Kevin DeGood is the Deputy Policy Director for Transportation for America where he conducts research, provides legislative analysis, and advances T4 campaign priorities with congressional leaders. Kevin authored Thinking Outside the Farebox: Creative Approaches to Financing Transit Projects and Why the Expansion of the TIFIA Program Matters in the Planning and Environmental Law journal. Prior to joining T4America, Kevin worked as the Director of Legislative Affairs for Simon and Company, Inc. a federal affairs firm specializing in the representation of municipal governments and transit authorities. Kevin holds a Masters of Public Policy from the University of Southern California and a Bachelors of Arts in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Steve Schlickman has over 34 years of transportation experience beginning as a bus driver in 1975 to becoming the Executive Director of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) in 2005, a post he left in the fall 2010 to become the Executive Director of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Urban Transportation Center. Through most of his career Steve has specialized in the funding and finance of transportation projects and teaches that topic to his graduate students. He has worked for the Chicago Transit Authority, the City of Chicago, Parsons Brinckerhoff, and numerous transportation related clients as a consultant. Notable highlights in Steve’s career include leadership roles in the Urban Transportation Center’s inclusion in three national University Transportation Centers in 2012, in the reform and finance of the RTA in 1983 and 2008, representing Macquarie Bank on their $1.8 billion purchase of the Chicago Skyway Project in 2005, numerous initiatives involving billions of dollars of funding in federal highway and transit authorization bills dating back to 1982, and a leadership role in assisting in the passage of the Airport Facility Charge Authorization in 1990.

Peter joined MPC as urban development director in 1996. For the past 16 years, he has played a lead role in expanding MPC’s capacity to produce quality research, develop sound policies, and advocate for sensible development in Chicagoland. He was promoted to Vice President of External Relations in 1999, and Vice President in 2009. In addition to overseeing MPC’s Regional Planning & Investments programs, Peter coordinates MPC’s legislative outreach to Springfield and Chicago’s Chicago City Council. He has led several major policy initiatives, including the 1999 rewrite of the Illinois Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Act, massive overhaul of Chicago’s zoning ordinance in 2004, and passage of Illinois’ Public Private Partnerships for Transportation Act in 2011. He staffed Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Transportation and Infrastructure transition committee, is working on bringing Bus Rapid Transit to Chicago's west side, and co–chair of the Mayors Pedestrian Advisory Committee with Gabe Klein, commissioner of the Chicago Dept. of Transportation. Peter also co- chairs the Local Exhibits Committee for the American Planning Association 2013 Conference, and is a member of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning Transportation Committee and University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) Campus Advisory Board. Prior to joining MPC, from 1994 to 1996, Peter worked for the Chicago Park District as area manager on the southeast side. He also founded and served on the UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs Alumni Association from 1997 to 2003. Peter has received several awards and honors, including the 2005 City Partner Award for outstanding contribution to UIC and the Chicago metropolitan area; and the 2007 Lou Liay Spirit Award for Extraordinary Alumni Service from the University of Illinois. Peter received a master’s degree in urban planning from UIC in 1993, and a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science from the University of Chicago in 1990. He was born and raised in Chicago’s Hyde Park community and lives on the North Side in the city’s 47th Ward with his wife and children.

Carol Coletta specializes in developing cities and creative communities. She is leading ArtPlace, a new national initiative to accelerate creative placemaking across the U.S. ArtPlace is a collaboration of the nation’s top foundations, leading banks, federal agencies and the National Endowment for the Arts. Prior to joining ArtPlace, Carol was president and CEO of CEOs for Cities, a national network of urban leaders building and sustaining the next generation of great American cities. For ten years, she hosted and produced a nationally syndicated public radio show, Smart City. She also 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 is a passionate advocate for cities, and she has devoted her life to answering the question: What makes cities succeed? Carol was a Knight Fellow in Community Building at the University of Miami School of Architecture and was named one of the world’s 50 most important urban experts by a leading European think tank. She is a Senior Fellow with the Design Futures Council and completed graduate work in future studies and design. In 2012, she was named one of the Top 100 in Public Interest Design.

