Speaker Biographies
Dianne Brake
PlanSmart NJ
Dianne Brake is best known for finding common ground among people with competing interests and devising effective land use solutions to problems of auto-dependence, regional equity and environmental degradation. She has been president of PlanSmart NJ, the new name for the Regional Planning Partnership, since 1985. PlanSmart NJ is the oldest and largest non-profit research and advocacy group dedicated to sound land use planning and regional cooperation in New Jersey. Ms. Brake has also served as Vice-Chair of the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) from 1990 to 1995, and was a member of the State Planning Commission from 1996 to 2001, where she chaired the Plan Implementation Committee. She has been involved in founding a number of effective coalitions, including New Jersey Future, the Coalition of Affordable Housing and Environment, and the New Jersey Regional Coalition. She has been an adjunct lecturer for the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, and, in 1998, Ms. Brake was one of four chosen from around the country to receive a German Marshall Environmental Fellowship to travel to thirteen European cities to study land use and transportation planning.
Robert Ceberio
NJ Meadowlands Commission
Mr. Ceberio has been the Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC) since July 2002. The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission is a regional state agency responsible for land use planning and management, environmental protection and solid waste management for a 32-square mile area encompassing parts of fourteen communities in Bergen and Hudson Counties. He has been with the NJMC since 1981. He worked his way up through the ranks and held various positions including Acting Executive Director, Deputy Executive Director, Director of Planning and Management, Director of Administration, Acting Chief Fiscal Officer and Administrator of Solid Waste Rate Management. Prior to coming to the NJMC, he worked for the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, the New Jersey Senate and the Township of Lyndhurst. As Executive Director, Mr. Ceberio is the Chief Executive Officer of the NJMC. He is responsible for overseeing a professional staff of more than 100 people and an annual budget of over $25 million. Mr. Ceberio is married to Carol Lynn and has three children: Matthew, Luke and Katherine Rose.
Susan Bass Levin
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Susan Bass Levin was appointed First Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey by Governor Jon S. Corzine on July 18, 2007. She is the senior New Jersey official on the Agency’s management team that oversees more than 7,000 public employees who operate and patrol many of the busiest and most important transportation links in the region, including airports, bridges, tunnels, seaports, rail systems and the World Trade Center site. Ms. Levin’s career as a public servant has been marked by her commitment to improving the quality of life for New Jerseyans, first as Mayor of Cherry Hill—a position she held for 14 years—and most recently as a Cabinet member in the administrations of three New Jersey governors. Ms. Levin served as Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs from January 2002 until July 2005, and again starting in January 2006 until her appointment to the Port Authority. Ms. Levin, a cancer survivor, is especially proud of her work in establishing an Ovarian Cancer Research Fund at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey. She is also the mother of two daughters.
Toni Griffin
City of Newark
Toni L. Griffin has built a twenty-year career in both the public and private sectors, combining the practice of architecture and urban design with the execution of innovative, large-scale, mixed-use urban redevelopment projects and citywide and neighborhood planning strategies. In June 2007, Ms Griffin became the newly appointed Director of Community Development for the City of Newark, New Jersey, responsible for creating a centralized division of planning and urban design. Prior to Newark, Ms. Griffin spent seven years in Washington, D.C., as Vice President and Director of Design for the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation from 2005 to 2006 and Deputy Planning Director for the D.C. Office of Planning from 2000 to 2005. In these public sector roles, Ms. Griffin oversaw large-scale redevelopment planning for the downtown, waterfront and commercial corridors, as well as the management of a comprehensive citywide neighborhood planning initiative. She also managed the master planning and development transaction for a mixed-use district around the new Washington National's ballpark, and influenced the design of major development and public realm projects along the Anacostia waterfront. Ms. Griffin began her career as an architect with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP in Chicago, where she became an Associate Partner involved in architecture and urban design projects including commercial developments in London, Barcelona, Sydney and Beijing; and urban redevelopment strategies for downtown Detroit and Chicago.
