Dana Bourland, AICP
Senior Vice President, Environment and Strategic Initiatives
The JPB Foundation

Dana works at the intersection of issues related to health, poverty and the environment. Dana led the creation of the Environment Program at The JPB Foundation with a focus on transitioning to a just, equitable and clean energy future, increasing access to the benefits of nature, detoxifying the built and natural systems, and strengthening the field of environmental justice. Formerly Dana was Vice President of Green Initiatives for Enterprise Community Partners where she led environmental strategy for the national affordable housing and community development intermediary. Dana developed and oversaw all aspects of Enterprise’s award-winning Green Communities program including the creation of the Green Communities Criteria and Enterprise’s Multifamily Retrofit Program.

Dana is the author of “Gray to Green: A Call to Action on the Housing and Climate Crises” published by Island Press. Dana is a graduate of Harvard’s Graduate Program in Real Estate and holds a Master of Planning Degree from the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Univ. of Minnesota. She was named one of Fast Company Magazine’s Most Influential Women Activists in Technology and is featured in and has contributed to numerous publications including the book “Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy”, “Greening Our Built World: Costs, Benefits, and Strategies”, “Women in Green”, “Growing Greener Cities”, “Becoming an Urban Planner” and is faculty in Fast Company’s 30-second MBA program. Dana is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, an Ironman finisher, runner, potter, and avid traveler.

Schlonn Hawkins
CEO & Publisher
Shelterforce

Schlonn is a communications executive with more than 15 years of experience. Before joining Shelterforce, Schlonn was director of Delaware’s Campaign for Grade-Level Reading—Get Delaware Reading, responsible for driving collective impact to ensure more children in low-income families are reading on grade level to help them achieve long-term educational success. Previously, she was one of the directors in the marketing and communications department at United Way of Delaware, where she used digital technology to creatively shape the story of the organization. She also led Delaware’s only one-day giving campaign yielding more than $800,000 of unrestricted dollars for the nonprofit sector.

Schlonn is adept in creating the brand experience digitally and has facilitated trainings for hundreds of nonprofits. Before her tenure at United Way, Schlonn was the leader of external affairs at YWCA Delaware, where she managed internal and external communications and provided brand training for executive management and staff. There, she served as an essential component of the Institutional Advancement team, leading the organization in marketing and development strategy. An active mentor and volunteer in her community, Schlonn serves on several boards including Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County and Delaware Local Journalism Initiative. She’s a proud graduate of Delaware State University.

Charles Rutheiser
Senior Associate, Civic Sites and Community Change
Annie E. Casey Foundation

Charles Rutheiser is a Senior Associate in the Center for Community and Economic Opportunity at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Charles has been part of the Casey team involved in the East Baltimore Revitalization Initiative, a large-scale effort to build a mixed-income community of opportunity in a deeply distressed neighborhood adjacent to the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Charles is also an active member of the Urban Land Institute Inner City Council and the Anchor Institution Task Force.

A former faculty member at Bryn Mawr College, Georgia State University, Johns Hopkins University and Western Michigan University, he earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in anthropology from New College of Florida. Charles is the author of The Opportunity Makers: The First Half-Century of Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (2016, Blurb), Imagineering Atlanta: the politics of place in the city of dreams (1996, Verso) and numerous articles, book chapters and reports on education and urban development in the United States and the Caribbean. Charles is former Fulbright and Inter-American Foundation Fellow.

Monica Valdes Lupi
Managing Director, Health
The Kresge Foundation

Monica Valdes Lupi, JD, MPH brings more than 20 years of experience in public health to her role as managing director of The Kresge Foundation’s Health Program.

Valdes Lupi most recently served as senior fellow at the de Beaumont Foundation, where she advised and led its efforts to amplify and accelerate policy initiatives aimed at developing and advancing a health agenda on critical public health issues such as tobacco control, racial justice and health equity.

Valdes Lupi was also a senior advisor to the CDC Foundation in its COVID-19 efforts. In this role, she guided activities aimed at quickly identifying and supporting critical gaps and needs among state and local health departments in their response and recovery activities. She also helped build and manage a team of regional advisors to expand the capacity of the foundation in its efforts to support health departments.

Previously, she served as the executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, the local health department for the City of Boston. Her portfolio included Boston Emergency Medical Services, the largest homeless services program in New England, school-based health centers and other critical public health services.

Prior to her tenure at the Boston Public Health Commission, Valdes Lupi also served as the deputy commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, where she led the day-to-day operations for an agency that included public health hospitals, several regulatory bodies, and numerous public health programs. She also has experience working at the national level as the first chief program officer for Health Systems Transformation at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. Valdes Lupi led ASTHO’s work on health equity, Medicaid and public health partnerships, government relations, state health policy, and public health informatics. She received her Juris Doctorate from the Dickinson School of Law, Master of Public Health from the Boston University School of Public Health and bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College.

MODERATOR

Jeanne Fekade-Sellassie
Executive Director
Funders for Housing and Opportunity

After two decades of working in the affordable housing and community development sector, Jeanne joined FHO as its first Project Director in 2017. Prior to joining FHO, she served as Senior Vice President of NeighborWorks America’s national initiatives division, guiding programming and grant making in the areas of real estate development, asset management, green and healthy housing, homeownership, mortgage and commercial lending, foreclosure mitigation, community stabilization, and resident engagement. Previously, Jeanne worked at the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and she managed the Make It Your Own National Women’s Homeownership Campaign at McAuley Institute.

