cityLAB at this very exciting time for the City of Pittsburgh.

Hugh Herr is Associate Professor within MIT's Program of Media Arts and Sciences, and The Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His primary research objective is to apply principles of biomechanics and neural control to guide the designs of wearable robotic systems for human rehabilitation and physical augmentation. In the area of human augmentation, Prof. Herr has employed cross bridge models of skeletal muscle to the design and optimization of a new class of human-powered mechanisms that amplify endurance for cyclic anaerobic activities. He has also built elastic shoes that increase metabolic economy for running, and leg exoskeletons for walking load-carrying augmentation. In the area of assistive technology, Prof. Herr’s group has developed powered orthotic and prosthetic mechanisms for use as assistive interventions in the treatment of leg disabilities caused by amputation, stroke, cerebral palsy, and multiple sclerosis. Prof. Herr received the Heinz Award for Technology in 2007.

Isaac Kwon, Architecture Student.

Ivonne Gutiérrez Bucher is Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Department of Welfare. Additionally she has served within the Pennsylvania Department of Aging as Deputy Secretary of Aging, Director of the Office of Community Services & Advocacy, and Chief of Staff. Previously Ms. Bucher served at the Pennsylvania Department of Health as Director of the Bureau of Family Health, and as Pennsylvania’s Maternal and Child Health Services Title V Director.
Ms. Bucher was the first Hispanic in the history of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to reach the level of Deputy Secretary and is the recipient of numerous awards recognizing her work. A native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Ms. Bucher holds an MBA and is a Licensed Registered Nurse with clinical experience in Medical Surgical, Emergency and Geriatric Medicine.

Jack Lew has been with Electronic Arts for four years and is currently the manager of Global Art Talent Resources where he develops strategies for identifying and recruiting top art talent globally. He has visited close to 50 colleges throughout the US and Canada identifying programs where EA has had collaboration and curriculum development.
Before joining EA, Jack was Senior Manager of Artist and Professional Development at Disney Feature Animation Florida and responsible for training initiatives, continuing education as well as evaluating all college art applicants. Jack has also served as a Professor of Art and Department Head at the Kansas City Art Institute and continues to be active in promoting the education of young artists. Jack received his MFA degree from Syracuse University and BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Jack Marshall is the President and founder of ProEthics LTD. A graduate of Harvard College, and Georgetown University Law Center, he practiced criminal law in Massachusetts and organization law in the District of Columbia, and has led non-profit organizations devoted to education, public policy research, legal services and health care. He teaches interactive seminars on legal, business, and government ethics from coast to coast.
His ethics commentary has been featured on radio talk shows and television news segments across the country, as well as on “Tell Me More” on NPR,“Your World” with Neil Cavuto, and as a regular contributor to “O” Magazine. He is the co-author, with Pulitzer Prize winning historian Ed Larson, of The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow, and contributed articles on baseball ethics to the Hardball Times 2009 and 2010 Baseball Annuals.
He is the author of a current events and American culture ethics commentary blog, Ethics Alarms (ethicsalarms.com) and the ethics resource website, The Ethics Scoreboard (ethicsscoreboard.com).
He lives in Alexandria with his wife and business partner, Grace Marshall, their son Grant, and their Jack Russell Terrier, Rugby. Like all ethicists, he is a lifetime fan of the Boston Red Sox

Jacques d’Amboise, who was raised on the streets of New York and went on to become the first male ballet star in the United States, now leads the field of arts education with a model program that exposes thousands of school children each year to the magic and discipline of dance. In 1976, while still a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, Mr. d’Amboise founded the National Dance Institute (NDI) in the belief that the arts have a unique power to engage and motivate individuals towards excellence. Over the last 30 years NDI programs, in New York City and their affiliates, have reached and influenced well over two million children.

James P. Smith holds the chair in labor markets and demographic studies at Rand Corp. He led panel for the National Academy of Sciences on the economic and tax effects of immigration. Dr. Smith has served as principal investigator on a number of projects, including an analysis of the effects of economic development on labor markets; a study of black-white wages and employment; trends in women's wages and labor force growth; migration in developing countries; and the economic impact of immigration. In addition, Dr. Smith has participated in projects studying the evaluation of economic loss in wrongful death cases.

Jim Denova is Vice President with the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation. His primary responsibilities include program development and grantmaking in the areas of education and economic development.
Jim holds a Ph. D. from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work with a concentration in social research. He has over 30 years of experience in nonprofit administration and philanthropy. Prior positions include: Research Director for the Community College of Beaver County, Vice President of Research & Planning for the United Way of Allegheny County, Senior Program Officer for the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, and Executive Director of The Forbes Fund.
He has consulted with other nonprofit organizations in the areas of program evaluation and strategic planning, and has publications that include school-based health services, adult education, and nonprofit management. He serves on the Advisory Council of the West Virginia Department of Education’s 21st Century Learning Initiative, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild Advisory Committee, and the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute of Politics Board of Fellows.

Jane Houlihan directs research programs at the Environmental Working Group. In spearheading work that exposes health risks from toxins in food, air, water and consumer products, Ms. Houlihan has propelled EWG to the forefront of debates on such critical issues as mercury in seafood, contaminants in drinking water, chemicals in personal care products, and the human "body burden," or what EWG calls "the pollution in people."
She serves as a national spokesperson on issues of environmental health, having appearing on such shows as 20/20, the network nightly news and morning shows, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. She brings a perspective that draws from her experience both as a researcher and a mother of two young children. Prior to joining EWG, she practiced as an environmental engineer for 10 years.
She holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in engineering from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, with postgraduate studies at Stanford University.

Janera Solomon is the executive director of the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, a multi-arts center in Pittsburgh, PA. An experienced curator, Ms. Solomon has worked with the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and developed the “First Voice International Black Performing Arts Festival” produced by the August Wilson Center for African American Culture in 2007. She has worked on a range of cultural projects including content development and programming for Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, project management for the August Wilson Center, branding at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and most recently, program planning for the National Museum for African American History and Culture currently under development in Washington D.C.

Janie French is the Director of Green Infrastructure Programs with the PA Environmental Council. PEC is a statewide non profit that works to protect and restore our natural and built environments through innovation, collaboration, education and advocacy. Ms French has more than 28 years professional experience in community based planning and water resource sustainability. Before joining PEC, she served as State Coordinator and Outreach Team Manger for Canaan Valley Institute, working with more than 150 community groups to implement locally led solutions that addressed rural water issues in PA, MD, VA and WV. Most recently, she was the Watersheds Program Manger for 3 River Wet Weather where she was responsible for building strategic alliances between local municipal governments, non profits and academia to educate and advocate for efficient, cost effective alternatives for solving combined sewer overflows in Allegheny County. Ms French is a founding member of the PA Organizations for Watersheds and Rivers and Professional Conservationist Award recipient from the State Council of Trout Unlimited.

Jarmele Fairclaugh is a Finance Specialist with The Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh.

Mixed media & folk performance artist Jason Sauer owns and runs the gallery Most Wanted Fine Art on Penn Ave in Garfield. He is currently Arts District Manager at Penn Avenue Arts Initiative (PAAI) and manages the Green and Screen project. He is a Community Service leader for city of Pittsburgh, and builds and drives demolition derby cars.

Jay Katarincic is a Managing Director of Draper Triangle Ventures and is an expert in early stage venture investing. He serves on the board of directors of several privately held corporations including: Carnegie Learning, Inc., iKnowthat.com, Inc., Plextronics, Inc., BitArmor Systems, Inc., CardioInsight, and BodyMedia, Inc. as well as the board of trustees of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, Shady Side Academy, the Institute for Learning Abilities and the Holy Family Foundation.
Prior to founding Draper Triangle, Jay served as Vice President-Corporate Development and General Counsel of J. Edward Connelly Associates, Inc., a diversified holding company where he was responsible for all corporate acquisitions, minority investments, divestitures and financings.

Dr. VanBriesen received her B.S. in secondary education and chemistry from Northwestern University. She received her M.S. and Ph.D in Civil Engineering from Northwestern University. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. VanBriesen is the Director of the Water Quality in Urban Environmental System (Water QUEST) Center at Carnegie Mellon University. She has received numerous awards including the George Tallman Ladd Award for outstanding research and professional accomplishment, the Pennsylvania Water Environment Association Professional Research Award, the Professor of the Year from the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the McGraw Hill-AEESP Award for outstanding teaching in Environmental Engineering and Science. Dr. VanBriesen’s research interests include biogeochemistry of recalcitrant organics (including chelates and PCBs), thermodynamic analysis of biological systems, and detection and quantification of pathogenic organisms in drinking water systems.

Jennifer Nielsen (cityLAB intern, 2011) is committed to building and sustaining relationships with community organizations and has experience supporting non-profit institutions in a variety of community outreach, volunteer management and program development roles. She received her B.A. in Fine Art and Psychology from West Virginia University and is currently enrolled in the Master’s of Adult and Community Education program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a specific interest in community education programming. She currently works with Office of External Affairs at the RAND Corporation’s Pittsburgh office.

Jennifer Sung is a northern metropolitan Virginian native studying towards an Industrial Design major, photography minor at Carnegie Mellon University School of Design. She is inspired by nature and how things work naturally in the world. She loves to learn about new things and gain from the people around her. Jennifer is excited to help make a change in Pittsburgh through cityLAB's experiments. She hopes to expand her knowledge with her experiences with cityLAB.

Dr. Jerry Paytas is the director of research for the Economic Architecture Practice of GSP Consulting. Formerly, he was the director of the Center for Economic Development (CED) at Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Paytas serves on the board of Sustainable Pittsburgh and is a Past-President of the Economic Club of Pittsburgh. He received a B.A. in Sciences and International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University, a M.A. in Urban and Regional Planning a Ph.D. in Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Paytas led the EDA’s study on Universities and the Development of Industry Clusters. In 1999, he developed the Innovation Assets index for the Development Report Card for the States, which continues to be used as a neutral arbiter of state performance. He also developed the new standard definition of technology industries for use with the new NAICS coding system for the State Science and Technology Institute.

Jes Friedrichs was a volunteer at our brainstorming event.

