Summer 2013 Annual Meeting

Presentations

Art Rolnik Human Capital Research

Carolyn Newberry Schwartz Collaboration for Early  Childhood

Phil Peterson  Aon Hewitt

Ivy Taylor San Antontio City Council Collaborative

Resources

Why is Early Learning So Important, Collaboration for Early Childhood, January 1st, 2014. Read more.

Early Childhood Education Initiative, City of San Antonio, Pre-K 4 SA, September 21st, 2012. Read more.

Building a Stronger Commonwealth: The Business Case for Investing in Pennsylvania’s Youngest Learner, ReadyNation, April 9th, 2013. Read more.

Markers that Matter: Success Indicators in Early Learning and Education, Hallie Preskill, Nathalie Jones, and Afi Tengue, Foundation Strategy Group, July 17th, 2013. Read more.

Oak Park Villager of the Year: Collaboration for Early Childhood, Anna Lothson, Wednesday Journal, January 1st, 2013. Read more.

Integrated Early Childhood System, Collaboration for Early Childhood, January 1st, 2014. Read more.

Key Outcomes and Benchmarks, Collaboration for Early Childhood, January 1st, 2014. Read more.

Early Childhood Education is a Top Priority for Voters, Second Only to Increasing Jobs and Economic, First Five Years Fund, January 1st, 2014. Read more.

Private Preschools See More Public Funds as Classes Grow, Motoko Rich, June 13th, 2013. Read more.

Early Childhood Ed will be Major Focus of City’s Anti-poverty Plan, Sonia Giebel, Philadelphia Public School Notebook, July 18th, 2013. Read more.

Making the Case for Early Ed, Art Rolnick has had Enormous Impact, Sharon Schmickle, April 16th, 2012. Read more.

Kindergarten to College: Local Innovation, National Impact, The Sallie Mae Fund. Read more.

In D.C., public school for 3-year-olds is already the norm, Susan Svrluga, The Washington Post, February 20th, 2013. Read more.

Virginia Beach GrowSmart Program Wins National Innovation Award, Karen Kehoe, April 11th, 2013. Read more.

The State of Preschool 2012, W. Steven Barnett, Megan E. Carolan, Jen Fitzgerald, and James H. Squires, June 1st, 2012. Read more.

Network Helps Diverse Communities Improve Third Grade Reading, Deborah l. Cohen and Lee Mullane, January 1st, 2013. Read more.

Report to Mayor Karl Dean, Mayor’s Advisory Council On Early Childhood Development and Early Education, April 13th, 2011. Read more.

Finding Common Ground: Coordinating Housing and Education Policy to Promote Integration, Deborah McKoy & Jeffrey M. Vincent, October 1st, 2011. Read more.

Educational Alignment for Young Children: Profiles in Local Innovation, National League of Cities, Institute for Youth, Education, and Families, April 30th, 2012. Read more.

Invest in Early Childhood Development: Reduce Deficits, Strengthen the Economy, James Heckman, December 7th, 2012. Read more.

Ask Professor James Heckman, The Heckman Equation Project. Read more.

Long-Run Economic Effects of Early Childhood Programs on Adult Earnings, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Katherine Magnuson, and Jane Waldfogel, Partnership for America’s Economic Success, February 20th, 2009. Read more.

Real Economic Development: Early Childhood Intervention on a Large Scale, Arthur J. Rolnick and Rob Grunewald, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, June 1st, 2013. Read more.

Speakers

Arthur J. Rolnick is a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Human Capital Research Collaborative at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the University of Minnesota.  Rolnick is working to advance multidisciplinary research on child development and social policy. He previously served at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis as a senior vice president and director of research and as an associate economist with the Federal Open Market Committee—the monetary policymaking body for the Federal Reserve System. Rolnick’s essays on public policy issues have gained national attention; his research interests include banking and financial economics, monetary policy, monetary history, the economics of federalism, and the economics of education.  His work on early childhood development has garnered numerous awards, including those from the George Lucas Educational Foundation and the Minnesota Department of Health, both in 2007; he was also named 2005 Minnesotan of the Year by Minnesota Monthly magazine.

