Speaker Biographies
Robin F. Bachin is the assistant provost for civic and community engagement and the Charlton W. Tebeau Associate Professor of History at the University of Miami. She has published books and articles and delivered presentations on topics such as universities and community engagement and the history of urban planning and design. She is the author of Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Chicago, 1890–1919 and is past president of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History. Bachin and the office of civic and community engagement have received numerous awards, including the 2015 Carnegie Classification in Community Engagement, the 2015 Phi Beta Kappa Key of Excellence Award, and the 2013 Engaged Educator of the Year Award.
Shekeria Brown is the executive director of South Florida Community Development Coalition (SFCDC), a nonprofit membership organization. SFCDC strives to make Miami-Dade County a better place for all through capacity building, advocacy, and developing partnerships that expand affordable housing and economic opportunity for the county's low- to moderate-income individuals. Brown has spent the last 15 years in south Florida as an urban planner, practitioner, and consultant focused on affordable housing and community and economic development. She has administered over $100 million in state and federal funding allocated to local government and has led the development of numerous strategic plans for community development investment. Brown holds a master of urban and regional planning from Florida Atlantic University, with a concentration in community and economic development.
Naomi Cytron is a senior research associate in the community development division at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Her primary research interests are neighborhood revitalization and regional equity, and she has authored numerous articles and reports on topics ranging from concentrated poverty to transit-oriented development. Previously, Cytron worked as a consultant in affordable housing finance and managed a fair housing testing program. She has a master's degree in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor's degree in biology from Macalester College.
Daniel De Vries is the senior manager of HELPline and senior services at Switchboard of Miami and is a certified information and referral specialist. He attended the University of Alaska in Anchorage where he completed course work for his bachelor of science in social work. De Vries previously worked at Switchboard as the quality assurance program coordinator and developed a comprehensive quality assurance program. His work history covers curriculum development for training staff, data collection, coaching staff, and process improvement.
Sue Gallagher has served as the chief innovation officer at the Children's Services Council of Broward County since 2007. Gallagher leads the backbone support efforts for the Broward Children's Strategic Plan, consisting of over 50 committees and 250 child serving nonprofits and community partners. Gallagher supervises research managers who oversee performance measurement systems for 150 contracts. Previously, Gallagher was an administrator in nonprofit organizations for over 15 years. She is an adjunct faculty at Florida International University teaching program evaluation and organizational and community strategic planning.
Karen Grassi has over 25 years of experience working with geographic information systems (GIS) technology. She started by developing end user solutions, focusing on the improvement of government operations; over the last several years her work has been concentrated on advancements of the county's GIS infrastructure as well as the provision of technical support to GIS users. She is currently Miami-Dade County's project manager for the award-winning Master Address Repository System. Grassi is responsible for the day-to-day provision of GIS web services, ArcGIS desktop (distributed via CITRIX), and ArcGIS online platforms. She is retired from the U.S. Air Force Reserves where she served as a civil engineer for 25 years and is a graduate of Community College of the Air Force.
Maggie Grieve is vice president for Success Measures at NeighborWorks America where she directs a social enterprise offering evaluation consulting, technical assistance, and technology services to national and community-based nonprofit organizations and funders. She previously served as director of research and evaluation at McAuley Institute where she codirected the initial development of Success Measures and managed the development of its data system, a web-based tool for data collection and evaluation support. She holds a bachelor of arts in American studies from the University of Minnesota and studied urban planning at the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania.
Cecilia A. Gutierrez is the president and chief executive officer of Miami Children's Initiative. With an adventurous spirit and a passion for service, culture, and travel, Gutierrez has dedicated her career to helping those most in need, particularly children. In 2009, she fulfilled a lifelong dream and embarked on a year abroad working in South Africa and India. Since October 2011, she has worked for Miami Children's Initiative, initially as the vice president for development. The organization is patterned after the nationally renowned Harlem Children's Zone. Gutierrez has more than 23 years of experience in executive management, policy and organizational development, program design and implementation, advocacy, and philanthropy. Most of her executive level positions have been in the education space, helping students and families access quality education. She is a graduate of Boston College with a bachelor of arts in sociology and a minor in women studies. She also received a master's in public administration as a National Urban Fellow from Baruch College of City University of New York.
