Speakers

 

Special guests

Majora Carter

Majora Carter is a real estate developer, urban revitalization strategy consultant, MacArthur Fellow and Peabody Award winning broadcaster. She is responsible for the creation and successful implementation of numerous economic developments, technology & green-infrastructure projects, policies and job training & placement systems, and is currently serving as Senior Program Director for Community Regeneration at Groundswell, Inc. Read more about Majora here. 

Dr. Marshall Shepherd

Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd is a leading international expert in weather and climate and is the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Georgia. Dr. Shepherd was the 2013 President of American Meteorological Society (AMS), the nation’s largest and oldest professional/science society in the atmospheric and related sciences. He serves as Director of the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Atmospheric Sciences Program and Full Professor in the Department of Geography where he is Associate Department Head.

Shepherd is also the host of The Weather Channel’s Weather Geeks, a pioneering Sunday talk show dedicated to science, and he is a contributor to Forbes Magazine. Dr. Shepherd routinely appears on national media outlets like CNN, The Weather Channel, CBS’s Face The Nation and more. He also provides expertise to NASA, NOAA, The White House, Congress and other stakeholders. In 2021, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineers, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the first faculty member in the history of the University of Georgia to achieve this trifecta, and the first African American to do so.

Zelalem Adefris

Zelalem Adefris is the Vice President of Policy & Advocacy at Catalyst Miami, where she oversees Catalyst’s Policy & Engagement Department. Zelalem joined Catalyst Miami in 2016, directing the organization’s climate justice work. Her previous work experiences include environmental justice organizing at the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island and conducting emergency preparedness research at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She holds an MPH in Global Environmental Health from Emory University and a bachelor’s degree in Community Health from Brown University. Zelalem serves as a co-chair of the Miami Climate Alliance, a philanthropic trustee of the Solutions Project, as well as a board member of the Miami-Dade College Earth Ethics Institute.

Gary Gero

Gary Gero was appointed LA County’s first Chief Sustainability Officer in November 2016.  Gary previously served as the President of the Climate Action Reserve and he now serves as the Vice-Chair of its Board of Directors. Gary’s career includes service as the Assistant General Manager for the City of Los Angeles Environmental Affairs Department, and he also managed renewable and energy efficiency programs at LADWP.

Sharai Lewis-Gruss

Sharai Lewis-Gruss is the Director of Data Enablement at First Street Foundation. In this role, she applies her background in environmental policy and GIS to help support those seeking to access the First Street data.

Before joining First Street, Sharai was a GIS Specialist and Project Coordinator at COWI North America, where she mapped shorelines in an effort to help reduce vulnerability to sea level rise, major storms, and other events. She coordinated teams in multiple countries to deliver an interactive mapping platform and products that were used for the City of New York projects, which included the Waterfront Maintenance Management System and Rebuild by Design Living Shoreline. Prior to that, Sharai was a GIS Manager for the Regional Plan Association of Greater New York. In that position she created the “Access to Jobs” interactive map, using it to present the findings of an associated study on the state of the tri-state region to private organizations and federal agencies, such as the Department of Transportation and the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition, Sharai worked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a GIS Specialist for the Superstorm Sandy recovery effort, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

She holds a Masters in Geography-GIS from Hunter College of the City University of New York and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Policy from Middlebury College. In addition, Sharai holds certificates in GIS from Hunter and in Spanish from the University of Buenos Aires.

Tiffany Chu

Tiffany Chu is a designer and a planner. She is the former CEO & Co-founder of Remix (remix.com) and now SVP at Via (ridewithvia.com). Remix is the collaborative software platform for transportation planning used by 500+ cities globally, and has been recognized as a Tech Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and BloombergNEF (New Energy Finance) for furthering sustainability and equity in the field. Remix was acquired by Via in March 2021, the leading transportation technology company powering public mobility systems worldwide.

Tiffany served as Commissioner of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, and sits on the city’s Congestion Pricing Policy Advisory Committee. Previously, Tiffany was a Fellow at Code for America, the first UX hire at Zipcar and is an alum of Y Combinator. She has been named in Forbes’ 30 Under 30, LinkedIn’s Next Wave of Leaders Under 35, Curbed’s Young Guns, and featured at SXSW, Helsinki Design Week, the New York Times Cities for Tomorrow Conference and more. Tiffany has a background in architecture and urban planning from MIT.

Bob Dean

​​Bob Dean joined the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) in 2018 as its Chief Executive Officer. CNT is a nationally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to deliver innovative analysis and solutions that support community-based organizations and local governments to create neighborhoods that are equitable, sustainable, and resilient. CNT works where urban form – the built environment and infrastructure of our cities – intersects with disparities by race and income. We work across sectors, on topics including climate resilience, environmental justice, healthy housing, transportation equity, community-based planning, and nature-based solutions.

Prior to CNT, Bob served as the Deputy Executive Director for Planning for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), where he created and then oversaw the Local Technical Assistance program, which has offered planning assistance to local governments across the region through over 200 local planning projects. Before initiating the LTA program, Bob managed GO TO 2040, the award-winning comprehensive plan for the Chicago metropolitan area that was adopted in October 2010. After leaving CMAP in 2017, he consulted for Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) and RW Ventures on local governance and economic development projects during 2018. Prior to CMAP, Bob worked in municipal government for five years in suburban Chicago. Bob holds a Master of Regional Planning from Cornell University and a Bachelor of Arts in American History from the University of Delaware.

Kim Lucas

Acting Director of Pittsburgh Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, full bio coming soon.

Dr. Regan F. Patterson

Dr. Regan F. Patterson is the Transportation Equity Research Fellow at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF), where she conducts intersectional transportation policy analysis and research. Prior to joining the CBCF, Dr. Patterson was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. She earned her PhD in Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation research focused on the impact of transportation policies on air quality and environmental justice. Dr. Patterson holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UCLA and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley.

Smart Growth America

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Get ready for this year with our discussion guides

Turn our Equity Summit content into action and tangible change in your community with this set of four discussion guides (plus an extra guide with instructions for using them), based on the 2021 Summit content.

Consider how to improve your smart growth advocacy where you live or work.  You can certainly do this on your own, but to maximize the impact, we recommend doing this with a small group of colleagues, friends, or other people in your community. Think of it like a book discussion group. Listen to last year’s Summit content, read the summaries of each session, and then think about the discussion questions together as a group—perhaps over a few weeks. For those of you that are ready to take the next step, you can put together a plan of action.

Download the full set of discussion guides (.pdf)

Watch last year’s Summit

Watching last year’s summit is a great way to get to know the content in the discussion guides above. In 2021, we spent a lot of time talking about the “why.” This year, we are hoping to tackle more of the “how,” while continuing to lay a foundation for those who are new to the discussion.