Rolnick has been a visiting professor of economics at Boston College, the University of Chicago, and Lingnan College, Guangzhou, China.  He is past president of the Minnesota Economic Association.  He has served on several nonprofit boards including the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Harvard University; the Northside Achievement Zone, Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation; Greater Twin Cities United Way; and Ready 4 K, a Minnesotan advocacy organization for early childhood development.

A native of Michigan, Rolnick has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a master’s degree in economics from Wayne State University, Detroit; and a doctorate in economics from the University of Minnesota.

Carolyn Newberry Schwartz became the Collaboration for Early Childhood’s first executive director in July 2009. The Collaboration has developed and supported the implementation of a strategic plan that provides the road map for developing a comprehensive early childhood care and education system in Oak Park that supports all families and promotes kindergarten readiness. Ms. Schwartz has almost 30 years of experience working in the not-for-profit sector developing and administering programs for children and teens. She served on the Oak Park Elementary School District 97 Board of Education from 2001-2009 including two years as president. Ms. Schwartz helped to establish the Collaboration in 2002 and has served on the Illinois Early Learning Council since 2004.

Phil Peterson is Senior Vice President and a Human Resource Consultant and actuary for Aon Hewitt, specializing in global retirement strategies, stock option valuation, and human capital metrics development.

Mr. Peterson joined Aon in 1987 and has more than 30 years of employee benefit consulting experience. He formerly managed Aon’s retirement practice in Philadelphia, chaired the National Defined Benefit Practice Council, and lead Aon’s national state and local government consulting practice. He currently consults with clients on retirement finance and planning issues.

Mr. Peterson has served on the board of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia and on the state board of the PA Economy League. He helped co-create, with Child Care Matters, the Aon/United Way of Southeastern PA Hand-in-Hand Award for quality child care in the business community. He has also testified before the House Education Committee of the state House of Representatives on the importance of child care to the business community. Mr. Peterson is former co-chair of the Early Learning Investment Commission and is current co-chair of ReadyNation.

Phil Peterson earned a B.S. in Mathematics at Dickinson College. He is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries, and an enrolled actuary.

Ivy R. Taylor was elected to serve as the District 2 Councilperson on June 13, 2009 and was re-elected to serve a third term on May 11, 2013. Ms. Taylor is a wife, mom and City Planner.

Ms. Taylor began her career working for the City of San Antonio in the Housing and Community Development Department and the Neighborhood Action Department. While at the City, she worked with a variety of neighborhood associations, developers and nonprofit organizations in order to facilitate inner city redevelopment. She also planned several of the City’s Housing Summits which provided an opportunity for community partners to exchange practical ideas on how to address our city’s housing needs. After six years, she left employment with the City of San Antonio to become a Vice President at Merced Housing Texas. At Merced, she worked to create and implement programs focused on children, education, health and financial literacy for apartment community residents. Councilwoman Taylor is a lecturer at UTSA in the Public Administration Department.

Ms. Taylor currently serves on the board for Healthy Futures of Texas and Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Texas. She has served on the City’s Planning Commission and as a Commissioner for the City’s Urban Renewal Agency (SADA) and on the advisory board for Our Lady of the Lake’s Center for Women in Church and Society. Ms. Taylor completed the Leadership San Antonio class sponsored by the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, and in 2004 was acknowledged by the San Antonio Business Journal as a “Rising Star” in their “40 under 40” class. In 2008, she completed Bank of America’s Neighborhood Excellence Leadership Training Program.

Ms. Taylor obtained a Master’s Degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998. In 1992, she received a Bachelor’s Degree from Yale University.

Presentations

Mayor David Pope Oak Park, IL

Mayor Mick Cornett  Oklahoma City, OK

Mayor Madeline Rogero Knoxville, TN

Dan Burden  Walkable and Livable Communities Institute

Resources

The Ten Steps of Walkability, Kaid Benfield, NRDC Switchboard. Read more.

Creating Walkable Communities, Bicycle Federation of America, December 1st, 1998. Read more.