Prior to launching Schell Games in 2002 Jesse Schell was the Creative Director of the Disney Imagineering VR Studio where he spent seven years as a designer, programmer and manager on numerous projects for Disney theme parks. As CEO of Schell Games he designs and develops widely recognized mass market MMOs, interactive theme park attractions and other projects.
Jesse is also a Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center where he teaches classes in Game Design. Jesse recently authored the critically acclaimed book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, which Game Developer Magazine named book of the year in 2008.
website: jesseschell.com

Jessi Klein is a writer performer who has appeared on Best Week Ever, The Today Show, Comedy Central, and CNN. She's written for the movies and some shows, including Saturday Night Live, which she's mentioning because that's probably the one you've heard of.

Jessica Trybus is CEO and founder of Etcetera Edutainment, a Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) spin off company that delivers game-based training simulations to train the next generation of workforce. Ms. Trybus also serves on the faculty of CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center. Her work at the University focuses on the R&D of how to build game-based learning to engage and motivate, with emphasis on exploring younger generations, and has contributed to CMU's recognition as an international leader in using video game technologies to teach more effectively. Ms. Trybus also serves as Game-Based Learning and Communications consultant for The New Media Institute, is on the board of the Andy Warhol Museum, and of TiE-Pittsburgh, a global organization that focuses on fostering entrepreneurship and innovation. Prior to working with interactive entertainment technologies, Ms. Trybus spent several years in marketing, business development, and project management with Viacom and AltaVista (Palo Alto).

Since taking office in January 1992 as Philadelphia’s Councilman-at-large, Jim Kenney has championed numerous issues affecting the entire city of Philadelphia, including economic development, family and domestic violence, school violence, anti-graffiti measures, fire and safety inspections, and restructuring the Section 8 housing program. Recent initiatives include reforming Philadelphia’s campaign finance laws and improving the region’s information technology industry. Every initiative undertaken by Jim Kenney is with one goal in mind: convincing current residents to stay in Philadelphia while attracting others to move here.

Jim Russell, co-founder and chief strategist of the Pittsburgh Expatriate Network (PEN) is a talent migration analyst tracing how Rust Belt refugees are responsible for economic development around the world. He archives his journey at his blog, Burgh Diaspora. Jim’s interest in the move to improve stems from a nomadic lost decade spent hitchhiking around the United States and Canada. Among his itinerant jobs was a position as a set dresser on the film “Ethan Frome”, starring Liam Neeson and Patricia Arquette. With the proceeds from that experience, he bought a one-way ticket to Athens, Greece. How he managed to return to the States is another story for another time.

Jimmy Krenn rose from the ranks of stand-up comedians to become Pittsburgh’s premier comedian and broadcast personality. Jimmy was voted five times as one of the Top Entertainers in the City by Pittsburgh Magazine. Jimmy has performed with Jay Leno, Howie Mandel, Dennis Miller, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Lewis, Gilbert Gottfried, Tim Allen, and many other nationally known celebrities. His act features a variety of impressions, characters, and anecdotes, helping to make him the area’s most popular and beloved performer.

Joey Rahimi started CollegeProwler.com with his CMU friends, publishing over 300 guidebooks that are in bookstores nationwide. He then took his passion for marketing and launched Branding Brand, an innovative public relations and online marketing group with Chris Mason and Christina Koshzow.

Johann Zietsman was born in the 50’s in South Africa, and has nurtured a life-long passion for the transformative value and role of the arts in a community. Eventually gaining degrees in architecture and music, he returned to his homeland in 1982, and started a 20-year career in executive arts management positions, including a music school, two orchestras, an opera and music theater company, a community arts center, a large multi-theater performing arts company, and a commercial communications company. During this time he was actively involved in the political transformation of South Africa through pioneering work in the arts, resulting in recognition from Mr. Nelson Mandela’s government. As a volunteer, he also launched and directed two community youth initiatives, which currently serve about 4000 at-risk kids in the townships.
Johann moved to the USA in 2002 to run the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA), based in NY, and then to Mesa, AZ, in 2007, when he now serves as Executive Director of the Mesa Arts Center, and Director of Arts and Culture for the city of Mesa.

Our moderator, John Craig, is president of Pittsburgh Regional Indicators, a broad-based community effort to establish a regional indicator program by encouraging the use of data in establishing public policy. Based at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research, it publishes 290 indicators in 10 areas of community activity from arts, to economy, to environment, to health and transportation. He started this project in 2003 after his retirement from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he was editor for 26 years.
Mr. Craig served as one of the first co-chairmen of the Riverlife Task Force, from 1999 to 2006, and continues to serve on its executive committee. He is also involved in complimentary activities as a commissioner of the Port of Pittsburgh and member of the board of the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area.

The Honorable John Fetterman, came to Braddock in the 90s as an Americorps volunteer after completing his Harvard education, and decided to stay. In 2001, Fetterman started a program helping youth attain GED certification and find employment. Then, in 2005, he ran for mayor and won. His leadership focuses on three things: improving the quality of life for young people in Braddock, attracting the kind of outside energy, ideas, and interest from the artistic, urbanist, and creative communities, and subverting the $2.5 billion Mon-Fayette Expressway designed to run straight through the middle of Braddock.
Fetterman’s efforts in his first term are paying dividends for the Braddock community. Creation of a large community center and a major piece of public art are in the works. A garden now sits on what was once one of the town’s most prominent overgrown lots. And an influx of activity and interest of all sorts from outsiders is generating a upswing in attention for this Southwestern PA municipality.

John Folan is the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Professor of Architecture, Director of the Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS), track Chair of the Masters of Urban Design (MUD) Program, and member of the Urban Laboratory faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois (Bachelor of Science in Architecture, High Honors) and the University of Pennsylvania (Masters of Architecture) where he was a Kahn Fellow and recipient of the Henry Adams Medal. Registered as an Architect since 1995, John has focused his research on the methodologies employed in the translation from drawing to building.

John Norton is an internationally recognized expert in the science of Albert Einstein. He has published extensively on Einstein's discoveries of general relativity, special relativity and the light quantum and also on philosophical aspects of Einstein's work. He has been a contributing editor to the publication of Einstein's collected papers and serves on the publication project's advisory board. His most notable achievement was the analysis of the "Zurich Notebook," which contains private calculations made by Einstein in preparation for his greatest discovery, the general theory of relativity.
In 2005, Professor Norton was an invited speaker at many conferences celebrating the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis of 1905, including events in Washington, London, Berlin, Tenerife, Jerusalem, Pasadena, Florence and Bern in Switzerland.
Professor Norton has taught in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, since 1983. He was its Chair from 2000-2005 and, since 2005, has been the Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, which is the world's leading research institute in philosophy of science. In an earlier career, Professor Norton was a chemical engineer and worked for Shell Refining making gasoline. That, he remarks, was worthwhile work, but pondering Einstein, his discoveries and a wide range of problems in history and philosophy of science is infinitely more entertaining.

John Rahaim was appointed Planning Director for the City and County of San Francisco at the beginning of 2008. In that role he is responsible for overseeing long range planning, development entitlements and environmental reviews for all physical development in the City. In addition to development and environmental reviews, John is overseeing a number of planning initiatives well underway with the City of San Francisco. These include a series of comprehensive neighborhood plans, a city-wide historic resource survey and updates to the City’s General Plan.
Prior to his appointment in San Francisco, John was Planning Director for the City of Seattle, as well as the Founding Executive Director of CityDesign, Seattle’s office of Urban Design, and the Executive Director of the Seattle Design Commission, the city’s primary design advisory panel for public projects and related urban design initiatives. Before Seattle, John was with the City of Pittsburgh Department of City Planning, where he served as Associate Director in charge of development review and the rewrite of the City’s Zoning Ordinance.
John received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Michigan, and a Master of Architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

John Rother is the Executive Vice President of Policy and Strategy for AARP. He is responsible for the federal and state public policies of the Association, for international initiatives, and for formulating AARP's overall strategic direction. He is an authority on Medicare, managed care, long-term care, Social Security, pensions and the challenges facing the boomer generation.
Prior to coming to AARP in 1984, Mr. Rother served eight years with the U.S. Senate as Special Counsel for Labor and Health to former Senator Jacob Javits (R-NY), then as Staff Director and Chief Counsel for the Special Committee on Aging under its Chairman, Senator John Heinz (R-PA).
He serves on several notable Boards and Commissions, including the National Coalition on Health Care and the Alliance for Healthcare Reform, is a frequently quoted in the news, and regularly presents at conferences and congressional briefings. John Rother is an honors graduate of Oberlin College and the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Law.

John Schombert is the executive director of the 3 Rivers Wet Weather (3RWW), a non-profit organization created in 1998 to help municipalities in the Pittsburgh region address their aging and deteriorating sewer infrastructure. Funded by federal, state and local governments, 3RWW helps communities by benchmarking wet weather technology and creating regional solutions to sewage and stormwater overflow issues. Prior to joining 3RWW, Mr. Schombert worked for nearly three decades in the Allegheny County Health Department’s water pollution, public drinking water and waste management programs. Most recently, he served as chief of Public Drinking Water and Waste Management. In October 2002, Mr. Schombert was appointed to the Pennsylvania State Board for the Certification of Sewage Treatment Plant and Waterworks Operators. Mr. Schombert also resides on several boards including the Local Government Academy and the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association. An expert on wet weather issues, he is a registered environmental health specialist and a Pennsylvania-certified sewage enforcement officer. He graduated from Thiel College with a B.S. in physics.

Jon Colombo was a volunteer at our brainstorming event.

Jon Rubin is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores the social dynamics of public places and the idiosyncrasies of individual and group behavior. His solo and collaborative projects include creating a game show for ideas, opening a fake store in an indoor shopping mall, starting a restaurant that secretly runs via takeout from its double across the street, broadcasting an office's telephone conversations through a talking piano and developing a free nomadic art school. He has exhibited video, drawings, installations and public projects internationally, including at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico), The Rooseum (Sweden), Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (Germany), Nemo Film Festival (Paris), as well as in backyards, living rooms and street corners. He is famous locally for his current project, the Waffle Shop.

Jonathan Greene is an architect and designer who has taken a different philosophical approach to design. Traveling extensively he documents buildings and places, settling for short periods in places that “beg of more attention” where he temporarily puts down roots, and funnels his experience of that place into a dwelling for himself.

Joseph Koon, Architecture Student.