Randy Blankenhorn is executive director of CMAP, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (www.cmap.illinois.gov). Under his leadership, CMAP developed and is now guiding the implementation of GO TO 2040, metropolitan Chicago’s first comprehensive regional plan in more than 100 years. The plan’s four themes -- Livable Communities, Human Capital, Efficient Governance, and Regional Mobility -- address the fundamental challenges that shape residents' daily lives. Randy and CMAP staff work closely with seven counties, 284 municipalities, and scores of stakeholder groups to implement the plan’s strategies for aligning public policies and investments, seeking to maximize the benefit of scarce resources as the region adds more than 2 million new residents in the next three decades. With GO TO 2040’s integrated approach to transportation, housing, economic development, open space, the environment, and other quality-of-life issues, CMAP is dedicated to strengthening the region’s communities and ensuring economic prosperity. In 2013, the American Planning Association selected CMAP as its first-ever recipient of the National Planning Excellence Award for a Planning Agency. Prior to joining CMAP in 2006, Randy was Bureau Chief of Urban Program Planning for the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), coordinating activities of the 14 metropolitan planning organizations across Illinois.

Since taking office in December of 2010, DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin has made it his mission to reduce the size and scope of local government in an effort to make it more accountable, more efficient and more transparent for taxpayers. Chairman Cronin has successfully cut the County budget by more than $13 million, reformed employee benefits saving $20 million and reformed essential public agencies. Prior to being elected to DuPage County, Chairman Cronin served as a state legislator for nearly 20 years where he was known as a “reformer” who was committed to taxpayers, children, senior citizens and small business owners. While serving in Springfield, he fought against attempts to raise the income tax rate on families and small businesses, he halted legislation to impose a Gross Receipts Tax that would have crippled small businesses and advocated for property tax caps for senior citizens and veterans.

Mr. Gates (58) is Chairman of the Board of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), which oversees all rail, bus, subway, elevated and other forms of public transit in the six county metropolitan Chicago Region. RTA owns, controls funding and integrates the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Metra (Commuter Rail) and Pace (Suburban Bus). This system provides 2.2 million rides per day and has annual operating and capital expenditures in excess of $4 billion. Mr. Gates is also Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PortaeCo, LLC a private investment company. In addition, he serves on the Boards of several for profit and not-for-profit institutions. In 1984, Mr. Gates co-founded CenterPoint Properties Trust and served as Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for the next 22 years. During that period, CenterPoint became the Nation’s first publicly traded Industrial Real Estate Investment Trust (NYSE: CNT) as well as the largest private property owner/developer in the Metropolitan Chicago Region. In 2006, the Company was acquired by the California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS) and Jones Lang LaSalle for approximately $3.5 billion. Mr. Gates graduated from Groton School in 1972 and from Trinity College in 1976 with a BSc in Economics and Philosophy. He began his career as an Assistant to Governor James R. Thompson of Illinois. In 1979, he joined CB/Richard Ellis, and in 1981, co-founded the Chicago office of Jones Lang Wootton (now Jones Lang LaSalle), a global commercial property investment firm.