A resolution Adopting “Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares”, City of El Paso, January 1st, 2011. Read more.

AIA’s 10 Principles for Livable Communities, The American Institute of Architects, January 1st, 2014. Read more.

Livability 101, The American Institute of Architects, January 1st, 2005. Read more.

Marion Street Plan, Village of Oak Park, January 1st, 2014. Read more.

Parking Will be Key to Cumberland Ave. Design Code, Hayes Hickman, knoxnews.com. Read more.

Knoxville Budget Aims to Expand Downtown Momentum (with video), Gerald Witt, knoxnews.com, May 14th, 2013. Read more.

Q&A: Mayor Mick Cornett, Jared Green, August 8th, 2012. Read more.

Downtown Strategic Initiative, City of Oklahoma, OK, August 1st, 2013. Read more.

Seattle Municipal Code, City of Seattle, August 8th, 2013. Read more.

Complete Streets Chicago, Chicago Department of Transportation, December 31st, 1969. Read more.

Missoula Pedestrian Safety Campaign, Phil Smith. Read more.

How Portland Sold Its Banks on Walkable Development, Noah Kazis, Streets Blog, May 25th, 2010. Read more.

Walk this Way:The Economic Promise of Walkable Places in Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Christopher B. Leinberger and Mariela Alfonzo, Brookings Institution, May 25th, 2012. Read more.

Giving Cities Legs, Walk Friendly Communities, August 1st, 2012. Read more.

Steps to a Walkable Community, Walksteps.org. Read more.

Walkability Checklist, US DOT Federal Highway Administration. Read more.

Community Design and Policies for Free-Range Children: Creating Environments That Support Routine, Mark Fenton, February 1st, 2012. Read more.

Speakers

As President of Oak Park, Illinois, a municipality of 52,000 residents, David Pope has eight years of experience as Chief Executive with budget and fiduciary responsibility for a $110 million municipal corporation.  He is a regional and national thought leader in areas of transportation and land-use planning, housing policy, environmental sustainability, and inter-jurisdictional collaboration.  During his tenure, Oak Park has achieved unprecedented improvements in the delivery of core municipal services, specifically including economic efficiency, public safety, and resident evaluations of overall quality of life.  David has also put Oak Park on the map as the national leader and a model city in a number of areas including: renewable power adoption; smart-grid infrastructure deployment; regional collaboration to address housing market inefficiencies and the foreclosure crisis; and local investment in early childhood development. Due to his record of accomplishment, he is regularly looked to for insight by his fellow mayors regionally and nationally, and he serves as a member of the leadership of the United States Conference of Mayors.

Previously, David worked for more than a decade as a corporate strategy consultant, becoming a Principal in the Management Consulting Practice of Price Waterhouse and PricewaterhouseCoopers.  As a strategy consultant, David led Corporation-wide and Business Unit level strategy definition engagements (including scenario-driven competitive strategy formulation, and merger analysis and integration), conducted operational restructurings, guided decision-makers through analytical prioritization frameworks, and led multi-functional teams to identify and evaluate competitive opportunities and strategy-aligned performance improvement initiatives.  He sold and delivered management consulting services to Fortune 500 and mid-market companies across sectors and industries including: Communications, Financial Services, Technology and Information Services, Energy/Petrochem., Utilities, Manufacturing, Government, and Nonprofit Associations.  David also served 2 ½ years as a Peace Corps Volunteer working alongside subsistence farming families in rural Thailand.  He earned his MBA in 1994 from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, where he was awarded the Austin Fellowship.  David lives in Oak Park with his wife, Beth Houle, and their two daughters, Elise and Vivienne.

Mick Cornett is only the fourth mayor in the City’s history to be elected to three terms. He received a record 88 percent of the vote in his re-election bid and was elected to a third term in 2010. He earned a degree in journalism at the University of Oklahoma and an MBA from NYU’s prestigious Stern School of Business.