Josh Knauer is the Co-founder & CEO of Rhiza Labs. He has been a social entrepreneur for the past 20 years, creating and leading successful organizations in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors. His ability to spot emerging trends in technology and how they can be used for the betterment of society and the environment have caused him to be considered a leading expert in the field. He’s been featured in Time, Fortune, Newsweek and Wired magazines, and was even named a New Media Hero by the Utne Reader. Prior to founding Rhiza Labs, Josh founded and ran Green Marketplace, an online clearing-house for socially and environmentally responsible products, services and information, which was sold to Gaiam in 2002.

Joshua Welsh, Adjunct Instructor, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University.

Joy Kang, Architecture Student.

Joyce Bromberg is director of WorkSpace Futures Research at Steelcase Inc., overseeing a team of Human Centered Design Researchers which look at vertical markets like Healthcare and Higher Education and who conduct ‘pioneering research’ for new product development.
Joyce joined Steelcase in 1982 as an interior designer and in 1986 was promoted to Interior Design project manager, designing many award-winning showrooms and industry/trade show events. She has served as manager of Strategic Planning for the architect and design market, director of Surface Materials and Advanced Concepts and director of Space-Planning Research and Environment Design. In these roles, she was responsible for all research and development activities related to space planning, the design of Steelcase environments, and was the lead developer of community-based planning, a space-planning methodology and web-based tool set.

Dr. Jules Rosen is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and at the Katz Graduate School of Business. He serves as the Chief of Geriatric Psychiatry Services at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and is the Director of the ACGME - approved Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship Program and Co-Director of the Hartford Foundation Center of Excellence in Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship, Clinician-Educator Track.
Dr. Rosen has a medical degree from the University of Cincinnati and completed his psychiatry residency at the University of Michigan. In 2003, he was named Educator of the Year by the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry. In 2006, he was honored with induction into the “Academy of Master Educators” at the University of Pittsburgh and was awarded the “Golden Apple Teacher of the Year Award” in 2008 by the residents and fellows at the University of Pittsburgh, Dept. of Psychiatry. He has authored over 75 peer-reviewed articles in his subspecialty of geriatric psychiatry. His areas of research interest include pharmacological and behavioral treatment of behavioral disturbances in dementia, nursing home depression, and organizational changes in nursing homes to enhance quality of life.

Kaitlin Miciunas, Architecture Student.

Karla Boos, Founder and Artistic Director, Quantum Theatre.

Since becoming executive director of the Bloomfield Development Corporation in 2009, Karla Owens has secured the organization’s 501(c)(3) status, prepared by-laws, raised over $100.000 in grant funds, implemented Liberty Avenue streetscape improvements, and assisted with restructuring the Baum/Centre Initiative. Additional priorities for Owens include participating in the West Penn Community Partnership, collaborating with East End Partners and Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development on new funding opportunities, and convening developers and stakeholders to build a new senior living center. Owens has previously served as Mainstreet Manager for the Bloomfield Business Association and as an adjunct faculty member with Robert Morris University’s School of Business.

Kathleen McKenzie has served as Allegheny County Deputy Manager since February 2004, responsible for the supervision and administration of the county’s operations as well as for major policy initiatives of Chief Executive Dan Onorato, such as the Kane Committee, a committee to restructure four county nursing homes, the Parks Action Team which established the first county parks foundation, and a committee to study the effectiveness and efficiency of county and city government headed by Chancellor Mark Nordenberg.
Previously, Ms. McKenzie was an operational manager for both West Penn Allegheny Health Systems and the City of Pittsburgh. In addition, she has over 10 years of experience engaged in the private practice of law.
Ms. McKenzie completed a B.A. in government and law from Lafayette College and received her Juris Doctor from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She currently sits on the boards of various public and community organizations, including the Pittsburgh Regional Health Care Initiative, Allegheny Correctional Health Services, Inc. Board, Riverlife and the International Women’s Forum.

Kathy Oliver, Producer.

Kathy Savitt, Founder & CEO | Prior to founding Lockerz, Kathy served as EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (AE.com), a leading retailer that designs, markets and sells its own brand of current clothing for 15 to 25 year-olds. Previously Ms. Savitt was VP of Strategic Communications, Content and Initiatives for Amazon.com where she had responsibility for global brand management, external and internal strategic communications, entertainment and original programming, worldwide PR, all offline marketing programs and also led Amazon's gifting and holiday customer experience programs. Prior to Amazon.com, Kathy was President and Co-Founder of MWW/Savitt, where she counseled more than 150 corporate clients including many global Fortune 500 brands. She is currently a Board Member for Build-A-Bear, an interactive entertainment retailer of customized stuffed animals. Originally from New York, Ms. Savitt received a BA in History and Government from Cornell University.

Kendra Gaul, Architecture Student.

Kevin Altomari is the Associate Dean of Enrollment and Student Services at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also president of the Neighborhood Business Inc., a company that helps small entrepreneurs grow their ideas into business plans.

The Pittsburgh Refugee Center's Executive Director, Khadra Mohammed, is a native of Somalia and has over twenty years of experience in working with refugee populations, both in the US and in refugee camps in Pakistan and Kenya. In Pittsburgh, for the past eight years, she has advocated on behalf of local refugees and brought awareness of refugee issues to the attention of the greater Pittsburgh community. Ms. Mohammed is also a published author of several children's books. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Girl Scouts Woman of Distinction in 2005, and was honored with PUMP and Pittsburgh Magazine's 2005 40 under 40 Award.

Khari Mosley is the Director of Green Economy Initiatives for G-Tech Strategies. Most recently he was the National Political/Policy Director for the League of Young Voters/Education Fund. He also is the elected democratic chairman of Pittsburgh's 22nd Ward. Khari has received a number of awards from various organizations including: Pittsburgh Acorn, Pittsburgh Magazine, the Pittsburgh League of Women Voters, the Pittsburgh Chapter of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. Khari sits on the boards of The Pittsburgh Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, The Pittsburgh ACLU, Pittsburgh Chapter Americans for Democratic Action, WQED's Community Advisory Board and The Mattress Factory, a contemporary art museum. He attended Indiana Univ of PA where studied political-science and is a graduate of The Green For All Academy. Khari lives in Pittsburgh, with his wife Chelsa and their son Thaddeus.

Kim O’Dell is the director of the Heinz Awards program, one of the projects of the Heinz Family Philanthropies. Presented since 1994 to honor the life’s work of the late U.S. Sen. John Heinz, the $250,000 Awards are among the largest individual achievement prizes.
They recognize remarkable contributions across a spectrum of activity – from the arts and the environment to technology and public policy. In addition to the Awards, Kim runs several other programs, including the John Heinz Senate Fellowship on issues of the Aging and the Teresa Heinz Environmental Scholarships. Prior to the Awards, Kim worked for Senator Heinz and the Heinz family in Washington, DC. She graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in business.

Kimberly C. Ellis, Ph.D. (historic.hill@gmail.com) is a scholar of American and Africana Studies who merges her scholarship with art and activism. She is Executive Director of the Historic Hill Institute and the Arts Outreach and Architectural Historian for the completion of the Hill District Master Plan.
Affectionately known as “Dr. Goddess”, she is also a poet, playwright and performing artist (www.drgoddess.com). An expert on the works of the late, great, playwright, August Wilson, Dr. Ellis taught the first seminar course on his works at the University of Pittsburgh and continues to lecture, teach and workshop his dramas.
Also an activist, Dr. Goddess received the 2009 Thomas Merton Center’s “New Person” Awards for combining art and activism with social media and the 2008 YWCA Racial Justice Award for organizing the successful “Raise Your Hand! No Casino on the Hill” Campaign. She was most recently given one of the "Fab 40" awards in the 100th Anniversary year of the New Pittsburgh Courier, as an honor to the next generation of leaders.

For the last 25 years, Dr. Lalit Chordia has pioneered R&D and commercial applications of supercritical fluid technology, a green materials processing technology. He was co-founder of Suprex Corp, which focused on small-scale, analytical supercritical fluid systems, and in 1990 he formed Thar Technologies to work on larger-scale supercritical fluid systems. He holds 12 patents and has 20+ pending patents.

As an Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, Laurence Glasco is focused on African American history, both locally and globally. He has studied the history of Black Pittsburgh for the past decade and researched and narrated the recent exhibition on slavery in early Pittsburgh, “Free at Last?,” which is available on-line at http://www.library.pitt.edu/freeatlast. Professor Glasco has written numerous publications on the history of Black Pittsburgh and is currently working on a biography of K. Leroy Irvis; on “August Wilson’s Pittsburgh,” a study of Pittsburgh to accompany August Wilson’s plays; and with the Carnegie Museum of Art on a major up-coming exhibition of the photographs of Teenie Harris.
Glasco’s activities in Pittsburgh’s African American community go beyond teaching and research. He has received several awards for his community work, serves on the advisory committee to restore the New Granada Theater in the Hill, delivered a lecture at the Economic Mini-Summit on Black Empowerment and spoke at the opening ceremonies of the K. Leroy Irvis Science Center at CCAC. In addition, he works toward preservation of historic Black sites in Pittsburgh as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation and a member of Young Preservationists Association.

Laura Ellsworth, partner-in-charge of the Pittsburgh office of Jones Day, practices across a wide range of complex litigation matters, including product liability and bankruptcy matters. Her work includes coordinating and litigating nationwide matters for various clients, and she has appeared in numerous federal and state courts throughout the United States.
In 2008, she was a lead lawyer in the landmark public nuisance case in which the Rhode Island Supreme Court rejected an attempt to apply public nuisance law to the manufacture and sale of products. She has also represented the creditor's committee in the largest bankruptcy proceedings of a health system in the country.
In 2008, Ms. Ellsworth was named by Governor Edward Rendell as one of Pennsylvania's "Best 50 Women in Business." She has been involved extensively in electronic discovery and has served as a managing editor of The Sedona Principles: Best Practices Recommendations and Principles for Addressing Electronic Document Production. She currently serves on the Firm's e-Discovery Committee and has participated actively in federal and state rulemaking in this area.

