Mark Gabriel Little is the executive director of CREATE, a global initiative building shared prosperity through applied interventions, research and policy. In this role he also leads NCGrowth/SmartUp, a multi-state initiative to help communities and business create jobs and equitable opportunities; and co-chairs Black Communities: A Conference for Collaboration, an annual international convening of scholars and leaders across the African diaspora. He previously served as managing director of the UNC Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise supervising operations, research, external affairs and student-facing activities. Mark has served as an AAAS congressional science fellow to the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs and worked in renewable energy development and the earth and environmental sciences. He is also a musician and composer. 

As Groundwork USA’s new Director of Capacity Building, Cate works to strengthen the Groundwork network and provide technical assistance and support to brownfield remediation projects across the US. Originally from Queens, New York, Cate began her career teaching middle school science to students in the Bronx and Brownsville, Brooklyn. She later transitioned to the policy side of working with low-income communities as the Director of Policy and Program Development for the Massachusetts Division of Public Housing. Cate holds a Bachelors of Arts in Biology from Reed College, a Master of Science Education from the City University of New York, and a Master of City Planning from MIT. 

Stacey Sutton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy and the Director of Applied Research and Strategic Partnerships at University of Illinois Chicago’s Social Justice Initiative. Her scholarship and teaching are in community economic development, with a central focus on racial and economic justice; economic democracy and worker-owned cooperatives; movement building and the solidarity economy; gentrification and dispossession; neighborhood small business dynamics; and disparate effects of punitive policy. Her frameworks for research and community engagement entail advancing “cooperative cities” and the solidarity economy and critiquing “punitive cities.” 

Georgeen Theodore is an architect, urban designer, and professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture and Design, where she coordinates the Master of Urban Design program. Theodore is a founder and principal of the award-winning architecture, urban design, and planning practice Interboro Partners.