The world has taken notice of Oklahoma City’s remarkable renaissance and its popular mayor. Oklahoma City is a regular fixture on national “Best Of” lists and Mayor Mick Cornett was recently named one of America’s Five Most Innovative Mayors by Newsweek. Cornett has also been honored as “Public Official of the Year” by Governing magazine, placed second in the London-based City Mayors Foundation’s “World Mayor Award” and is the recipient of the 2012 Joseph P. Riley Jr. Award for Leadership in Urban Design from the American Architectural Foundation.

Cornett led the charge to pass the visionary infrastructure program known as MAPS 3 – a $777-million investment in a 70-acre downtown park, modern streetcar system, senior wellness centers, river improvements and other infrastructure projects that will dramatically reshape Oklahoma City and enhance the quality of life of its residents. He is overseeing Project 180, a forward-thinking, $140-million redesign of Oklahoma City’s downtown streets and sidewalks to make the city more pedestrian friendly.

Cornett’s leadership in securing an NBA franchise helped Oklahoma City attain permanent major league status with the arrival of the Oklahoma City Thunder. During his time in office, Oklahoma City has had one of the strongest economies – and lowest unemployment rates – in the nation. He made national news in 2007 when he famously put Oklahoma City “on a diet” and challenged citizens to lose a collective one-million pounds. The goal was reached in January 2012, with more than 47,000 residents participating in the awareness campaign.

Madeline Rogero was elected the 68th Mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee and took office in December 2011. She is the first woman to hold the office. Her career includes serving as the city’s community development director, Knox County commissioner, non-profit executive, urban and regional planner, community volunteer and neighborhood champion. She is a former consultant to Capital One and America’s Promise, and former executive director of Dolly Parton’s Dollywood Foundation and Knoxville’s Promise – The Alliance for Youth. She has a B.A. in Political Science from Furman University and a Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from The University of Tennessee.

Mayor Rogero is dedicated to promoting a vibrant local economy, strong neighborhoods, a high quality of life, a thriving downtown and a greener Knoxville. She believes Knoxville’s strength comes from the diversity of its people and the beauty of its natural resources.

Dan Burden is Director of Innovation and Inspiration and co-Founder of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute, a non-profit organization that is based in Washington state but works throughout North America and the world to create healthy, connected communities that are supportive of active living and that advance opportunities for all people through walkable streets, livable cities and better built environments.

Dan has spent more than 35 years helping to get the world “back on its feet” and his efforts have not only earned him the first-ever lifetime-achievement awards issues by the New Partners for Smart Growth and the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, but in 2001, Dan was named by TIME magazine as “one of the six most important civic innovators in the world.” Also that year, the Transportation Research Board of the Nationa Academny of Sciences honored Dan by making him their Distinguished Lecturer. In 2009, a user’s poll by Planetizen named Dan as one of the Top 100 Urban Thinkers of all time.

Early in his career, starting in 1980, Dan served for 16 years as the country’s first statewide Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator for the Florida Department of Transportation and that program became a model for other statewide programs in the United States. In 1996, Dan sought to expand his reach and ability to really change the world, so he and his wife Lys co-founded another non-profit organization, Walkable Communities. Since then, Dan has personally helped 3,500 communities throughout the world become more livable and walkable.

In 2009, Dan founded the WALC Institute with Sarah Bowman to create a focus on education, capacity-building and training in support of urban design and tranpsortation planning to make communities more engaged and healthier. In 2010, the WALC Institute donated $130,000 in services to communities and raised $135,000 for communities through grants.

Presentations

Nigel Griswold Griswold Consulting

Charlie Catlett  Urban Center for Computation and Data

Resources

Charlie Catlett is a Senior Computer Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy scientific research laboratory. Catlett is also a Senior Fellow at the Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, and a Visiting Artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His current research focus areas include urban data science, cyber security and privacy, mobile devices and social networks, and the use of mobile and embedded computing to create intelligent infrastructure. He served as Argonne’s Chief Information Officer from 2007-2011.

He also served as director of the TeraGrid Initiative, a national-scale facility supported by the National Science Foundation, co-founded the Global Grid Forum, (now Open Grid Forum). Concurrently, he directed the State of Illinois funded I-WIRE optical network project, deploying dark fiber and transport infrastructure to ten institutions in Illinois.