LaVerne Baker Hotep is director of community education and outreach at the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime, where she oversees school and community-based violence prevention programs. She and her staff develop community training and education programs unique to the violence prevention landscape, which include producing and hosting “Peace It Together Pittsburgh”, a radio talk show focusing on issues of peace building.
Over the past 16 years, Hotep has served as minority outreach specialist for the American Cancer Society, and on the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation‘s National African American Advisory Council. In 1998, she founded SisterTeach Council, an organization that designs and publishes culturally relevant health education materials and programs for women of color. In addition, she is creator, producer and host of “WellWoman Radio Retreat”, a program which focuses on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health of women.
She currently sits on the board of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, the South Pittsburgh Peace Coalition, and the steering committee of the Girls Coalition of Southwestern PA. Recognized by the New Pittsburgh Courier as one of Pittsburgh’s 50 African American Women of Influence, Hotep has received numerous awards including the coveted Women in Communications Matrix Award and the YWCA 2004 Racial Justice Award for her work as a community outreach specialist and educator.

Lena Andrews graduated from Tufts University in 2009 with B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy. After Coro, Lena hopes to pursue a Ph. D. in Political Science, with a focus in Democratic Theory. She is new to Pittsburgh and enjoys all the warm weather.

Lenka Clayton works on this blog, and other creative duties for cityLAB. She is an artist and documentary filmmaker whose work investigates the poetry of labor expended toward an epic, utopian, often impossible task. In recent projects she searched for and photographed the 613 people mentioned in a German newspaper, hand-numbered 7000 stones, filmed one person of each age from 1 – 100, and re-organised the 4100 words of President Bush’s Axis of Evil speech into alphabetical order. In collaboration with writer Michael Crowe she is currently writing a hand-written letter to every household in the world.

Lenore Blum is a Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon where she is co-director of the NSF-ALADDIN Center and faculty advisor to the student organization, Women@SCS. Her most recent creation and passion is Project Olympus, a high tech innovation center with the goal of building a climate/culture/community to enable talent and ideas to grow in the Pittsburgh region.

Liam Lowe, Architecture Student.

Lindsay Hyde is the founder and executive director of Strong Women, Strong Girls, Inc., a Boston-based mentoring program that works to inspire young women to change the world. Hyde started the program in 2000 as a Harvard freshman looking for a way to pass the knowledge, strength and inspiration of strong women in history and the local community on to elementary school-age girls. The 7-year-old program has achieved tremendous success, earning Hyde numerous awards including a 2007 National Jefferson Award, the ‘Nobel Prize’ for public service.
In 2007, 45 students from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University volunteered as mentors to more than 150 girls throughout Pittsburgh’s city schools.

Lisa Kuzma is a program officer at the Richard King Mellon Foundation. After a 20 year career in the banking as a commercial loan officer serving mid-sized businesses in the Pittsburgh region, Ms. Kuzma began working with nonprofit organizations to achieve long term sustainability, first as a senior manager with Deloitte & Touche and then as one of the founding members of the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management at Robert Morris University. In her current position, she works on a variety of work-force issues.

Liz Berlin's creativity has grown to be a viable force in any project she applies herself to. Over their 12-year history, Ms. Berlin and Rusted Root have toured the country with Santana, The Allman Brothers, Sting, The Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow, Jewel, and The Grateful Dead among many others, with numerous television appearances too long to list.
Ever restless, Ms. Berlin is also one of the forces behind Mr. Smalls, a recording studio and performance space located in a beautiful, former roman catholic sanctuary in Millvale. Supporting the arts scene, Mr. Smalls includes apartments, studios, residences for visiting artists, a private rectory garden and a gallery. Ms. Berlin just released her solo effort AudioBioGraphical on her label Creative.Life.Support Records.

Liza Langer, Architecture Student.

Professor Luis von Ahn works in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His current research interests include encouraging people to do work for free, as well as catching and thwarting cheaters in online environments. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Packard Fellowship, a Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship, and a Sloan Research Fellowship. He has been named one of the 50 Best Minds in Science by Discover Magazine, one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business of 2010 by Fast Company Magazine, one of the "Brilliant 10" scientists of 2006 by Popular Science Magazine, one of the 50 most influential people in technology by Silicon.com, and one of the Top Innovators in the Arts and Sciences by Smithsonian Magazine.
Photo: Joshua Franzos

Lynn Heckman has spent decades working in the areas of transportation planning, land planning, economic development, regional planning and public policy. In her current role as assistant director of Transportation Initiatives for Allegheny County's Economic Development Department she manages the County Executive's Transportation Action Partnership, which has prioritized the Downtown-to-Oakland Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) initiative. Her responsibilities include transportation activities for highway, road, bridge, transit, transit-oriented development, port/waterways, rail, bicycle and pedestrian. Ms Heckman spearheaded the development of AlleghenyPlaces, the County's first comprehensive plan and focuses on implementing the transportation element of that plan. Recently, she co-managed the West Busway Area TOD Plan with SPC, and was project manager for ActiveAllegheny; a comprehensive bicycle and pedestrian plan for Allegheny County. She serves on several boards including the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, Port of Pittsburgh Commission and Allegheny Land Trust.

Moderator Lynne Conner is a theatre and dance historian, playwright and arts consultant. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches courses in theater and dance history and dramatic literature. She recently published the book, Pittsburgh in Stages: Two Hundred Years of Theater (University of Pittsburgh Press).

Mackenzie Evan Smith studies Creative Writing and Arabic at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the recipient of a Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship in Morocco, a Phi Theta Kappa National Honors Society Scholarship, and a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship from Carnegie Mellon University. Her writing has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Her Campus and Many Voices—One Community; she was selected as a finalist for the Alexander Patterson Cappon Prize for Fiction from New Letters.
In 2006, Ms. Smith solo hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine; this experience formed the basis of her creative writing fellowship, The Appalachian Trail: Understanding Its Impact and Meaning in Pennsylvania Communities Through Creative Nonfiction. This fellowship and her experiences traveling in North Africa and the Middle East contributed to her senior honors thesis, The Naked Note Taker. She plans to graduate in May 2011.

Madhu Malhan was born in India, attended elementary school in Zambia and developed her first crush in Guyana, all before landing on America soil at the age of seventeen.
She serves as the vice president and director of creative branding for the USA division of Publicis in New York. She has also worked at BBDO and at Ogilvy where she oversaw a variety of programs designed to strengthen the culture of the company, such as a speaker program that brought people like David Pogue, Arianna Huffington, Immaculée Ilibagiza and others to the agency.
Her first major position was at the Ad Club, where she worked for fifteen years, leaving as the youngest executive director in the organization’s 104-year history, having rejuvenated its programs and doubled its membership. There she was an early champion of diversity programs in the advertising business and established the Ad Club’s first Diversity Committee.
Madhu currently serves as co-chair of the International ANDY Awards Committee. In past years, she has served as Lieutenant Governor, Diversity Committee member and National Student Advertising Competition Chair for District Two of the American Advertising Federation.
Although she has lived all over the world, Madhu considers herself a true Brooklynite – residing Clinton Hill, where she follows the basketball career of her 15 year-old son.

Magali Duzant, Photographer and illustrator extraordinaire.

Maria Graziani has been a Garfield resident since 1999. Over the past 12 years she has been committed to the health and wellness of Garfield through her work starting and developing Healcrest Urban Farms, Inc. located on Hillcrest Street. Maria is not only a certified herbalist, urban farmer and small business owner, she is a professional Project Manager, an MBA student at Carlow University, a yogi and a dedicated single mother to her son Savitur Negus Tafari! They are pictured here spending a relaxing weekend at home in Garfield.

Marian Heard is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Oxen Hill Partners, specialists in leadership development programs and brand enhancement strategies. She is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay in Boston and the Chief Executive Officer of the United Ways of New England. During her tenure, this United Way moved from the #87 position in major gifts to the #1 position in America. Mrs. Heard is renowned on the national level where she served as the Founding President and Chief Executive Officer of the Points of Light Foundation which was organized to perpetuate President George Bush's (#41) idea to support volunteers who are addressing serious social problems. She also served as the CEO of the Steering Committee of the Presidents' Summit for America's Future which was co-chaired by former Presidents Clinton and Bush. General Colin Powell served as the Honorary Chair. In addition, she is a Founding board member of MENTOR, the recipient of 16 Honorary Doctorate Degrees, serves as a Trustee of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and is a Board member of several corporations.

Entrepreneur Mark DeSantis is President and Co-founder of Mobile Fusion, a technology firm that builds portable sensor platforms for the military. Mark co-founded several technology-based businesses in the US prior to that.
Mark has served in a number of policy positions in government including as a Senior Policy Analyst in both The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department of Commerce in the administration of George H. W. Bush, and on the staff of the late U.S. Senator John Heinz.
His civic activities range from serving on various boards (The Veterans Leadership Program of Western Pennsylvania, Sustainable Pittsburgh, Propel Schools), hosting a local monthly radio program on Pittsburgh Renaissance Radio focused entrepreneurship and writing frequently as a columnist for Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine. He has co-founded several local non-profit organizations and advocacy groups whose mission is to improve the performance of local government and promote economic development in western Pennsylvania. In 2007, Mark ran as a candidate for Mayor of Pittsburgh.

Mark Fairclaugh is a life-long Garfield resident. His favorite color is Payne’s grey.

Mark Lewis, President and CEO of the POISE Foundation, graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in accounting. He worked for Price Waterhouse LLP and Ernst & Young LLP as a financial auditor and later information systems security and controls auditor for 13 years. After reaching the position of senior manager at Ernst & Young, Mr. Lewis left his position to lead the POISE Foundation.
In addition to his day to day employment, Mr. Lewis serves as an Elder and treasurer of Deliverance Baptist Church, treasurer of the board of the August Wilson Center and Program to Aid Citizen Enterprise (PACE), chair of the advisory board of The Heinz Endowments' African American Male Initiative, and as a member of various committees for the Pittsburgh Foundation, Grant Makers of Western Pennsylvania and the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management. He is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and a graduate of Leadership Pittsburgh XXII.

Mark Minnerly serves as the Director of Real Estate and is project partner at the The Mosites Company. Mark is a registered architect who began in private practice, then expanded into community development where he served as the Director of Friendship Development Associates, a community development corporation focusing on planning, banking advocacy and real estate development.
Mark’s work in the neighborhood of Friendship lead to his appointment as program officer for the Pittsburgh Partnership of Neighborhood Development (PPND), a non-profit formed to support local community development corporations. His job included managing a program of investment of over $20 million of real estate and community planning capital that in turn yielded over $200 million in new investment in Pittsburgh’s distressed neighborhoods. Additionally, part of Mark’s background was his work for HUD as part of Secretary Andrew Cuomo’s Community Builder Fellows, where he facilitated cross-program collaborations within HUD and with other government, charitable and non-profit partners.
Mark serves as adjunct faculty at Carnegie Mellon University teaching Real Estate Design and Development, and was a member of the City of Pittsburgh Design Review Committee and on the Board of Directors of the Community Design Center of Pittsburgh (CDCP).