Barbara “Bobbie” Ibarra is executive director of the Miami Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy agency dedicated to preventing and ending homelessness in south Florida. She serves on several boards, including Funders Together to End Homelessness, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, and the South Florida Community Development Coalition. Ibarra also is an instructor at Miami Dade College. Previously, she served as vice president and general manager of Jungle Island and was founding president of Our Kids. She also served as vice president for human resources for Mayor's Jewelers and senior vice president for Citibank. Ibarra also spent 15 years in government. She has a bachelor's and master's degrees from Temple University.
Moira Inkelas is associate professor in the department of health policy and management at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Fielding School of Public Health and assistant director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities. Her research and policy studies examine how systems of care influence quality and performance of children's health services and supports. She has directed innovation and improvement collaboratives with networks of health care providers to improve child and family outcomes. Inkelas has also designed measurement and change processes to support cross-sector efforts involving health, education, child care, social services, and others to achieve population health goals for children and families.
Roderick K. King is chief executive officer for the Florida Institute for Health Innovation, an associate professor in the department of public health sciences at the Miller School of Medicine, and senior faculty at the Disparities Solutions Center at the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital. His academic work and key consulting roles focus on improving the health of underserved communities via leadership and organizational development and human capital development. Dr. King has worked to improve the health of communities nationally and internationally via training and facilitating collaborative leadership efforts to support leaders in creating aligned actions and measurable results for underserved communities. In 2011, he was selected as one of 20 scholars in the western hemisphere for the new Fulbright Regional Network for Applied Research (NEXUS) Program to engage in collaborative thinking, analysis, and problem solving to improve the quality of life for communities in the region. From 2010–11, he served as the senior adviser to the Bureau of Primary Health Care of the Health Resources and Services Administration in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He currently serves as chairman of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Minority Health. Previously, Dr. King served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health for 16 years. He is board certified in pediatrics and a fellow in the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Thamara Labrousse has hands-on expertise managing complex organizational issues, developed over 25 years working in the nonprofit sector. Her administrative skills includes program development and implementation, strategic planning, community engagement and collaboration, grant writing, community needs assessment, board administration, fiscal operations, human resource management, and staff and volunteer training and development. Labrousse excels in bridging partnerships that bring grassroots leaders together with professionals and policymakers to improve their communities. Her professional experience includes seven years as a consulting partner with Strategic Partners where she focused on building infrastructure of nonprofit and government entities. She also held leadership positions with Switchboard of Miami, including executive director and chief operating officer. Currently, she works with the city of Miami Gardens as program director of Healthy Community Partnership. This initiative is part of the city's strategic and systemic effort to reduce poor health outcomes by engaging community residents to improve selected public health indicators. Labrousse is a double Barry University alumnus, with a bachelor of science in public administration and a master of science in management.
Marisel Losa is the president and chief executive officer of the Health Council of South Florida Inc., a private nonprofit organization. Its mission is to be the source of unbiased health and quality of life data and analysis; the preferred partner for quality program planning, management, evaluation, and community services; the facilitator of collaboration and partnerships in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties; and the trusted champion for ethical and targeted health care policy at the local, state, and national levels. Losa has more than three decades of experience in the health care field. Under her leadership, a cohesive, dedicated, and dynamic professional leadership team provides various services to the community: needs assessments, emerging needs solutions, strategic planning, and program development and evaluation in such areas as service coordination, chronic disease management, reduction of health disparities, and the promotion of wellness and healthy lifestyles for the counties' residents.