Prior to this, Charlie was Chief Technology Officer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). As part of the original team that established NCSA in 1985, Charlie participated in design, deployment, and evolution of NSFNET, which was one of several early national networks that collectively evolved into today’s Internet. Beginning in 1992 his team designed and operated NCSAs web infrastructure during the exponential growth of the web following NCSA’s release of the Mosaic web browser.

Nigel Griswold serves as Principal at Griswold Consulting Group, which creates strategic progress in urban, urban-fringe and rural land use policy arenas. In partnership with Thriving Communities Institute at the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, Case Western Reserve University, and the Cuyahoga Land Bank, current research focuses on the impact of demolishing blighted residential structures in urban housing markets as well as the relationship demolition has on fluctuations in mortgage foreclosure rates in Cleveland, Ohio. The recent disbursement of $100 million and $60 million for demolition of blight in Michigan and Ohio, respectively, is directly tied to their research outputs and some similar 2006 research that Nigel performed in Flint, Michigan.

Mr. Griswold was recently a Research Fellow at the Center for Community Progress where he focused on the design of a practitioner’s toolkit for place-based revitalization strategies in for America’s legacy cities. Nigel was a regional planner and community economic development coordinator that worked with state, regional and local governments throughout Michigan and Colorado. As a researcher in academia, Nigel focused on in-depth econometric analysis of diverse urban and rural land use issues. Nigel has experience in multiple sophisticated economic modeling procedures that involve quantifying the costs and benefits of blight abatement strategies, competitive advantages, non-market valuation, input-output techniques and shift-share analysis, among others. Nigel’s leadership and communication abilities, technical aptitude with large datasets and effective command of relevant software packages have been critical to his successful past works. Nigel graduated from Michigan State University with a Master of Science in Agricultural Economics and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Economics and Policy.

Presentations

Maria Krysan  University of Illinois at Chicago

Mayor Earl Leiken Shaker Heights, OH

Morgan Davis Fair Housing Policy

Resources

International Flair, Nancy O’Connor, ShakerOnline, May 1st, 2009. Read more.

Ludlow: Our Civil Rights Landmark, Sue Starrett, Shaker Online, September 18th, 2012. Read more.

A Planner Should Be Flexible, Wayne Senville, Planners Web, April 7th, 2009. Read more.

City of Shaker Heights History, City of Shaker Heights, July 23rd, 2013. Read more.

America’s Racially Diverse Suburbs: Opportunities and Challenges, Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce, Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity University of Minnesota Law School, July 12th, 2012. Read more.

Hardly the End of Segregation, Patricia Fron, Morgan Davis, Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance, February 7th, 2012. Read more.

Building Community, Building Opportunity, Oak Park Regional Housing Center. Read more.

Diversity Date Resource, Diversitydata.org, Harvard School of Public Health, January 1st, 2014. Read more.

Racial Blind Spots: A Barrier to Integrated Communities in Chicago, Maria Krysan, Institute of Government and Public Affairs, Departmnet of Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago, June 1st, 2008. Read more.

Regional Insights: Little Room for Growth Without Minorities, Harold Miller, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 2nd, 2013. Read more.

WMAN Has Helped Unify Diverse Area for 40 Years Forum Celebrates Progress in W. Mount Airy, Earni Young, philly.com, March 25th, 1999. Read more.

In Houston, America’s Diverse Future Has Already Arrived, Elise Hu, National Public Radio, July 1st, 2013. Read more.

New Homes, New Neighborhoods, New Schools: Progress Report on the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program, Lora Engdahl, Poverty & Race Research Action Council, October 1st, 2009. Read more.

Why your block is more integrated, Jacob Vigdor, New York Daily News, February 1st, 2012. Read more.

Watch These American Cities Segregate, Even As They Diversify, Emily Badger, The Atlantic Cities, June 25th, 2012. Read more.

Study Finds Racially Diverse Suburban Communities Growing Faster than White Suburbs, University of Minnesota Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, July 20th, 2012. Read more.