Dr. Mark Re is Senior Vice President of Research and Technology Development at the Seagate Research Center in Pittsburgh, PA. Prior to joining Seagate, Mark was Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Read-Rite Corporation in Fremont, California. and he held several management positions at IBM Corporation in California and New York where he was named an IBM Distinguished Engineer in 1997. Mark holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and BS from Northwestern University. He has over forty scientific publications and ten patents.

Mark Roosevelt was appointed the Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Schools in August of 2005. Roosevelt is a public-sector change agent with a proven track record. A champion of public education, he has been successful in attaining the support necessary for the equitable funding and accountability measures necessary to drive school improvement. As Chair of the Massachusetts State Legislature’s Education Committee, Roosevelt worked for three years to craft and steer to passage the Education Reform Act of 1993, landmark legislation fundamentally restructuring the way that state funds and manages its public schools. As a result of the Act, well-to-do and poor districts now have roughly the same resources and the state has a highly regarded academic standards and assessment program. Massachusetts now leads the nation in educational performance at almost all grade levels and subject matters. In 1994, Roosevelt was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Massachusetts.

Mary Beatrice Dias is a Ph.D. student in the Engineering and Public Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University. She was born and raised in Sri Lanka and went on to earn her undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, with concentrations in Mathematics and Physics. Following college, she worked as an actuarial analyst with CIGNA Insurance in Philadelphia before moving to Pittsburgh for graduate school. Her initial graduate research work involved measuring the effects of the USAPATRIOT Act and the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act on select agent research in the U.S. Ms. Dias is currently conducting research in the field of Information Communication Technology for Development in collaboration with TechBridgeWorld, a research group based out of CMU. She also volunteers as a student representative on TechBridgeWorld’s Executive Board. Her research focus is on evaluating how technology affects underserved communities in different parts of the world.

Matt Gray was born in Sydney to English parents with Canadian passports and has had a notable career which includes teaching, directing and performing at many prestigious schools such as LAMDA, the Royal Academy of Dance, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the Arts Council of the Isle of Man and Concordia in Shanghai. Most recently Matt was seen performing in Quantum Theater’s production of 36 Views, as well as directing Crime and Punishment for Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theater (PICT) which the City Paper called “the best production of 2009”. He is currently working on a new adaptation of RUR (where the word ‘robot’ was first used), continuing his research into Live Performance Skills and Digital Technology, is a professor in the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, and is directing the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama’s production of Richard III.
Matthew Day, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

Matthew Galluzzo is the Executive Director of the Lawrenceville Corporation. Since arriving in Pittsburgh in 2002, Mr. Galluzzo has worked as a community development professional in Hazelwood and the Northside, and has served as Adjunct Faculty member for the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School for Community Organization and Social Administration. Currently, he serves on the URA Real Estate Loan Review Committee, the Urban Initiatives, LLC Advisory Board, and the Carnegie Mellon University Artist Incubation Advisory Committee. Prior to the LC, Mr. Galluzzo served as the Arts District Manager for the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative. Under his leadership, the PAAI reduced vacancy rates along the Penn Avenue Arts Corridor to below twenty percent and increased arts-space along the avenue to nearly 1/4 of the total occupied space.

As the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Green Government Council, Maureen Guttman, AIA, is a strong voice for environmentally sustainable practices in planning and policymaking in Pennsylvania government. The GGGC works in partnership with Commonwealth agencies to further sustainable practices in state government and to encourage consumers to undertake energy efficient project. Projects include energy and resource conservation, environmentally preferred purchasing, consumer funding programs and green building practices.
Guttman is an active leader in the architecture profession, recently serving as the Pennsylvania representative to the American Institute of Architects Board of Directors. She is a recognized expert on building codes and green building policy, and has been instrumental in the development and passage of several pieces of related legislation in Pennsylvania.

Maureen McAvey is Executive Vice President, Initiatives Group for the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in Washington, D.C. She previously was Senior Resident Fellow and ULI/Klingbeil Family Chair for Urban Development at ULI.
Ms. McAvey leads a group that includes Senior Resident Fellows, Scholars in Residence and special project efforts around infrastructure, energy and climate change. In this role, she has authored a number of annual reports on current strategic issues around infrastructure and land use. Her latest report in May highlighted the potential solutions and best practices in infrastructure development and finance. In late 2008, she published a report focused on the role of land use decisions on carbon production, and the opportunity for better land use planning and urban growth in future climate adaptation and mitigation. Ms. McAvey is a frequent national and international speaker and recently has engaged in dialogues in India, France and participated in conferences in China, Japan and throughout the United States.

- Maxine Markfield, graduated as a Coro Fellow in Pittsburgh in May 2010.

Melissa Mak is currently a Communication Design major with a minor in photography at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design. From a small town not too far away from Boston, MA, she is inspired by the natural designs, patterns, and colors in urban and natural settings. In her spare time, she loves taking photographs, cooking with friends, and exploring the city. She is happy to have the opportunity to further develop her design skills and gain experience in a new environment such as cityLAB.

Co-Founder and director of Burgh Bees, Meredith Grellis' mission is to find places in our fine city for residents to keep bees and in so doing promote a healthy environment and reactivate underutilized spaces. After being introduced to bees by her beekeeper grandfather, Meredith found more formal training while working at the Chicago Honey Coop, an urban apiary that sits in the shadow of an abandoned factory in Chicago. Meredith has a BA in urban history from the University of Chicago, completed culinary training at Le Cordon Bleu Paris and will receive an MBA in May from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. Before Burgh Bees she worked in community development and land reclamation at the Western Pennsylvania Brownfields Center. Burgh Bees brings together her love of food and city spaces.

Micah Toll, a senior Mechanical Engineering student in the Swanson School for Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, is a serial inventor and entrepreneur who submitted his first patent application at 15 and started his first company at 17. Mr. Toll has received a number of honors including at the 2006 and 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, as well as being the two-time winner of the University of Pittsburgh's Big Idea Competition. He currently operates a handful of small companies and is continuing his work in Pittsburgh by developing a company to provide Personal Electric Vehicles to Pitt students and faculty. His team has produced a series of prototype electric vehicles and plans to start beta testing vehicles with the public this summer.

Michael Jeffers, Architecture Student.

Attack Theatre co-directors Peter Kope and Michele de la Reza have been recognized as a “masterful and dynamite duo…the Fred and Ginger of the 90s where Ginger does most of the lifting.” Attack Theatre has been making personal, accessible and collaborative dance-based performances with “ninja-like intensity” for more than a decade. They combine modern dance, original live music, multimedia and interdisciplinary art forms to present work in traditional and nontraditional spaces throughout the United States and around the world.
Michele has performed throughout the US, Europe and Asia. With Peter, she has received numerous awards in the field of dance. They have choreographed works for the Avignon Festival, the 7th Next Wave Dance Festival in Japan, the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, and the Broadway production, Squonk.

Mickey McManus is president and CEO of MAYA Design, a design consultancy and innovation lab dedicated to taming the complexity of technology products. He leads an interdisciplinary team that creates innovative ways to integrate information and technology into a satisfying consumer experience. He speaks often about the need to include the human element in design, especially in the looming multi-billion dollar pervasive computing industry, which will encompass a multitude of networked products and smart services throughout our environment. Mickey was formerly co-founder and senior vice president of creative vision and strategy at élan communications, an integrated communications consultancy.

Mike Edwards, As the President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, Edwards manages a 90-block BID, and has been active in the Downtown development efforts, overseeing the development of enhanced cleaning services, a new Safety Ambassador program, and the launch of Wi Fi Downtown Pittsburgh. Currently, he is implementing a new 5-year Strategic Action Plan and completing the second 5-year renewal of the Downtown Pittsburgh Business Improvement District.

Mike Roy was a volunteer at our brainstorming event.

Misha Varshavsky, Architecture Student.

Morton Coleman is Director Emeritus of the Institute of Politics of the University of Pittsburgh and Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work with a joint appointment with the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and Urban Studies.
Dr. Coleman's previous positions have included dean of the School of Social Work at University of Connecticut, personal advisor to Henry Ford II on urban issues, secretary to the mayor of the City of Pittsburgh, and senior social planner for the Community Renewal Program in the Pittsburgh Department of City Planning. Dr. Coleman received his Masters in Social Work and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Moira Gunn is Host of Tech Nation and BioTech Nation, which air in such venues as National Public Radio's Satellite Radio channels NPR Now and NPR Talk, and internationally to 133 countries via Armed Forces Radio International. Produced at the studios of KQED in San Francisco, the programming can also be heard on over 200 domestic public stations and through podcasts via iTunes and other Internet distribution venues. Tech Nation is the sole national weekly radio program on the impact of technology, and its weekly BioTech Nation segment enjoys the same status in the area of biotech issues. Dr. Gunn's weekly commentaries touch all aspects of our lives in these unpredictable times. Dr. Gunn is not so much interested in the opinions of the day - she is more interested in how people come to form these opinions, especially when a comprehension of the underlying technology and science is essential.
Dr. Gunn is Program Director of Information Systems at the College of Professional Studies, University of San Francisco and an advisor to both Purdue and Stanford Universities. Her past career is punctuated with science, technology and robotics.

Mollie Naber is passing through Pittsburgh en route from Germany to New England, but wishes she could stay for good! After graduating from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, she worked for governments, corporations and foundations in Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Germany on economic and education development initiatives. She’s inspired by grassroots urban redevelopment efforts in the Steel City and hopes to apply what she’s learning in Pittsburgh to whatever community she lands in next.

Mykia Long, Coro Fellow, Pittsburgh.

Nathan Martin is the founder and CEO of DeepLocal, an innovation studio that helps companies rapidly develop and implement new ideas and technology. Nathan leads a team of creative people, each with specific areas of expertise all working to apply the ingenuity of art to the challenges of business.
Nathan has taught art and design at several universities and holds an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, both in Electronic Media Art. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his work in art, music, and technology, and continues to write and speak about his passion for integrating the artists' process into the design and development of improved ways of experiencing people, information and objects in this world.

