Expert Commentators: Strong Communities

Meet the StrongCommunities Challenge Expert Commentators - thought-leaders who will be sharing their insights, expertise, and feedback on how citizens can connect and steer change to build stronger communities.

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Michael Wood-Lewis

Michael Wood-Lewis has been pulling neighbors together into community since his Indiana childhood spent organizing ball games and visiting neighbors on his evening paper route. Decades later, he founded Front Porch Forum, which hosts a pilot network of 140 online neighborhood forums that blankets 25 northwest Vermont towns. More than 19,000 households subscribe, including 40% of dozens of neighborhoods and small towns. The resulting news sharing and community building is attracting recognition from Knight News Challenge, PBS MediaShift, the Vermont legislature, the Rural Telecom Congress, and the Case and Orton Family Foundations. Previously, he led an innovative trade association of New England utilities. Earlier, he guided a DC-based consortium of U.S. municipal leaders in developing environmental technologies, building on his experience as an inventor of high-tech recycling equipment. He earned an MS in engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as an MBA.

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Anna Jones

Anna Jones is Vice President with Progressive Urban Management Associates (P.U.M.A), a consulting firm specializing in downtown revitalization strategies. Anna focuses on strategic planning, community engagement and implementation strategies in both urban and rural communities. Before working at P.U.M.A, Anna was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sri Lanka where she found a wonderful future husband and learned a language spoken only in that tiny island nation. Anna is a member of the Denver Planning Board, and is on the board of directors of Downtown Colorado Inc.

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Mary Margaret Schoenfeld

Mary Margaret Schoenfeld is an independent arts management consultant. For 25 years she has led efforts in nonprofit and public sector arts service organizations to train and provide technical assistance to artists and arts administrators, develop and support peer learning networks, and manage funding programs and other resources to ensure that arts and cultural opportunities are available to the widest possible audience.

Schoenfeld works with a variety of clients to support community cultural development. Her practice has included small group training for arts administrators, research projects, strategic planning facilitation, and presentations on arts, culture and community development issues to a variety of audiences. Her clients have included national associations, nonprofit organizations and a family foundation. She has been invited to join the faculty of the Arts Extension Service as an instructor for AES’ arts administration degree and certificate programs. She serves frequently as a panelist on a variety of arts management topics, and as a grant evaluator.

Most recently she was the Director of Local Arts Agency Services at Americans for the Arts, a national arts service organization. Schoenfeld developed and implemented professional development opportunities for the field, including a two-day conference on cultural districts, the economic development track in three AFTA conventions, and numerous trainings and conference presentations.

Schoenfeld has worked for local, state and national organizations. Schoenfeld worked for ten years at the Cultural Affairs Division of Arlington County, Virginia, served as Executive Director of the League of Historic American Theatres, Grants Officer at the Vermont Arts Council and as a gallery assistant at the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

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Taylor Stuckert & Mark Rebmert

Mark is a co-founder and director of Energize Clinton County. Mark grew up in Clinton County and is a graduate of Wilmington High School. Mark attended Haverford College where he earned a B.A. in economics, completing his major at Bryn Mawr College.

After college Mark lived in West Philadelphia and worked for a start-up public relations firm. In the fall of 2008, Mark returned to Wilmington after receiving an invitation to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador where he hoped to expand his interest and knowledge in economic development. He has since deferred his service to stay in Clinton County and continue his work with Energize Clinton County.

Taylor is co-founder and director of Energize Clinton County. He moved to Clinton County 1996 and is a graduate of Wilmington High School. Taylor attended Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana where he majored in Philosophy. Following college, Taylor moved to New York City, and worked for Jones Day, an international law firm, before accepting an invitation to the Peace Corps.
In January 2008, Taylor joined the Peace Corps as a volunteer in Bolivia where he worked in the Agriculture Extension program, serving four rural communities. He returned to Wilmington prematurely after the program was evacuated from Bolivia in September, 2008. After planning to re-enroll in the Peace Corps for service in Ecuador, Taylor decided to defer his service and continue his work with Energize Clinton County.

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Ed McMahon

Ed McMahon is an attorney, community planner, lecturer and author; he is currently Senior Resident Fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C., where he holds the Charles Fraser Chair on Sustainable Development. Before joining the Urban Land Institute in 2004, Ed spent 14 years as the Vice President and Director of Land Use Planning for The Conservation Fund in Arlington, Virginia. He is also the co-founder and former President of Scenic America, a national non-profit organization devoted to protecting America’s scenic landscapes. Before that, he taught law and public policy at Georgetown University Law Center for nine years and served in the U.S. Army at home and overseas. He is the author of 15 publications and over 150 articles, including: Ten Principles for Smart Growth on the Suburban Fringe (ULI, 2004); Green Infrastructure: Connecting Landscapes and Communities (Island Press, 2006); Land Conservation Financing (Island Press, 2003); Better Models for Commercial Development (Conservation Fund, 2004); and Balancing Nature and Commerce in Gateway Communities (Island Press, 1997). He also writes regularly for Urban Land Magazine, Planning Commissioners Journal and other periodicals. Over the past 20 years, Ed has drafted numerous local land use plans and ordinances. He has organized successful efforts to acquire and protect urban parkland, wilderness areas and other conservation properties. Ed has an M.A. in Urban Studies from the University of Alabama and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law School.

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Amy Frykman

Amy leads Resource Media's land use and agricultural work from their Bozeman, Montana office. She was the lead author of Connect to Values, Resource Media’s comprehensive analysis of how land use issues are being portrayed in fast-growing small- and medium-sized communities in the West. This analysis produced important recommendations about how government officials and advocates can improve their communications. She has since provided hands-on communications support to numerous western communities grappling with rapid growth and development. Prior to joining Resource Media, Amy worked for the Northern Plains Resource Council, a Montana grassroots conservation and family agriculture group, where she directed successful outreach strategies for ballot initiatives, legislative bills and state rulemaking processes. A Montana native, Amy holds a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of Montana.

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