Policy Forum – Racial Segregation in Metropolitan Chicago Housing, Tyrone Forman and Maria Krysan, Institute of Government and Public Affairs, February 1st, 2008. Read more.

Subtle Forms of Discrimination Still Exist for Minority Homeseekers, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research. Read more.

Speakers

Maria Krysan (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1995), a Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago, focuses her research on racial residential segregation and racial attitudes.  She is co-author (with H. Schuman, L. Bobo and C. Steeh) of the book Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (Harvard University Press, Revised Edition, 1997), and is responsible for a website that updates the data from that book (http://www.igpa.uillinois.edu/programs/racialAttitudes/).  In addition to an edited volume with Amanda Lewis (The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity, Russell Sage Foundation), her most recent work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Science Research, Social Problems, and The DuBois Review.  Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Russell Sage Foundation, and Ford Foundation.  Krysan serves on the editorial board of Public Opinion Quarterly and Social Problems and has been a member of the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey.

Maria Krysan is also the Director of the Chicago Area Study (http://igpa.uillinois.edu/cas/), a funding and training opportunity for UIC faculty and graduate students that provides cutting-edge, original social science research about the Chicago area to scholars, community-based practitioners, and public policy analysts.

Mayor Earl M. Leiken took office on January 1, 2008 and was elected to a second four-year term effective January 1, 2012. Prior to becoming mayor, he was a City Council member for eight years.

He was a member of the Shaker Heights Board of Education and served as its president. A partner at the law firm of Baker & Hostetler until his retirement the day before he took office in 2008, he is also a past president of Shaker Family Center and served on the Youth Center Board.

He has been a member of the Jewish Community Center Board and served as its president. Mayor Leiken is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

His other activities include:

• Legislative Committee of the Cuyahoga County Mayors & City Managers Association
• Budget Committee of the Cuyahoga County Mayors & City Managers Association
• Executive Committee of the First Suburbs Consortium
• Member of the Council of Governments of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District
• Board member of the Senior Transportation Connection
• Board member of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency

Mayor Leiken and his wife, Ellen, have lived in Shaker Heights since 1973. Their two sons, Jonathan, a current Shaker resident, and Brian are graduates of the Shaker schools.

As the Director of Fair Housing Policy, Morgan Davis contributes to the policy development, advocacy, and communications efforts of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center. Morgan also conducts research and analysis, including reports on analysis of impediments to fair housing, racial disparities in housing, patterns of segregation, the geography of opportunity, and best practices to affirmatively further fair housing.

Morgan is also the Managing Editor of The Oak Parker Magazine, a publication that is the distinctive voice on the history, culture, and diverse lifestyles that shape the Oak Park community. Prior to her work in Oak Park, Morgan held positions with Umoja Student Development Corporation, Metropolitan Planning Council, and the City of Evanston’s Planning & Zoning Division.

Morgan earned her Master of Public Policy & Administration degree from Northwestern University and her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Urban Studies from Calvin College. She is currently the Events & Marketing Co-Chair for the Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance and a member of the Steering Committee for Access Living Chicago where she assists with providing fair housing education and outreach that is available for persons with disabilities.

Resources

K.C. Doyle Susantainability Manager, Oak Park, IL

Mayor John Marks   Tallahassee, FL

Suzanne Russo  Pecan Street, Inc.

Resources

Doyle Summer 2013 Smart City USA Project: An International Smart Growth Collaboration, Oak Park, August 17th, 2013. Read more.

In Two-Way Chargin, Electric Cars Begin to Earn Money from the Grid, Mattew L. Wald, The New York Times, April 25th, 2013. Read more.

Pecan Street Demonstrates the Potential of Smart Grid Technology, Melissa Barnes, ECN Magazine, January 7th, 2013. Read more.

Tallahassee: A Nationally Recognized Leader in Public Utilities, John Marks III, The United States Conference of Mayors, September 17th, 2012. Read more.

A Tale of Two Smart Grids, Nora Caley, Colorado Biz, July 1st, 2012. Read more.