Nathaniel Doyno is the founder and executive director of Steel City Biofuels, which he founded in 2005 to build the awareness, technology, policy and infrastructure necessary for the sustainable production and use of biofuels in Southwest PA. He serves as coordinator of Pittsburgh Region Clean Cities, a Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored program designed to reduce petroleum consumption in the transportation sector and sits on both the Pittsburgh Technology Council's CleanTech Advisory Board and the City of Pittsburgh's Green Government Task Force.
He is also also a co-founder of GTECH Strategies (Growth Through Energy & Community Health), a new social venture that is revitalizing vacant lots & brownfields in the region through the cultivation of bioenergy crops and the development of a Green Job training program.

Supported by University of Pittsburgh Environmental Law Clinic, several Pittsburgh foundations and many others, Ned Mulcahy created Three Rivers Waterkeeper in 2009. In its simplest form, Waterkeeper serves as a voice for the water in the Pittsburgh region. Armed with an aluminum boat, two attorneys, and an insatiable desire to create a well-informed citizenry, Three Rivers Waterkeeper protects water quality through on-the-water surveillance, education, legal action and community empowerment.
In addition to holding J.D. and Certificate of Advanced Study in Environmental Law, Science, and Policy (2009) and a B.A. in Political Science (2001), Ned is pursuing an M.P.H. with a focus in Environmental Risk Assessment at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Though reasonably well traveled, Ned has spent 28 of his 30+ years as a proud resident of Southwestern Pennsylvania and now calls Lawrenceville home.

Nick Durrant is co-founder of Plot, who were consultants for the 6% Place. He has worked in interaction design for over a decade. After several years in Silicon Valley, via Taligent, IBM, and 280 Inc. developing group, collaboration environment, and social software such as 'Places for project teams' and 'Meeting Centre' he returned to the UK to bring interaction design strategy to Metadesign, Icon MediaLab and Futurebrand Digital. Client work at from this time includes research, strategy and design for Bristol Legible City, which won an environmental design effectiveness award and is widely held up as a best-practice example in urban design. More recently Nick has been a Visiting Professor to Innocence/Interbrand, an 'Agent Provocateur' for Orange, and an ongoing Advisor to, and Mentor for, the Design Council's Humanising Technology project. He graduated from the Computer Related Design program at the Royal College of Art in 1994. Together with his partner Gill Wildman, Nick is currently Nierenberg Chair of Design at Carnegie Mellon University.

Niko Triulzi, Architecture Student.

Nina Marie Barbuto lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. She completed the Mediascapes Master of Architecture Program at Southern California and has a Bachelors of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University. Her media includes architecture, film, sound, and art installation often with the idea of recycling noise into the system or elevating the vernacular spectacular. Over the past seven years, her works have been featured in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Seoul, Korea. In 2007, she co-founded the I Made It! Market, a nomadic indie crafts marketplace that provides opportunities for artists to sell their wares. An idea based on urban acupuncture, the I Made It!Market partners with community, arts and non-profit organizations to raise funds and awareness to assist in improving their communities. Currently, Nina's entrepreneur ventures include awesome studio, focusing on social media and architecture, and awesome gallery, an experimental space where one can learn through the process of making.

Noelle White, Architecture Student.

Pablo R. Garcia is the founder and principal of Pablo Garcia/POiNT, a collaborative and multidisciplinary research studio based in Pittsburgh. POiNT is dedicated to experiments in the spatial arts - architecture, design and the visual and performing arts, in a variety of scales from the portable to the urban. In addition to POiNT, Pablo is the Lucien and Rita Caste Chair in Architecture and Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Pablo was the 2007-2008 Muschenheim Fellow at the University of Michigan College of Architecture + Urban Planning.

Patrick Dowd is a Member of Pittsburgh City Council representing District 7, primarily in the east end of Pittsburgh and along the Allegheny River. In City Council, he serves as Chair of the Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs. He also sits on the Boards of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. Mr. Dowd has pledged to pursue fiscal responsibility and set new standards for the delivery of city services and accountability in government. He is also a member of the City of Pittsburgh’s newly formed Land Recycling Task Force.
Mr. Dowd came to Pittsburgh in 1991 to pursue graduate work at the University of Pittsburgh. After earning a doctorate, he taught history at the secondary level until elected to office in 2007. Mr. Dowd is a 42 year-old father of 5. He and his family reside in Highland Park.

Patrick Roberts is principal transportation planner for the City of Pittsburgh's Department of City Planning. He reviews and interfaces with all transportation projects in the city. His background is in planning, design, environmental compliance, financing, operations, and maintenance and is built on an earlier career with PennDOT where he focused on local systems and revitalization projects. Mr. Roberts is a car-free project manager for the MOVEPGH multimodal transportation plan, which is about to kick off. MOVEPGH is Pittsburgh's first attempt at a combined transportation plan and will include multimodal transportation, a bike/pedestrian plan and a street design manual.

Dr. Paul Anastas, known as the father of Green Chemistry, joined Yale University as Professor in the Practice of Green Chemistry with appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Department of Chemistry, and Department of Chemical Engineering. In addition, Prof. Anastas serves as the Director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale.
From 2004 -2006, Dr. Anastas served as Director of the Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. He was previously the Assistant Director for the Environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Trained as a synthetic organic chemist, Dr. Anastas is credited with establishing the green chemistry movement during his time working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as the Director of the U.S. Green Chemistry Program. Recognizing that wastes released into the environment represent an economic investment for manufacturers, he sought to redesign benign chemical processes and products at the molecular level, thereby eliminating potential wastes before they are ever produced. His work is credited with having eliminated millions of pounds of hazardous chemicals and solvents, saved millions of gallons of water, and eliminated millions of pounds of carbon dioxide that otherwise would have been released into the air.

Of her most recent music recording project, "Torch of Blue", Nate Guidry of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said she is a “…charismatic artist with a clear sense of musical purpose.” From WQED, Phillip Harris had this to say about the voice of Phat Man Dee; “Expressive and passionate, Phat Man Dee's sensual voice pulls you in and takes you away to where the words no longer matter and you float along on pure emotion.”
Mandee appeared with Foxy Moxy's Cabaret Risque, The Boiler Bar Stage,The Madagascar Institute of Brooklyn, NY, Candye Kane, the Goddess Perlman's Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad, the Fat Bottomed Girls Burlesque Review, Chicken John's Circus Ridiculous, Wolgemut, Jazz Mandolin Project, the Bindlestiff Family Roadshow, The Bull Seal! Collective, SEEMEN, the Flaming Lotus Girls and Heavy Pedal Cyclecide and with a multitude of other national artists in a multitude of venues.
Young Mandee was born in 1975 to a schoolteacher and a railroad man in Youngstown, OH. She studied music, classical cello and voice, theatre and dance all through childhood and into her brief college career at Allegheny College in Meadeville, PA. She left college to join the circus as Mistah Sistah Phat Man Dee, a half-man half-woman vaudeville act singing love songs to herself, eating glass, tap dancing, and playing cello while traveling with several variety acts cross country.
She recently celebrated her wedding anniversary with Tommy Amoeba, her husband of 5 years. They were wed on a pink elephant in Pittsburgh’s historic South Side on July 11, 2002.

Priya Narasimhan is the president and founder of YinzCam Inc., a company focused on mobile live streaming and experiential technologies for live events. She is also an associate professor with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and Director of the CyLab Mobility Research Center, at Carnegie Mellon University. Her honors include an Alfred Sloan Fellowship, the 2009 Carnegie Science Center's Emerging Female Scientist Award, an NSF CAREER Award, the 2001 UCSB Lancaster Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award and two IBM Faculty Partnership Awards.

Ralph Bangs, Ph.D., is Associate Director of the Center on Race and Social Problems in the School of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh. He is also Associate Editor of the new national and international journal, Race and Social Problems, which is published by Springer Press. His areas of expertise are race relations and public policy analysis. His current research is on improving education for African Americans, the Pittsburgh Promise, increasing local government contracting with minority and women-owned businesses, and reducing homicides and youth violence. His Ph.D. is from the University of Pittsburgh in public policy research and analysis.

Raymar Hampshire is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about creating socioeconomic equity. His passion has driven him launch SponsorChange.org, a new social venture based in Pittsburgh. SponsorChange.org addresses the challenge of rising student loan debt and falling volunteer rates of young professionals by aiding them in being civically engaged while rewarding student loan stipends. The program has been described as “a perfect blend of creative thinking, civic spirit, and economic good sense” and as an “idea that is simple yet totally brilliant”. Major media outlets, notably BusinessWeek, are also taking note of the Pittsburgh-based program having featured it in a recent article entitled "Kiss those Student Loans Goodbye".

Regina Koetters is driven to unleash the unrealized potential of the country’s riverfront Rust Belt cities through transportation oriented and strategic redevelopment, and chose Pittsburgh over every other city in the nation to begin her work. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, she logged ten years of active duty between her studies in naval architecture at the United States Naval Academy and progressive real estate development and business at the University of Michigan.
During her naval career, she managed operations of the largest air base in Iraq; led airborne maritime patrol and reconnaissance missions throughout the western hemisphere, and facilitated maritime security and economic development projects in western Africa. Since relocating to Pittsburgh, she has championed several initiatives for sustainable development projects in downtown Pittsburgh and joined a public-private team endeavoring to bring passenger rail service to the Allegheny Riverfront.

Moderator Regina Schulte-Ladbeck is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research is in the area of observational astrophysics. Most recently, she has been combining data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to probe galaxies that are in the process of forming new generations of stars. Schulte-Ladbeck came to the United States in 1987 with a fellowship from the German Science Foundation. As a project scientist at the Space Astronomy Laboratory in Madison, WI, she worked on the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo Polarimeter Experiment, a small telescope that flew twice on a space shuttle mission. Schulte-Ladbeck has taught astronomy to several thousand students since 1992. She has published over one hundred primary papers on a variety of topics in astronomy and astrophysics, and has served on scientific committees for NASA.


Rick Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield Garfield Corporation, has dedicated decades to the improvement of the neighborhood he lives and works in. In his role, he seeks to better the social, economic and physical fabric of the Bloomfield, Garfield and Friendship neighborhoods by engaging and inspiring members of the community.

