PEOPLE

SHANTI GAIA, VICE PRESIDENT

Shanti has worked with Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, the founder of the MetaIntegral Associates, focusing on teaching the MetaImpact framework through courses called “Designing Wisdom Economies” and on working towards the creation of multicapital value accounting software. He has spent a decade living at two different ecovillages that were also nonprofit education centers, spending a significant amount of his time in leadership roles at those organizations.

He spent three years on the board of the Sirius, Inc. nonprofit, including approximately two years as treasurer. He also spent a couple of years on the statewide steering board for the Massachusetts 350.org network. Over the length of his career, he has founded or worked for over half a dozen environmental nonprofit organizations.

Overall, he has worked in the nonprofit sector for most of his career. He also has expansive training and practice in ecological conscious raising work, having trained directly with Joanna Macy and others in Experiential Deep Ecology, along with training in similar work by the Pachamama alliance.

JEAN KNAACK, Treasurer

Jean Knaack is the Chief Executive Officer of the Road Runners Club of America where she has served in the role since 2005. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay with a Bachelor’s of Science in Human Nutrition. She earned a Master’s of Public Administration with a concentration in nonprofit management from George Mason University. She has extensive skills in organizational and financial development, board and member relations, and program planning and implementation.

Merrick Hoben

Merrick Hoben is Director of CBI’s Washington D.C. Regional Office where he provides assessment, facilitation, training, coaching, and dispute system design services to public and private clients worldwide. Merrick also co-leads CBI’s Corporate-Community Engagement Practice Area. His core competence is helping organizations, companies, and diverse groups apply negotiation and consensus building tools toward more creative, effective, and efficient stakeholder engagement and decision-making. Internationally, he has worked with numerous multilateral development agencies, global NGOs, governments, major companies, and other national partners to institutionalize collaborative approaches to planning, resource, and project management. Merrick is also a Practitioner Associate at the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, and Faculty Associate at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He is fluent in Spanish

BLAKE BELANGER

Blake Belanger, American, PLA, ASLA is a licensed landscape architect and urban designer with over twenty-five years of combined experience in professional practice and academia. While in professional practice, Professor Belanger’s work centered on urban design, community planning, civic space and parks, and site planning at various scales. He joined Kansas State University in 2007, where he teaches design studios, theory and research seminars, foundational lecture courses, and serves on graduate student advisory committees. He is an engaged scholar specializing in place-inspired brownfield regeneration visioning and has led or co-led service-learning projects with communities in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, and Colorado, resulting in dozens of student awards from ASLA and APA regional chapters. Professor Belanger has been recognized with numerous teaching and research awards, including the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Excellence in Design Studio Teaching Award (2012), the Big 12 Fellowship (2017) the College of Architecture Planning and Design McElwee Teaching Award (2015, 2024), the Mary Jarvis Emerging Faculty of Distinction in Landscape Architecture (2010), the Kansas State University Academic Excellence Award (2011, 2014, 2016), the LARCP Teacher of the Year Award (2024), and the TAB+LARCP Faculty Brownfield Fellowship (2024-2027). Professor Belanger holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Michigan State University and a dual Master of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design from the University of Colorado at Denver, where he graduated with honors and was the lead designer of the winning team in the 2005 ULI / Gerald D. Hines Urban Design Competition.

Blake focuses on community-engaged scholarship, urban resilience through brownfield redevelopment, graphic representation, and the creative design process. In “Situating Eidetic Photomontage in Contemporary Landscape Architecture”, he and his co-author present a framework for understanding the role of – and potential for – photomontage in landscape architectural design process and communication. He teaches Unlocking Creativity, a university-wide elective designed to equip students with methods for generating creative ideas and the confidence to find their inherent genius.

AYANNA WAYNER

Ayanna, American-Jamaican, is an experienced executive and attorney with significant public and private sector experience and a proven track record for over twenty years in affordable housing development, real estate investment, city planning, project management, government relations and community and economic development.

Ayanna is the founder and president of ARRA Enterprises LLC, an affordable housing consulting and real estate development firm partners with local stakeholders to build thriving and inclusive urban communities that catalyze opportunity and well-being.

As the former Deputy Commissioner of Economic Development for the City of New Rochelle and Executive Director of the New Rochelle IDA, Ayanna ushered-in a massive $6 billion 300-acre downtown revitalization project. Ayanna previously served as Development Director for New York State’s Housing and Community Renewal Agency in their Multifamily Finance and Development Department; Associate General Counsel at Urban American; the former Director of Programs for the Office of Preservation Services at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development and Associate at the top international law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in the Banking & Institutional Investing group.

Ayanna has promoted economic community development in marginalized communities internationally by providing training in Honduras through a partnership between international NGOs and the Honduran government. Ayanna also serves on the board of World Connect, on the advisory board of NYC Connect, and formerly on the board of trustees of Westhab and TFOA Charter School.

She graduated from Barnard College (BA) and Columbia Law School (JD).

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