Austin Energy Delivers First Smart Grid in the US, Andres Carvallo, ElectricEnergyOnline.com, January 1st, 2009. Read more.

Oak Park test drives a blackout-proof, solar-powered smart grid, Darby Minow Smith, Grist.org, January 25th, 2013. Read more.

Chicago Suburb Oak Park Joins International Solar-Power Smart Grid Test, Jeff Spross, January 27th, 2013. Read more.

Jones Lang LaSalle’s ‘Connected City’ Study Ties Cities’ Smart Grid Use to Economic Drivers for CRE, JonesLangLaSalle.com, October 8th, 2012. Read more.

Dialing Back Energy Use: 5 Steps to Plan Energy Management Programs that Show Results, Jay Sheehan and David Bouffard, December 1st, 2009. Read more.

National Grid Unveils Future Home of Sustainability Hub, Business Wire, May 16th, 2013. Read more.

Smart Grid Saves EPB Chattanooga $1.4M in One Storm, Katherine Tweed, Greentech Media, August 1st, 2013. Read more.

EPB Chattanooga Cuts Outages in Half After Recent Storm, Katherine Tweed, GreenTechGrid, July 12th, 2012. Read more.

S&C Electric Company, EPB and the U.S. Dept. of Energy Reach Smart Grid Installation Milestone, S&C Electric Company, April 24th, 2012. Read more.

How Fort Collins Created America’s First Zero-Energy District, Brad Berton, The Atlantic Cities, February 23rd, 2013. Read more.

Fort Zed Fact Sheet, FortZed.com. Read more.

Salem Smart Power Project, Portland General Electric. Read more.

BOMA’s Smart Grid Joins Other Chicago Sustainable Efforts, Robert Carr, National Real Estate Investor, March 11th, 2013. Read more.

Silver Spring Bringing Intelligence to Street Lights in Paris, Jeff St. John, GreenTech, May 15th, 2013. Read more.

Smart Grid Implementation in Sacramento, Jim Parks, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, August 1st, 2012. Read more.

The Relationship Between Smart Grids and Smart Cities, Ken Geisler, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, May 1st, 2013. Read more.

Speakers

As Sustainability Manager, K.C. Doyle is responsible for leading efforts to foster an environmentally sustainable Oak Park and educate Village residents and employees as to best practices for sustainability.  In the past 2 and ½ years, K.C. has successfully secured over $750,000 in grant money for a 100-kilowatt solar panel array, assisted in attracting international smart grid investors to Oak Park, co-created Oak Park’s annual Earth Fest, started a community garden, and collaborated with stakeholders on PlanItGreen, the community sustainability vision plan.  K.C. also oversees programming for energy efficiency, water conservation, alternative transportation choices, smart grid investment, air quality and community outreach programs.  K.C. received her J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law and her B.A. in Journalism from Marquette University.

Suzanne Russo serves as Chief Operating Officer for Pecan Street Inc.  Prior to joining Pecan Street in October 2010, she spent three years as Director of Sustainability Initiatives for New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development where she led the development of green building and sustainable retrofit standards for municipally-funded affordable housing.  An urban planner with a Masters degree in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin, Suzanne has worked in East Africa, China, India and several states in the USA on community-based sustainable development.

John Marks was first elected Mayor of the City of Tallahassee in 2003 has been re-elected twice, in 2006 and 2010.  He serves on the Board of Advisors for the U.S. Conference of Mayors and has served as the President of both the Florida League of Mayors (2005-2007) and the Florida League of Cities (2009-2010).  Mayor Marks is admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court and was named Florida Super Lawyer (Utility Regulatory Law) by Florida Super Lawyers magazine in 2006 and 2007.  In 1979 Governor Bob Graham appointed Mayor Marks to the Florida Public Service Commission, where he served for eight years.  Prior to that, he served four years in the U.S. Air Force as a Judge Advocate.  Named one of Florida State University’s 100 Distinguished Graduates, Mayor Marks received his B.S. degree in 1969 from the FSU School of Business and his Juris Doctor degree in 1972 from the FSU College of Law.