URBAN ANCHORS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
A COMMITMENT TO PLACE, GROWTH, AND COMMUNITY
Hosted by
PENN INSTITUTE FOR
URBAN RESEARCH
Houston Hall
University of Pennsylvania
October 8-9, 2007
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BIOGRAPHIES (A-C)
Dale Allen joined The Cecil Group to translate his exceptional experience into services for other institutions, neighborhoods and municipalities to develop shared strategies for mutual benefits. In his previous role as Director of Community Relations at Springfield College, he was responsible for designing and leading initiatives to pro-actively assist the surrounding community through structured programs and projects to achieve shared interests. These initiatives drew national acclaim and included a major neighborhood housing redevelopment and reinvestment program, infrastructure improvements, shared academic programs, educational programs and assistance, and many other projects. He served as a program director for numerous Federal, State and foundation funded programs that utilized collaboration to deliver services, learning experiences, and shared redevelopment. Mr. Allen is currently completing his Ph.D. in public policy, focusing on the interdependence and economic relationships of institutions and communities. He has published chapters, journal articles, and presented on topics related to institution and community partnerships, civic engagement, national service, and leadership development.
Peggy Amsterdam is President of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, the region’s leading nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the cultural sector, serving as a vital resource to its over 300 nonprofit member organizations as well as the broader cultural community. Under her direction, the Cultural Alliance has launched a successful sector-wide marketing campaign, highlighted by the newly redesigned PhillyFunGuide.com events calendar and popular FunSavers half-price ticket program. Ms. Amsterdam is a member of the Board of Managers of The Philadelphia Foundation, the executive committee of the Greater Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau, and The Forum of Executive
Women and the International Women’s Forum. She has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and on the steering committee of the national Arts Education Partnership. Amsterdam formerly served as Governor Tom Carper’s Director of the Delaware Division of the Arts from 1993- 2000 and was a founding member of the Delaware Arts Stabilization Fund.
Timothy D. Armbruster is President and CEO of the Goldseker Foundation. A private, Baltimore-based institution with assets of $100 million, the Foundation’s $5 million annual grant program focuses principally in three areas: community and economic development, encouraging regional thought and action, and improving the performance of the private nonprofit sector. Beginning in 1989, he served as President and CEO of the Baltimore Community Foundation, under an affiliation between the two institutions. Before going to Baltimore in 1979, he served six years as an officer and senior staff member of the Cleveland Foundation, the nation’s oldest community foundation. He has led and served
on numerous boards and committees in Baltimore, Maryland and nationally, encompassing the arts, urban policy, and domestic and international philanthropy. Dr. Armbruster graduated with a B.A. in government from Franklin & Marshall College. As a graduate fellow, he received an M.S. in public management and a Ph.D. in political science from Case Western Reserve University.
Karl Webster Barnes is the former President of West End Neighborhood Development, Inc., a corporation that represents the homeowners in the West End Historic District of Atlanta, GA. Currently, he is an active member of the City of Atlanta’s Zoning Review Board, the Board of Directors of Atlanta Renewal Community Coordinating Responsible Authority, Inc./Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., and the West End Atlanta Rotary Club. He is also assisting Morehouse College and the other institutions of the Atlanta University Consortium (AUC) through their University Community Development Corporation to receive and execute a U.S. Department of Commerce – Economic Development Administration planning grant to create a regional economic development strategy and action plan for 40 census tracts
surrounding the campuses. His day job is with the Georgia Minority Supplier Development Council, an affiliate of the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), the premier organization representing supplier diversity among America’s FORTUNE 500 corporations. He received an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an M.S. in city planning/historic preservation from the College of Architecture of the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received a B.S. in behavioral management from the College of Industrial Management of Georgia Tech.
Eugenie L. Birch, FAICP, is the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Professor and chair of the department of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania and co-director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. Holding advanced degrees from Columbia University, she has recently published Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster: Lessons from Katrina (with Susan Wachter); “Changing Place in the New Downtown,” in J. Oakman, The New Downtowns, The Future of Urban Centers; and “Hopeful Signs: U.S. Urban Revitalization in the 21st Century,” in G. Ingram, Contemporary Issues in Land Development.
Omar Blaik is the President and CEO of U3 Ventures, a real estate advisory and development company. Mr. Blaik was most recently the Senior Vice President of Facilities and Real Estate Services at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the University in January 1997, and served as the Chief Planning and Real Estate Officer. Under his management, Penn embarked on more than $2.0 billion of construction and real estate development transforming both campus and the surrounding community. These efforts have been recognized with prestigious award: the 2003 Urban Land Institute Award for Excellence for the West Philadelphia Initiatives, and 2001 and 2002 Business Week/AIA Award – Good Design is Good Business. Mr. Blaik came to Penn from Coopers and Lybrand, were he led a team of consultants providing advisory services to Presidents, CEO’s, and Executive Vice Presidents in the areas of facilities planning, real estate, and capital programs. Mr. Blaik is a nationally recognized speaker and during his tenure at Penn, he served on several boards in the Philadelphia area, including the Schuylkill River Development Corporation, University City District (chairman), and others. He received a B.S. from Cairo University, an M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Southern California, and an M.B.A. from New York University, Leonard Stern School of Business.
Robert Wm. Blum, is the William H. Gates, Sr. Professor and Chair of the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has edited two books, and has written over 220 journal articles, book chapters and special reports. In July 2007, Dr. Blum was named the Director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute. He is a Past-President of the Society for Adolescent Medicine; has served on the American Board of Pediatrics; was a charter member of the Sub-Board of Adolescent Medicine, is a past chair of the Alan Guttmacher Institute Board of Directors and served as chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Adolescent Health and Development. In 2006, The National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine elected Dr.