Allen Magrini
Hartz Mountain
Allen Magrini joined Hartz Mountain Industries, Inc. in 1988. As a member of the Legal Department, his practice focuses primarily on land use, general real estate, and government affairs. Prior to joining Hartz, Mr. Magrini was with the firm of Gibbons, DelDeo, Dolan, Griffinger and Vecchione in Newark. Before that, he was Director of Economic Development for the City of Paterson, New Jersey. Mr. Magrini is licensed to practice law in the State of New Jersey, the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, and the United States Supreme Court. He is also a Licensed Professional Planner in the State of New Jersey. Among his public affairs activities, he is a member of the Board of Trustees of the New Jersey Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP) and the Land Use Law Section of the New Jersey Bar Association. Mr. Magrini also currently serves as President of NJ-NAIOP.
Michelle Doran McBean
President, Future City Inc.
Michelle Doran McBean brings a lifelong commitment to living, developing and sustaining a culture of respect, mutual trust, equity and ethics. She is President and CEO of Future City Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Elizabeth that seeks to bring the African American and growing immigrant communities into the planning and implementation process. An immediate priority is the linking and application of sustainable development to NJ’s watershed and green spaces through programs that promote community-friendly open spaces and healthy neighborhood/healthy home initiatives. Ms. McBean is a graduate of Harvard University School of Education, studied at Radcliffe Institute and is a recent graduate of the Princeton Theological Seminary. Ms. McBean has a husband, Nathan Dodge McBean, and son, Michael Nathan McBean.
Michael McGuinness
NJ-NAIOP
Michael McGuinness is Executive Director of the New Jersey Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP). Nationally, NAIOP represents over 15,000 members. The New Jersey Chapter has 540 members representing developers, investors and owners of the state’s major office and industrial real estate investment properties. In addition to overseeing the daily operations and programs of the Chapter, Mr. McGuinness directs the legislative program and manages the Developers Political Action Committee (DPAC). Mr. McGuinness frequently meets with members of the executive branch of government and testifies before New Jersey’s legislative committees on matters of importance to the commercial and industrial real estate development industry. McGuinness assumed this position in 1997. Mr. McGuinness previously served as Acting Director for Governor Whitman’s Office of the Business Ombudsman in the New Jersey Department of State. Mr. McGuinness has served as a commissioner on the New Jersey Commerce and Economic Growth Commission from 2002 to 2004 and currently serves as a trustee for the Society for Economic and Environmental Development (SEED), the Patriots Path Council of the Boy Scouts of America and as a member of the Steering Committee for the New Jersey Sustainable State Institute. Mr. McGuinness resides in Hamilton with his wife Susan and his three daughters.
Bernard McNeilly
PB Americas, Inc.
Bernard McNeilly joined PB as a Vice President in 2007 with overall responsibility for the firm’s business development and client relations efforts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for planning, design, program management, construction management and strategic consulting. Through his career, Mr. McNeilly has provided design, inspection, infrastructure reconstruction, facility retrofit, traffic/transportation engineering and communications implementation services. Mr. McNeilly’s project experience includes leading scoping, environmental analyses and documentation and permitting, and infrastructure design projects. By working closely with the local community and residents, he is able to create a sense of place by providing amenities that can be blended with traditional public works needs. Mr. McNeilly is a licensed professional engineer in New Jersey and several Eastern states. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering and a Masters of Science from Stevens Institute of Technology. Mr. McNeilly is formally trained in context-sensitive design, community impact assessment and management of the environmental process. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Newark Regional Business Partnership.
Gualberto Medina
Cushman & Wakefield
Gualberto (Gil) Medina is Executive Managing Director for Cushman & Wakefield. He manages the New Jersey operations of the firm, where he is responsible for all the service lines offered by the firm. Prior to his current position, Mr. Medina served as director of Cushman & Wakefield’s Technology Enterprise Group. He earlier served as Secretary of Commerce for New Jersey during the Christine Todd Whitman administration. Mr. Medina is an attorney and CPA and served as legal counsel to a major federal department, as well as a consultant to city, state and federal bodies.
