Fred Kent is a leading authority on revitalizing city spaces and one of the foremost thinkers in livability, smart growth and the future of the city. As founder and president of Project for Public Spaces, he is known throughout the world as a dynamic speaker and prolific ideas man. Fred travels over 150,000 miles each year, offering technical assistance to communities and giving talks across the US, as well as internationally, on the importance of place. Each year, he and the PPS staff train over 10,000 people in Placemaking techniques. Over the past 35 years, Fred has worked on hundreds of projects, including Bryant Park, Rockefeller Center, and Times Square in New York City; Discovery Green in Houston, TX; Campus Martius in Detroit, MI; Granville Island in Vancouver, BC, Canada; and a series of major destinations in Perth, Australia. In addition to projects, Fred has led trainings across the world for audiences such as the Urban Redevelopment Agency and the National Parks Board in Singapore, representatives from the City of Hong Kong, the Ministry of Environment in Norway, the leading Dutch transportation organization in the Netherlands, Greenspace in Scotland, UK, numerous transportation professionals from US State DOTs, and thousands of community and neighborhood groups across the US. Before founding PPS, Fred studied with Margaret Mead and worked with William H. Whyte on the Street Life Project, assisting in observations and film analysis of corporate plazas, urban streets, parks and other open spaces in New York City. The research resulted in the now classic ‘The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces’ published in 1980, which laid out conclusions based on decades of meticulous observation and documentation of human behavior in the urban environment. In 1968, Fred was Program Director for the Mayor’s Council on the Environment in New York City under Mayor John Lindsay. In 1970, and again in 1990, Fred was the coordinator and chairman of New York City’s Earth Day.

Kathy Madden is an environmental designer who has been at PPS since its inception in 1975. During this time, she has been involved in all aspects of the organization’s work and has directed over countless research and urban design projects along with training programs throughout the U.S and abroad. She also currently directs PPS’s Placemaking Education and Public Space Research and Publications programs. Kathy has co-authored and written both books and articles, including the PPS best-selling publication How to Turn a Place Around, which has now been translated into Czech, Korean, Dutch and Japanese. She has lectured extensively and conducts, in conjunction with other PPS staff, PPS’s semi-annual training programs in New York. While at PPS she also taught for six years at the Pratt School of Architecture Graduate Program in Urban Design. In 1995, Kathy started the Urban Parks Institute with a $2.2 million grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. The Institute brought together over 2,000 parks leaders from both the private and public sectors in eight national conferences and four regional workshops. The Institute produced a volume of research and publications related to urban parks, and created a major online resource center for urban parks best practices and research, Urban Parks Online, which attracts over one million page views annually. Prior to working at PPS, Kathy worked at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and at the New York City Parks Department.

One of the Main Street movement’s earliest pioneers, Norman Mintz has consulted on all matters of downtown revitalization providing technical assistance in areas of urban design, retail retention, organization and promotion. He works with communities and organizations of every size to strengthen their capacity to successfully execute and manage the many revitalization challenges they face. Norman’s career in historic preservation and downtown revitalization began with his direction of the nationally acclaimed Market Street Restoration Program in Corning, NY (1974-81), where he initiated the role and became recognized as America’s first Main Street manager. He is the co-author of the widely acclaimed book, Cities Back From the Edge: New Life for Downtown, which chronicles stories from around the country that illustrate how dozens of Main Street business districts and urban commercial neighborhoods have revitalized their commercial centers using small scale, innovative approaches that encourage new local businesses. He has worked closely for twenty years with the 34th Street Partnership and Bryant Park Corporation, two large Business Improvement Districts in midtown Manhattan. He lectures widely on the subject of downtown revitalization and has extensive teaching experience, having taught at Columbia University, Cornell University and Rensselear Polytechnic Institute. He currently instructs a course in Neighborhood Commercial Revitalization at Pratt Institute. Norman formerly worked at PPS from 1982-1989, when he assisted many communities in implementing various revitalization initiatives. He has recently begun a new collaboration with PPS on our in-house training workshops, and will be helping us integrate placemaking with the National Trust for Historic Preservation Main Street program as part of our new partnership. He will also be contributing his practical experience and expertis to various PPS projects.

Alan M. Hantman, FAIA, was appointed on February 5, 1997 to serve a ten year term as the 10th Architect of the Capitol by President William Jefferson Clinton, with the advice and consent of the United States. Upon completion of his term in 2007, Mr. Hantman established the firm A.M. Hantman Associates, LLC, to provide consulting services in architecture, facilities planning, urban planning, and historic preservation. Mr. Hantman led the Architect of the Capiltol (AOC) federal agency, an organization of more than 2200 staff, responsible for all architecture, engineering, renovation and new construction, historic preservation and facilities management for the United States Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and all Congressional Office Buildings. This totals more than 300 acres of Capitol Grounds and 15 million square feet of monumental Capitol Hill buildings. This also includes the detailed design and construction of the new Capitol Visitor Center (CVC) which, at 580,000 square feet increases the size of the Capitol by approximately 70%. Before his appointment as Architect of the Capitol, Mr. Hantman was responsible for Architecture, Planning, Historic Preservation, and Construction for the Rockefeller Center Management Corporation. He played a leading role in Rockefeller Center Corporation’s $300 million Capital Improvement Program as well as in the day-to-day management of the 15-million-square-foot “city within a city.” It was at this time that he first began working with Project for Public Spaces on a wide range of Placemaking improvement projects.A registered architect in Washington D.C. and the states of New York and New Jersey, Mr. Hantman holds Council Certification from the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards was elected to fellowship in the American Institute of Architects.