Rob Pfaffmann, AIA, AICP is an architect and planner with over 30 years of diverse experience leading the design of key architecture, preservation and planning projects in the Pittsburgh region. Through his writings, drawings and research, and community involvement, he is known for his advocacy of design, historic preservation and urban planning policy.
Rob began his career in higher education at Syracuse University and then moved to the Pittsburgh office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in 1983. There he has led key projects, ranging from Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute to the Heinz History Center. Since founding Pfaffmann + Associates in 1996, Rob's design leadership has continued with a wide range of award-winning work that includes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter, the Homewood and Hill District branches of the Carnegie Library and Alcoa's US Business Services Center.
Rob's urban planning work is grounded in his passion for Pittsburgh's historic neighborhoods and riverfronts. He has developed community plans for many Pittsburgh Neighborhoods including the Central Northside and Lawrenceville. His proposals for the Reuse of the Mellon Arena received an AIA design award last fall.

Rob Rogers is the award-winning editorial cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His cartoons have been vexing and entertaining readers in Pittsburgh for 25 years. Syndicated by United Feature Syndicate, Rogers’ work also appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and Newsweek, among others.
Despite having been born in Philadelphia and spending ten years in Oklahoma (through no fault of his own), Rob Rogers now considers himself a true Pittsburgher. In his twenty-five years as a local cartoonist, Rogers’ work has become a staple of Pittsburgh culture with a national impact. After graduating from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh with an MFA in painting, Rogers was hired as staff cartoonist for The Pittsburgh Press. When the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette bought the Press in 1993, Rogers joined the new Post-Gazette.
Rogers is an active member (and past president) of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. His work received the 2000 Thomas Nast Award from the Overseas Press Club and the 1995 National Headliner Award. In 1999 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Rogers has also been the curator of three national cartoon exhibitions, Too Hot to Handle: Creating Controversy through Political Cartoons and Drawn To The Summit: A G-20 Exhibition Of Political Cartoons, both at The Andy Warhol Museum, and Bush Leaguers: Cartoonists Take on the White House at the American University Museum.
He is currently serving as board president of the ToonSeum, a cartoon museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Robert C. Hampshire is assistant professor of Operations Research and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University. Dr Hampshire's research focuses on management, modeling, and optimization of services. His particular focus is on IT enabled mobility services, which include smart parking and bike/car sharing; communication services which include call centers, bandwidth exchanges and web conferencing and web services which include person-2-person lending, wikis and blogs. He uses both non steady state stochastic modeling and dynamic optimization to develop management strategies. Dr. Hampshire has worked at IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center, Bell Laboratories of Lucent Technologies, Compaq Computers and VLSI Technology. He has patents in the areas of IT asset portfolio management and supply chain risk management.

Robert Parris Moses grew up in Harlem, attended Hamilton College and received a master's degree in Philosophy from Harvard.
After an early career of teaching math at the Horace Mann School in New York, Dr. Moses directed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee's Mississippi Project 1961-1964, directed the Council of Federated Organizations, led the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, and was instrumental in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the Mississippi regulars at the 1964 Democratic Convention. He went on to teach mathematics for the Tanzanian Ministry of Education.
In 1982, Dr. Moses began a five-year MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and founded the Algebra Project, which uses mathematics as an organizing tool to guarantee quality public school education for all students. Over the past two decades, AP grew from teaching math in one school in Cambridge, Mass., to more than 200 middle schools across the country, developing successful models of whole-school and community change. Dr. Moses has received several honorary doctoral degrees, including Harvard, Princeton, University of Michigan, and is the recipient of numerous awards. In 2000 he received the Heinz Award from the Heinz Family Foundation for his efforts to make math instruction available to children of all backgrounds.

Ryan England is a graduate from Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied Civil and Environmental engineering. He currently works for Earthen Vessels Outreach as Director of Operations. In his work with Earthen Vessels Outreach, he hopes to enhance and transform the lives of the people in the communities of Bloomfield, Garfield, and Friendship.

Ryan Hopkins, founder of the Public Square Project.

Sala Udin is president and CEO of the Coro Center for Civic Leadership in Pittsburgh and a former member of Pittsburgh City Council. During his 11 years on Pittsburgh City Council, Udin became known as the voice for the poor and oppressed. He led the city's contracting of a disparity study, which resulted in an unprecedented number of underrepresented groups obtaining jobs or construction contracts for the demolition of Three Rivers Stadium and the construction of PNC Park and Heinz Field.
Udin served as chair of City Council's Finance and Budget Committee for three successive two-year terms and led two citywide referenda to amend the City Charter to include the Citizen Police Review Board and to create a jobs program called Pittsburgh Works. He also oversaw the largest new housing construction in Pittsburgh's history-Crawford Square, Bedford Hills, Oak Hill and the Manchester Hope VI communities.
More recently, Udin assumed his current post as president and CEO of the Coro Center for Civic Leadership, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen the democratic process by preparing individuals for effective and ethical leadership in the public arena. It has additional chapters in New York, St. Louis, Cleveland, Kansas City, LA, and San Francisco.

Sam Boese filmed our brainstorming event.

Sam Price, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

Sandhya Krishnan, Executive Director of Blue Mango.

Sanjeev Shah is a Principal and Regional Director with Lea+Elliott, Inc. based in Miami, Fla. He leads transportation projects specializing in the feasibility, planning, and engineering of projects including Automated People Mover (APM) systems and rail. He has been involved in transit projects in cities including Miami, San Francisco, Phoenix, Dubai and Dublin.
A past president of the National Council of Structural Engineers Association and a past chair of the Structural Engineering Certification Board, Sanjeev is a registered engineer in multiple U.S. jurisdictions including Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and New Jersey. Sanjeev has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami, and a master of science in engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.

Santina Moran-Seaborne is an assistant prop manager at Point Park University.

Sara Blumenstein managed cityLAB's experiments and designed cityLAB's programs, graphics, and web projects from 2011 to 2014. She loved working on cityLAB's projects, especially the Garfield Night Market and Tiny Houses. Read more about Sara on her website.

Sara Radelet, past executive director of the New Hazlett Theater, helped to launch cityLIVE! in 2007. Sara has since moved on and away to Paris, France, but we wish to recognize her efforts in helping to launch and sustain cityLIVE! in its early years.

For nearly six years, Scott Bricker has been the executive director of Bike Pittsburgh, the 1400+ member-strong, local bicycle advocacy organization whose mission is to make Pittsburgh increasingly safe, accessible, and friendly to bicycle transportation. Bike Pittsburgh has been integral in not only raising awareness about bicycling issues and but also bringing resources to bear to install necessary bike infrastructure in the city. Branching out to state and national advocacy, Mr. Bricker also sits on the board of PA Walks & Bikes, and The Alliance for Biking & Walking. He is 34 years old and lives in Friendship with his girlfriend.

Scott Faber, MD, is a developmental pediatrician at The Hospital at The Children’s Institute, working with children with severe developmental and behavioral disorders, including autism. Previously he served for six years as director of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, completed his internship in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Buffalo and his residency in Boston.
He practiced as a general pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center prior to completing a fellowship in developmental-behavioral pediatrics and neuro-developmental disabilities at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland. He is a frequent lecturer and has made presentations at American Academy of Pediatrics exhibitions and at Pediatric Academic Society meetings, also publishing work on the clinical effects of deprivation on the developing brain as well as other topics.

Known for both his lyrical fluidity and high-tier technical facility Sean Jones is considered one of the finest young jazz artists in the country. His career began with his Mack Avenue Records debut in 2004 (Eternal Journey), recorded when he was 24, and he has since released five albums as bandleader. As a session musician, he has performed with several notable ensembles and musicians, including Tia Fuller, Gerald Wilson, Joe Lovano, Tom Harrell, Jon Faddis, Jimmy Heath and Frank Foster.
He has played in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as the big band's lead trumpeter, and is currently a professor of Jazz Studies at Duquesne University. Jones also plays at music venues and jazz festivals such as the Monterey Jazz Festival, Detroit International Jazz Festival and Montreal International Jazz Festival. Most recently taken on the role as co-leader of the newly formed Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra which had their premiere performance in October.

Entrepreneur. Nonprofit and Government Leader. Dedicated advocate. Passionate community builder. Selena Schmidt is Project Director for the Power of 32 – the largest regional visioning project ever undertaken. She reformed Pittsburgh’s Ethics Code; changed policies across the country for women, young leaders, land-use; and facilitates workshops on leadership, advocacy and strategic planning.

Senay Erdem, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

Seth Gernot is the Bike Tour Coordinator for Venture Outdoors. His main duties find him introducing others to the incredible riding that we have to offer in our region. Having found a mountain biking mecca in Pittsburgh, his love of cycling has found new outlets and led him to the rail trails and roads in the city and beyond. For vacation he likes to ride across Iowa with 15,000 people or pedal around Ohio with a few thousand new friends. Currently working on a bike ride across the state of Pa, he’s looking to bring fun cycling events to Pittsburgh and grow our cycling culture.

Spike Wolff works both as a freelance designer in Pittsburgh and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, teaching undergraduate design studios, coordinating the school’s lecture series and curating the 2010 wats:ON festival. Recent freelance projects include The Hurricane a temporary jazz club in the Hill District and exhibition design for the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh.
Spike moved to Pittsburgh from Los Angeles, where she worked on museum projects including The Getty Center, exhibition design for the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA and historic restoration projects of the Kaufmann House by Richard Neutra and the Loewy House by Albert Frey.

Stefani Danes, AIA, LEED-AP, is a registered architect and principal in the firm of Perkins Eastman Architects, where her work and passion are focused on creating environments that sustain and enhance communities. She has extensive experience in the design of housing and facilities for older persons, including senior cohousing, independent and assisted living, and facilities for dementia care.
Stefani heads the national AIA Design for Aging Research Committee, which is exploring new concepts in environments for aging. She is working with several organizations on senior cohousing, transforming “aging in place” to “aging in community”.
Stefani leads Perkins Eastman’s firm-wide Research Collaborative, which develops innovative, practice-based research to inform design. She was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University for twenty years and a member of the Advisory Board for the Presbyterian Association on Aging’s Innovative Living Environments project. Ms. Danes received her M.Arch. at Yale University and her Bachelor’s Degree at Princeton.

Stephanie Newcomb, Architecture Student.