Scott Bernstein is President of CNT, which promotes sustainable communities by helping local leaders to better use their hidden assets; CNT received the MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative & Effective Organizations; President Clinton appointed Scott to the President’s Council for Sustainable Development, where he co-chaired its task forces on Metropolitan Sustainable Communities (with HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo and Tulsa Mayor Susan Savage) and Cross-Cutting Climate Change Strategies (with NOAA administrator D. James Baker); and Scott helped launch the Presidential Climate Action Program, delivering an action plan to incoming President Obama and offering a challenge to all 2012 presidential candidates. He studied engineering and political science at Northwestern University, served on the research staff of its Center for Urban Affairs, was a founding board member of the Brookings Institution Center on Metropolitan Policy, and has taught planning at UCLA in the graduate school of policy. Scott is known for promoting location-efficient regions, with tools ranging from mortgage lending to foreclosure prevention to transit-oriented development; a common aspect of CNT’s work is helping communities, regions and markets demonstrate the economic benefits of efficient use of land, water, energy and infrastructure resources. He helped organize the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership in 1990 which enabled policies to preserve and enhance existing communities in infrastructure investing, and chairs its board of directors; and the Center for Transit Oriented Development in 2005, for which CNT is one of three partners with Reconnecting America and Strategic Economics. CNT created the H+T Affordability Index, to help communities understand their direct transportation costs, including maps & data for all US regions, helping shift public investment to mass transit and sustainable infrastructure and creating new financing for affordable housing near transit; HUD’s strategic plan commits to making U.S. communities both energy- and location-efficient, and HUD & DOT competitive grant applications are now screened using this tool. The new affordability index is now being used in a majority of cities across the country in applications ranging from financial counseling to planning for increased affordability to justifying new mass transit investments. CNT helped organize a climate protection strategy for the City of Chicago and for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency on planning; CNT prepared the City’s mitigation plan in tandem with a task force of US members of the IPCC who took responsibility for the first urban sustainability plan to address both these aspects. Scott is leading Redefining Economic Progress, an effort to help make urban and metropolitan economies and cultures more legible and adaptive to an increasingly volatile world, with applications in regions to infrastructure investment, placemaking and in building collective efficacy. CNT has been published by the National Academy of Sciences, and Scott is a co-author of The New Transit Town, and of Street Smart: Streets and Cities in the 21st Century, and he serves on the boards of Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, the American Council for an Energy Efficiency Economy, the Congress for a New Urbanism and the Center for Transit Oriented Development; CNT’s staff of 108 is located in Chicago, DC and San Francisco. Scott is listed in Planetizen’s 100 Top Urban Thinkers, and in its list of Leading Thinkers in Urban Planning and Technology, and has received lifetime achievement awards from the Secretary of the US Dept. of Energy and from the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Frank Beal, executive director of Metropolis Strategies previously served as president of Ryerson International Inc., an operating unit of the former Inland Steel Industries. He worked in many other capacities at Inland Steel for two decades, including president and CEO of Ryerson/West. Prior to joining Inland Steel, he served as director of the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources under Governor James Thompson, and, as the state’s first deputy director of the Institute for Environmental Quality under Governor Richard Ogilvie.

Jacky Grimshaw, Vice President of Policy Jacky joined CNT in 1992 and has since developed its capacity to engage in public policy advocacy, transportation research, public participation tool development, GIS mapping, and community economic development. Jacky created and has led CNT’s transportation and air quality programs and has led CNT’s Transit Future Campaign in the fight for mass transit reform in the Chicago region. Jacky serves on numerous boards, including: Chicago Transit Authority, RTA Strategic Plan Advisory Committee, Smart Growth Network, and the IL53 Advisory Council. She recently completed terms on the National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board’s Committees on Women’s Issues in Transportation and Environmental Justice. She was appointed to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel’s Transition Team. She has participated on several Advisory Committees for Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, including the Economic Recovery Commission, the Illinois Tollway Transition Team, and the Elgin-O’Hare West Bypass Advisory Council. She was recognized in 2009 with a Leon M. Despres Award from the Midwest Academy. She was a member of the Energy and Transportation Task Force of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, and on the Boards of Congress for New Urbanism, CTA’s Citizens Advisory, Renew America-Renew the Earth and Smart Growth America, and also on the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership Steering Committee, and has been a longtime activist for social justice. Prior to CNT, Jacky spent time as a researcher in hematology and gastroenterology, worked in both state and federal government, for the Chicago Public School district and served in numerous other capacities, including political advisor for the late Mayor Harold Washington and Director of the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Deputy City Treasurer, talk show host for the Chicago NPR and ABC affiliates, and columnist for Crain’s Chicago Business. Jacky has completed the M.A. in Public Policy requirements at Governors State University and holds a B.S. in Biology from Marquette University in Milwaukee