Kathleen Miller Prunty
Director, Cranford Downtown Management Corporation
Kathleen Miller Prunty joined the Cranford Downtown Management Corporation in 1997 when the town adopted a comprehensive approach for downtown revitalization that focused on transit-oriented development. As Director, she has managed a number of major development projects in Cranford, including the mixed-use Cranford Crossing; a transit-oriented development of the waterfront; and numerous other transit-friendly infill development projects throughout town that have stimulated millions in reinvestment and improvements to existing downtown properties. For all these projects, she has overseen redevelopment area designations, negotiated with developers, and performed community outreach and public relations. She has also worked with the town to develop a Downtown Vision Plan to improve development, parking, public spaces, and zoning in the town and she developed an Action Plan based on Cranford’s Transit Village designation that identified growth and infill development areas and planned for pedestrian improvements. Ms. Prunty is also on the Board of Directors for Downtown New Jersey.
William O’Dea
Deputy Executive Director, Elizabeth Development Company
Bill O’Dea has worked for the Elizabeth Development Company since 1993, serving as Deputy Executive Director for the past eight years. In this capacity, Mr. O’Dea oversees the administration of more than $10 million in economic and community development projects annually, and has managed more than $750 million in redevelopment projects, developed public policy with special expertise in the area of community organizing leveraging state and private funds to spearhead economic development growth in underutilized urban markets. Under his supervision, the National Association of State Development Agencies named EDC as the number one enterprise zone program in America in 1998. In 2004, EDC was awarded the second largest grant in New Jersey in the amount of $700,000 from the Wachovia Regional Foundation for the Elizabeth port development. In 2006, the Elizabeth port neighborhood became only the second neighborhood to be approved for the Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit designation by the Department of Community Affairs. The EDC also received $10 million in New Market Tax Credits in 2006. Mr. O’Dea serves as Chair of the Executive Board of one of the estate’s largest Hispanic social service providers, Puerto Rican Organization for Economic Education.
Noelle Reeve
Vice President, Planning, AICP, PP
Ms. Reeve has more than 15 years experience in work related to the interface between urban systems and the natural environment. She has a Bachelors of Science in Environment & Resources from Trent University and a Masters of Science in Community and Regional Planning from the University of British Columbia. There she focused on natural resource inventories and the economics of sustainable development. In New Jersey, she has produced a Watershed Management Plan for the Delaware Tributaries; an Urban Growth Targets report for the City of Trenton and coordinated a Metro-Equity Coalition in Central Jersey. She is currently working on a Handbook for Regional Planning and the Smart Growth Economy Project. Prior to her work at PlanSmart NJ, Ms. Reeve worked for the province of British Columbia for four years in the areas of environmental policy and economics. As a member of Board of the Environmental Advisory Committee for the City of Victoria, and the Board of the Forum for Planning Action, she authored two groundbreaking reports: Guidelines for Environmental Land Use and Development (1993), and Sustainable Development in Municipalities: Making It Work (1989).
Jose Torres
Mayor, City of Paterson
As Mayor of the third largest City in the State of New Jersey, Jose Torres is committed to cracking down on crime, neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, improving the city’s schools and providing better educational opportunities for all residents. Mayor Torres was first elected to the City Council in 1990 and has served the people of Paterson for the past 14 plus years. Mayor Torres has been in the forefront of establishing hundreds of affordable housing units for working families, and has proven his commitment to education by establishing twelve after-school centers that offer a safe place for Paterson’s children to play, while providing peace of mind for hardworking parents. Mayor Torres recently received the New Jersey Planning Association’s Award for Smart Growth for the City of Paterson’s Master Plan. “Joey” and his wife, Sonia, have three daughters.
John Weingart
Highlands Council
John Weingart serves as Chair of New Jersey's Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council. He is also the associate director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. Before coming to Eagleton, John worked in New Jersey state government, focusing on environmental and land use issues, during the administrations of two Democratic and two Republican governors. His posts included serving as Director of the Division of Coastal Resources and Assistant Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, and Executive Director of the state's Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility Siting Board. His publications include the Eagleton Institute study, "Another Government Success Story: Citizen Volunteers on New Jersey State Boards and Commissions;" and the books, Waste Is A Terrible Thing To Mind: Risk, Radiation, and Distrust of Government, and Reform of Undergraduate Education (written with Arthur E. Levine) which was named "Book of the Year" by the American Council on Education. On Sunday nights, John hosts Music You Can't Hear On The Radio, New Jersey's longest-running folk music and bluegrass radio show, on WPRB-FM and WPRB.com. John and his wife, Deborah Spitalnik, live in Hunterdon County.