Grace Morales began at Switchboard of Miami in 2011 as an AmeriCorp member, responsible for answering information/referral and crisis calls through different specialized helplines in Switchboard's contact center. In 2012–13, she became a full-time counselor answering more than 15 specialty lines. In 2014 Morales became Switchboard's resource coordinator, serving as the liaison between nonprofits and other organizations and Switchboard's community resource directory (the HelpPages). She has a master's degree in forensic psychology and has numerous professional certifications related to her work.
Ned Murray is the associate director of the Florida International University Metropolitan Center. Murray has over 20 years of professional and academic experience in city planning and economic development. He holds a doctorate in urban and regional planning with a concentration in economic development from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and is a professionally certified planner with the American Institute of Certified Planners. Murray has served as principal investigator on many landmark planning and economic studies in south Florida, including the city of Miami Florida East Coast railway corridor strategic redevelopment plan, economic development implementation plan for Miami-Dade County, city of Miami targeted industry study, and the leading housing studies for Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.
Paul Petrella is technology and data manager for Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida (NHSSF), a nonprofit affordable housing and community development organization. He has been with NHSSF since relocating from Minneapolis to the Miami area in 2012. Petrella is a technology and operations professional with expertise in desktop and network support, data management, software training, business analysis, and nonprofit leadership. He applies practical approaches that foster transformative improvements and bring greater organizational success. Previously, Petrella served over 12 years as applications specialist for the University of Minnesota Medical Foundation, a nonprofit that raised funds for medical research. He is also founder and past board chair of One Voice Mixed Chorus, a nationally recognized 120-voice community chorus based in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.
Kathryn Pettit is a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where her research focuses on measuring and understanding neighborhood change. She directs the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, a network of local organizations that collect, organize, and use neighborhood data to inform local advocacy and decision making. Pettit is a recognized expert on small-area data sources and the use of neighborhood data in research and practice. She has conducted research on a wide range of topics, including neighborhood redevelopment and federally assisted housing, and recently coauthored the book Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data.
Lisa Pittman is a senior research and evaluation analyst at the Children's Trust in Miami-Dade County. She oversees community-level research, evaluation, and needs assessment, and contributes to community initiatives requiring collaboration-building and cross-agency/cross-systems efforts. Her expertise in program and systems evaluation, outcomes measurement, and public policy analysis has advanced the trust's mission to improve the lives of children and their families since 2007. Pittman earned her doctorate in economics from George Washington University in Washington, DC. She has undergraduate degrees in economics from California State University at Sacramento, and in international relations from the University of South Florida in Tampa. Prior to making Miami-Dade County her home 23 years ago, she was a business-education partnership consultant, an economic development officer in southwest Virginia, an economic analyst at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, a paralegal in California, and a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines.
Arden Shank is president and chief executive officer of Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida (NHSSF) and has 30 years of diverse nonprofit housing and community development experience. Shank has a deep knowledge of specialized community-based housing issues, including corporation start-ups, restructuring, fund-raising, and capital project implementation. He has helped expand NHSSF from a small agency of three staff members to a sophisticated operation with a professional team, an engaged 14-member board, and an expanded territory that includes Miami-Dade and Broward counties. NHSSF has six lines of business: homebuyer preparation, lending, housing development, real estate sales, neighborhood revitalization, and foreclosure prevention. Shank's commitment to making communities stronger has resulted in his involvement with numerous organizations. He is board chair and president of South Florida Community Development Coalition, founder and president of the Community Reinvestment Alliance of South Florida, and an elected member for the Federal Reserve Board Community Advisory Council.
Clare Sibori is Miami-Dade County's project manager for geographic information systems websites on the county's web portal, miamidade.gov. Sibori and her team of GIS developers have created multiple GIS-related websites used by county departments, municipalities, residents, and businesses to visualize and understand geographic information, which is used by all county departments to support better decision making, operational effectiveness, and increased efficiency. Sibori earned her bachelor of science from Barry University and almost immediately began her career with the county, where she has been employed for 27 years.