Blum into membership. He is a consultant to The World Bank and UNICEF as well as the World Health Organization where he has served on the Technical Advisory Group of the Child and Adolescent Health Department as well as the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group of the Human Reproductive Program. He has been awarded the Society for Adolescent Medicine’s Outstanding Achievement Award (1993); and in 1998 was the recipient of the American Public Health Association’s Herbert Needleman Award “for scientific achievement and courageous advocacy” on behalf of children and youth.
Paul C. Brophy is a principal with Brophy & Reilly LLC, a Maryland-based consulting firm specializing in housing, community development, and the management of complex urban redevelopment projects. Mr. Brophy has been involved with housing, economic development, and neighborhood improvement in the United States since 1970 as a practitioner, an author, and a professor. In addition to his consulting practice, he currently is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Trustee of Enterprise Community Partners, and a Lecturer at the School of City Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Masters in City Planning in 1969.
Kevin T. Byrne is the Chief Investment Officer at The University Financing Foundation, Inc. Since joining the firm in 2003, he has led its national expansion, including its deepening involvement in Research Park development. He has crafted full scale research park business plans for three universities, including developing innovative investment structures that enable parks to maximize the efficiency of its limited resources. Since 2003, TUFF has invested over $200 million into thirteen University expansion projects, ranging from $2 million to $80 million including incubator space, classrooms, performing arts center, housing and high-performance wet and dry research lab space. Mr. Byrne is an Honors graduate from Furman University and spent his early career at Arthur Andersen with a primary focus in the real estate and financial services industries. Mr. Byrne was named to several Andersen specialty teams, developed several of the real estate structuring techniques used by real estate entities today, and served all the premier real estate companies in the Southeast. In 1997, Mr. Byrne founded Byrne & Associates which focused on providing investment banking services to small and middle market companies. After earning his M.B.A. with Honors from the Wharton School in 2001, Mr. Byrne joined a real estate development firm as the CFO, managing a balance sheet of over $200 million and leadingnew transactions of over $150 million in just 2 years.
Henry Cisneros is Chairman of the CityView companies, community-building firms dedicated to producing workforce homes in America’s cities. From 1997-2000, Mr. Cisneros was president and COO of Univision Communications, the Spanish-language broadcaster which has become the fifth-most-watched television network in the nation. From 1993 to 1997, he served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. As a member of President Clinton’s Cabinet, Secretary Cisneros was assigned America’s housing and community development portfolio. He is credited with initiating the revitalization of many of the nation’s public housing developments and with formulating
policies which have contributed to today’s record homeownership rate. Prior to joining the Cabinet, he was chairman of Cisneros Asset Management Company, a fixed income management firm operating nationally. In 1981, Mr. Cisneros became the first Hispanic-American mayor of a major U.S. city, San Antonio, Texas. He has led and served on several foundations and companies. He served as an infantry officer in the United States Army. He was recently featured in Builder’s 2006 list of the Top 50 “Most Influential People in Home Building,” and in Latino Leaders’ list of the Top 101 “Top Leaders of the Hispanic Community.” In June 2007, he was inducted into the National Association of Home Builders “Builders Hall of Fame” and honored as the “Housing Person of the Year” for the U.S. National Housing Conference. Mr. Cisneros holds a B.A. and master’s in urban and regional planning from Texas A&M University, a master’s in public administration from Harvard University, a Ph.D. in public administration from George Washington University, and has been awarded more than 20 honorary doctorates from leading universities.
Carol Coletta is President and CEO of CEOs for Cities and host and producer of the nationally syndicated public radio show Smart City. Before moving to Chicago to head CEOs for Cities, she served as President of Coletta & Company in Memphis. In addition, she 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. Janne Corneil is a principal at Sasaki and an urban designer and planner for campus master plans, urban districts, and waterfronts, international developments, and downtown revitalization plans. Corneil’s background combines twenty years of urban design and architectural experience, both in the U.S. and abroad. Working in both the institutional and urban realms, Corneil’s urban design work includes the design of new universities, research parks, and campus districts in the U.S. and Europe, urban development strategies for central cities in San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle, and the regeneration of mixed-use neighborhoods in Boston, Seattle, and Baltimore.
Jay Cross as team president of the New York Jets, oversees business affairs including marketing, sponsorships, financing, public affairs, merchandising, Internet and broadcasting opportunities. Cross also spearheaded the team’s efforts to establish a permanent home. He led negotiations with the Giants and the state of New Jersey to create what will be the nation’s premiere sports venue. The New Meadowlands Stadium will open for the 2010 season. In 2006, he also led the team’s search for a site to build a new state-of-the-art training facility in 2008. After completing an exhaustive search, the Jets selected a 20-acre site in Florham Park, NJ. Under Cross’ watch, the Jets have created the Jets Academy, an afterschool program serving inner-city youth in New York City and launched a community initiative called Heads Up, which provides grants for new football teams in New York City public schools. Cross came to the Jets directly from the Miami Heat of the NBA where he was president of business operations and the driving force behind the American Airlines Arena. Previously, Cross, a veteran real estate developer, led the planning stages of the Air Canada Centre, home for the
NBA’s Toronto Raptors and the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs. Cross holds a Master’s degree in Architectural Technology from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Toronto.