Christine Brooks PHD is an educator, coach, and practitioner whose work explores creativity, self-awareness, social intelligence, and community building. At the California Institute of Integral Studies, she helps prepare expressive arts coaches and facilitators to use creative practice as a tool for connection and transformation.

JT Mudge is an award-winning futurist passionate about sustainability, ethics, and ancestral futures. I have a masters of science in foresight from the University of Houston, where I am also an adjunct professor teaching foresight and change theory. 

Sidewalk Ballet’s New Year’s Resolutions are a collection of ideas, provocations, and aspirations for making cities better in the year ahead. Drawn from conversations across the Sidewalk Ballet community, they offer a playful but purposeful look at the things city-makers might resolve to do differently—from how we design and manage places to how we listen, collaborate, experiment, and make room for joy.

Conrad Benner is the Founder/Editor of StreetsDept.com. A Fishtown, Philadelphia born-and-raised documentarian, curator (Streets Dept Walls and Mural Arts Philadelphia), and podcaster (Streets Dept Podcast), Conrad’s work explores the art of our public spaces and the artists who create it. 

Starkey Strategies is a boutique strategic consulting firm that provides consulting services for business improvement districts and urban and rural destinations, nonprofits, governmental entities, corporations and startups around the United States.

Bright Brothers Strategy Group is a people-first, data-driven consultancy that works with cities, districts and DMOs on strategic planning, marketing, and placemaking.
From connecting with your constituents and target audiences, to mapping out customer journeys and strategic touchpoints that drive tangible results, to human-centered placemaking initiatives, Bright Brothers Strategy Group is on the cutting edge of the intersectionality between urban planning, vibrant places and economic impact. We've worked with dozens of downtowns and districts around the country, and understand that every community starts with one thing: people.

Josh Yeager is a founder and principal at Bright Brothers Strategy Group and has been an active champion of the Urban District Place Management world and a vocal advocate for great places and great people.

Josh has been a guest and a guest host on Sidewalk Ballet and brings a depth and breadth of experience in making great places.

The International Downtown Association (IDA) is the leading global membership organization for people and organizations working to manage, strengthen, and shape downtowns and urban districts. Founded in 1954, IDA connects the growing field of urban place management, including downtown associations, business improvement districts, public agencies, and other place-based organizations.

Through conferences, research, professional development, and peer networks, IDA helps practitioners share strategies for economic development, public-space management, planning, events, organizational leadership, and advocacy—work that happens where policy, culture, commerce, and everyday urban life meet.

Jay Pitter is an award-winning placemaker and author whose work explores belonging, cultural memory, equity, and public joy. Through planning, policy, teaching, and storytelling, she advances the idea that joyful public space is not a luxury, but essential urban infrastructure and a human right.

Kady Yellow is a creative placemaking practitioner and Vice President of Placemaking and Activations at Downtown Vision in Jacksonville. Through PlacemakingJax and a career spanning public art, Pop-Up Civics, and community-led activation, she works to give people a meaningful role in shaping the places they call home. Also, someone wrote a song about her.

Project for Public Spaces is a global nonprofit that has spent more than 50 years helping communities create and sustain public spaces. Through placemaking, training, convening, research, and advocacy, PPS champions gathering places shaped with—and cared for by—the people who use them.

Nate Storring is Co-Executive Director of Project for Public Spaces, where his work focuses on placemaking, public-space stewardship, and engaging people in urban planning and design through storytelling. He has helped shape PPS research and resources on inclusive placemaking, innovation districts, and place governance, and is co-editor of Hyperlocal: Place Governance in a Fragmented World and Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs. Before joining PPS in 2015, Nate produced exhibitions and public programs exploring cities, architecture, and transportation in Toronto, Chicago, Boston, and Rhode Island.

Gwen Brown is a San Francisco community leader and co-founder and co-director of SF Black Wall Street, an organization advancing Black economic empowerment, cultural preservation, and community-building in San Francisco. Her work has included youth and workforce development, neighborhood investment, public-space activation, and creating opportunities for Black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs; she has also served on San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee.

Majora Carter is an urban revitalization strategist, real estate developer, MacArthur Fellow, broadcaster, and author whose work focuses on creating opportunity within historically undervalued communities. Her approach connects economic development and talent retention to the belief that people should not have to leave their neighborhoods to find opportunity.

Karen Christensen is an author, publisher, and community leader whose work spans culture, sustainability, and the power of networks. As the founder of Berkshire Publishing Group, she has long championed ideas and institutions that strengthen communities. Her forthcoming book, written in collaboration with Ray Oldenburg, revisits and reimagines the concept of the “third place” for today’s world.