Steve Bland is the CEO of the Port Authority of Allegheny County, and is responsible for overseeing the planning and operation of all bus, light rail, incline and paratransit operations.
A 21-year transit professional, Mr. Bland previously served as Executive Director of the Capital District Transportation Authority (CDTA) in Albany, NY; Executive Director of rabbittransit in York, Pa; and managed transit operations in Syracuse, NY, Gloucester, Mass., and Dallas, Texas. Under his leadership, he has striven towards significant improvements in maintenance and ridership. At CDTA alone he achieved a one-year ridership gain of 11 percent.
Mr. Bland is a strong advocate for accessible and affordable public transportation for persons with disabilities. He holds degrees in public affairs, in transportation planning and management, and in public finance.

Steve Winberg is the Vice President for CONSOL Energy Research & Development, which focuses on energy development, improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions. CONSOL is the only U.S. coal company with an R&D department. Mr. Winberg has 29 years of experience in the energy industry, ranging from power generation equipment design and installation to use of innovative fuels. He has worked on a variety of emerging energy initiatives including coal-to-liquids, greenhouse gas reduction technology, fluidized bed combustion, emulsified fuels, fuel cells and coal-water slurry applications.
Steve sits on the FutureGen Industrial Alliance Board of Directors and serves as the Secretary/Treasurer. He has represented the gas industry on EPA’s Acid Rain Advisory Committee and participated in various regulatory rulemaking initiatives involving end-use application of natural gas. Steve also holds two patents related to NOx emissions reduction using coal and natural gas.
CONSOL Energy is a multi-energy producer of coal, gas and electricity. CONSOL produces both high-BTU coal and gas, which collectively fuels two-thirds of all U.S. power generation, from reserves located mainly east of the Mississippi River.

Sunil Wadhwani is CEO and Co-Founder of iGATE Corporation (formerly Mastech) a global Information Technology business, with over 6,000 employees that service over 200 major clients on four continents. Under Sunil’s leadership, Mastech was listed four times in Inc. magazine’s ranking as one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States, one of the “Top 100 Hot Growth” companies by Business Week and one of the “Technology Fast 50” by Deloitte and Touche.

Susan Everingham is the director of RAND’s Pittsburgh office, which was established in 2001, and is the home for nearly 200 staff members. A senior operations research analyst, Susan joined RAND in 1988. She has been involved in a diverse array of studies, mainly in defense and criminal justice. She specializes in the mathematical modeling of complex systems as well as cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness.
Previously, she directed RAND’s International Programs, which consists of five internationally-focused centers that support RAND’s globalization agenda. She has also served in several management roles in RAND’s National Security Research Division, and is a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She earned a B.A. in mathematics and biology from Williams College, and an M.A. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Talia Perry, Architecture Student.

Todd Owens, Dewey & Kaye.

Tom Hoffman is the Western Pennsylvania Director for Clean Water Action, a national organization dedicated to fighting for clean air and water at the national, state and local level. CWA has 1 million members nationwide and 150,000 in Pennsylvania.
Currently CWA has several key priorities:
• Requiring publicly funded development to be part of the solution to the twin problems of stormwater runoff which is fouling our rivers and reducing diesel emissions which cause asthma and other respiratory diseases.
• Stronger protections for the sources of our drinking water in Pennsylvania
• Protecting our drinking water and water resources from the contamination by wastewater from drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus shale.
Before Clean Water Action, Tom worked with the One Hill Coalition and Pittsburgh UNITED to win the first ever community benefits agreement between the Hill District Community and the Penguins for the new hockey arena.

Tony Miga, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

Traci Thomas is a Senior Design Strategist with a specialization in service design at BCG Platinion. Traci designs new and improves existing services that create value and memorable experiences for users and stakeholders. Her work has spanned a diverse range of industries including manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality, automotive, and cultural institutions. She follows a human-centered design approach rooted in problem framing, ethnography, co-design, and iterative prototyping. She coalesces her deep insights of the human experience with tangible recommendations at the intersection of the physical environment, information, and technology.
Traci is passionate about evangelizing service design and community engagement; she currently serves on the board of two local non-profits in Pittsburgh, and was recently the co-chair of Service Design Pittsburgh. In 2015, she participated and facilitated a workshop “Service Design: The Future of Work” at the IXDC Conference in Beijing, China.
Traci earned her Master of Design in Design Research and Strategy at the Institute of Design in Chicago.

Tracy Certo is publisher and Founding Editor of Pop City, an online weekly magazine that showcases the creative and influential people driving the region forward. Since 2006, Pop City has challenged readers to see Pittsburghdifferently and to actively improve the city.

Valentino Castellani was the Mayor of Turin from 1993 to 2001. In 2001, after completing his second term as mayor, he was appointed President of the Organizing Committee of the XX Winter Olympic Games (TOROC). Mr. Castellani’s priority as mayor was to provide a vision for the future of the city. Turin had lost its manufacturing base and needed to create a vision for the future. Leading an inclusionary process in which both public and private citizens engaged, the result was the first strategic plan ever completed by a major italian city. In addition, he focused on creating an international network for the city by actively building relationships with numerous other European cities, including Barcelona, Lyon, Glasgow, Stuttgart, Koln, Bilbao and Stockholm, to better understand their best practices.
As mayor, Mr. Castellani guided the candidature team for the Winter Olympic Games. The success of the Turin Games was unanimously echoed both at the national and international level and with that event Turin closed the last page of its old history, and began moving towards its future.
Mr. Castellani graduated in Electronic Engineering in 1963 at the Politecnico di Torino (Turin) and spent a year at MIT where he graduated in Electrical Engineering in 1965, returning to Turin to become a Professor of Telecommunications at the Politecnico di Torino.

Vanessa German is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist (actress, poet, spoken word artist, photographer, sculptor, educator and fashion designer), living and working in Homewood, Pittsburgh since 2000. Vanessa is an accomplished. Her sculptural work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout the country and recently been acquired by the David C. Driskell collection, Franciscan University and the IP Stanback Museum at South Carolina State University. Vanessa was one of the inaugural 2009/2010 class of fellows at the August Wilson Center of African American Culture; writing and performing her spoken word opera, “root”. The opera has since been performed at the Vineyard Playhouse on Martha’s Vineyard and will be performed at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in 2011. Vanessa has performed as a spoken word artist around the world, from Sweden to Africa. Most recently she was featured in a TEDx performance at MIT. Vanessa has also been featured artist at SNAP! Science, Nature, Art and People, at PopTech!, Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, and the international black arts festival in Grahmstown, South Africa.

Walter Isaacson is the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, and past Chairman and CEO of CNN and Managing Editor of Time magazine. He is the author of several biographies, including Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger. His biography of Albert Einstein - Einstein: His Life and Universe - was released in April 2007.
Isaacson began his career at the Sunday Times of London and then the New Orleans Times-Picayune/States-Item. In 1978 he joined Time Magazine where he served as a political correspondent, national editor and editor of new media before becoming the magazine's 14th managing editor in 1996. In 2001 he became Chairman and CEO of CNN , and then president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003.
He was appointed after Hurricane Katrina to be the vice-chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. He is on the Board of Directors of United Airlines, Tulane University, the National Constitution Center, and he is chairman of the board of Teach for America.

Will Zavala is an assistant professor at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. He specializes in documentaries and founded the Documentary Salon, a monthly film club, in 2006. Will is from California, where he studied filmmaking at Stanford University and produced videos for clients in the San Francisco bay area. In 2003 he moved to Pittsburgh with his new wife and son because they wanted to live there, and they they now have a daughter as well. Will’s most recent documentary, Virgil Cantini: The Artist in Public, was exhibited with other short films at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in the fall of 2009. Will's class in Advanced Documentary Production is documenting "Pop Pittsburgh Up".

William T. Cagney is the Business Manager and Financial Secretary of the International Union of Operating Engineers. As a 35 year member, he founded and chairs the Local’s Training Fund, Building Fund and 401(k) Plan, and he is the Chairman of the Pittsburgh Building Owner’s Health and Welfare Fund. Mr. Cagney also serves in many capacities for his International Union including Treasurer of the International’s General Pension Plan, and President of the Pennsylvania State Council of Operating Engineers. Mr. Cagney also serves on the Board of Directors at Visit Pittsburgh, Green Innovations, and the Three River’s Labor Management Committee. He is also a member of the City of Pittsburgh’s Green Government Task Force, The Allegheny County Green Action Committee and the UPMC Health Insurance Advisors Board.

Our moderator, Yvonne Campos is a nationally known focus group moderator, and Owner and CEO of Campos Inc., a market research firm in Pittsburgh specializing in immersive research, focus groups and moderation.
Ms. Campos has over 20 years of experience working with corporations, small businesses and not-for-profit organizations. With a background in qualitative research, her group dynamic skills extend from one-on-one interviews to moderator training sessions. Campos Inc. works with consumers, professionals, executives and specialized populations, conducting focus group discussions in both English and Spanish.
In 2006, Ms. Campos was one of 12 women honored as “Enterprising Woman of the Year” by Enterprising Women magazine and also one of 50 women across the state to be profiled in Voices: African American and Latina Women in Pennsylvania Share Their Stories of Success. She is consistently on the top 25 Women in Business list of the Pittsburgh Business Times and is founder and facilitator of the Women President’s Organization (WPO), Pittsburgh chapter.

Zach Cohen, Architecture student.

Zach Restelli attended Allegheny College and currently lives in Pittsburgh. He is fascinated by urban development and building efficiency retrofits and now works with Bona Fide Homes LLC, where he hopes to maximize public utility through private venture while minimizing environmental impact. He strives to share his values and develop strong relationships in Pittsburgh's changing neighborhoods so the community as a whole can work to build better, more efficient places.

Zachary Morris (cityLAB intern, 2009 & 2010) felt very fortunate to have been part of the cityLAB team where he was able to freely explore his odd infatuation with all things Pittsburgh. A Florida native, Zach graduated summa cum laude from the honors college of the University of Pittsburgh, with degrees in both Urban Studies and Politics and Philosophy. He studied urban policy in Brazil, South Africa, and New Zealand, and researched rural-to-urban migration in Mongolia as a David Lawrence Scholar. A Coro Fellow in Public Affairs in 2009 - 2010, Zach is currently attending the University of Oxford in England, as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, working on an MSc in Comparative Social Policy. He hopes to come back to Pittsburgh.