Jeanne completed her undergraduate work at Seattle University, was an Applied Community and Economic Development fellow at Illinois State University’s Stevenson Center where she received her Master degree in Political Science, and served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Boston, MA and Washington, DC.

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MODERATOR

John Gomperts
Executive Fellow, Campaign for Grade-Level Reading
Former President & CEO, America’s Promise Alliance
@JohnGomperts

John Gomperts is a long-time leader in non-profits and government organizations devoted to civic engagement and to creating greater opportunity for children and youth. From 2012 – 2020, John served as President & CEO of America’s Promise Alliance. Prior to that, John served as the Director of AmeriCorps in the Obama Administration. Earlier in his career, John worked in the US Senate (Sens. Wofford, Kerry, Daschle), practiced law and served as a judicial clerk. John earned his JD from Georgetown University Law Center and his AB in History from University of California, Berkeley. John has served on a wide range of boards in including FoodCorps (Chair), Points of Light, Presidio Institute, News Literacy Project, and others.

PRESENTERS

Jean-Claude Brizard
President & CEO Digital Promise
@DigitalPromise

Jean-Claude Brizard is President and CEO of Digital Promise Global, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on shaping the future of education and advancing equitable education systems by bridging solutions across research, practice, and technology. He is former Senior Advisor and Deputy Director in US Programs at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where he focused on PK-16 education across five communities in four states. He also led several strategies to help close the racial and economic achievement gaps in Washington State’s educational system as well as support the growth and sustainability of the state’s public charter school sector.

He is the former Chief Executive of Chicago Public Schools. Prior to his appointment in Chicago, he was Superintendent of Schools for the Rochester, NY School District. Under Mr. Brizard’s leadership, both the Chicago Public Schools and the Rochester City School District saw substantial improvements in student performance. Mr. Brizard’s experience also includes a 21-year career as an educator and administrator with the NYC Department of Education. He served as a Regional Superintendent, supervising more than 100 schools in the Borough of Brooklyn and he also served as the system’s Executive Director for its 400 secondary schools. He is a Fellow of the Broad Center, a Fellow of the Pahara-Aspen Institute, and a member of the Aspen Institute Global Leadership Network. A commercial pilot and a native of Haiti, Jean-Claude credits his parents—both of whom were educators—with inspiring him to pursue a career in education. He is married to Dr. K. Brooke Stafford-Brizard and is the proud father of four beautiful children.

Yolie Flores
Campaign Director, Parent Nation
TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health
University of Chicago
@AParentNation

Yolie Flores is Campaign Director for Parent Nation, leading strategic efforts to activate parents and allies in building a parent nation. Prior to joining the TMW Center, Yolie supported a network of Campaign for Grade Level Reading communities in their efforts to ensure early school success for more children by elevating parent success. Previously, Yolie served on the Los Angeles Board of Education, was CEO of the L.A. County Children’s Planning Council, and Director of Child Care Policy and Planning for the City of LA. Yolie’s 30-year career advancing the well-being of children and families has earned her the distinction of, twice, being named Social Worker of the Year.

Jacqueline Jones, Ph.D.
President & CEO
Foundation for Child Development
@fcdusorg

Jacqueline Jones has been a teacher, researcher, and policymaker. Currently, she is the President and CEO of the Foundation for Child Development. During the first term of the Obama administration, Dr. Jones served as Senior Advisor on Early Learning to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and as the country’s first Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Early Learning in the US Department of Education. Prior to federal service she was the Assistant Commissioner for the Division of Early Childhood Education in the New Jersey State Department of Education, with responsibility for New Jersey’s Abbott Preschool Program, with an annual budget of approximately $550 million. For over 15 years Dr. Jones served as a Senior Research Scientist at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton where she and her colleagues explored appropriate assessment of young children in the areas of science and literacy. Dr. Jones has been a Visiting Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and early in her career was a faculty member at Lehman College.

She has served as a member of the National Academy of Science’s consensus committees that produced Early Childhood Assessment: Why, What and How and Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation. Dr. Jones attended Hunter College and earned both a masters and PhD from Northwestern University.

Susanna Loeb, Ph.D.
Director, Annenberg Institute for School Reform
Executive Director, National Student Support Accelerator
Brown University
@loeb_susanna | @NSSAccelerator

Susanna Loeb is Director of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, where she is also Professor of Education and of International and Public Affairs and the founder and acting executive director of the National Student Support Accelerator, which aims to expand access to relationship-based, high-impact tutoring in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Susanna’s research focuses broadly on education policy and its role in improving educational opportunities for students. Her work has addressed issues of educator career choices and professional development, of school finance and governance, and of early childhood systems. Before moving to Brown, Susanna was the Barnett Family Professor of Education at Stanford. She was the founding director of the Center for Education Policy at Stanford and co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education. Susanna led the research for both Getting Down to Facts projects for California schools. In 2020, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also an affiliate at NBER and JPAL and a member of the National Academy of Education.

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