Michael Shannon is founding president of the not-for-profit Northern New Jersey Community Foundation (NNJCF) located in Hackensack, NJ. Mr. Shannon holds a B.A. in Architecture from Princeton University, an M.A. in Adult Education from the department of Organization & Leadership at Columbia Teachers College, and a M.A. in Anthropology from Columbia University. His professional background includes corporate management as President, Northwood Corporation; Director, Design & Marketing, at Dunbar Furniture Company; and Director of Design, Formica Corporation. His self-employed experience includes design management consulting, free-lance furniture design, and pre-K-12 educational consulting in the fields of Design & Technology Education, 3-D Design, and Service Learning.

For more than three decades, Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP has worked to enhance quality of life, advance economic equity and promote social justice in communities. He carries a wide-ranging perspective from his career as a journalist, urban planner who specializes in community economic development, leadership coach, educator, creative placemaker, and nonprofit executive.

As Executive Director of the Northern New Jersey Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization that serves an eight-county region of more than 4.3 million people. The Foundation works to make life better for more people in North Jersey by enhancing public places, building alliances to address critical community issues and connecting community-oriented organizations with valuable resources. In addition to his executive duties, Leo leads the Foundation’s environmental and economic development projects, and a new initiative to create a National Heritage Area in North Jersey.

Leo has been recognized nationally and in New Jersey for his work in urban planning, creative placemaking and social justice. In 2012, he won the American Planning Association’s National Planning Leadership Award for Advancing Diversity and Social Justice in Honor of Paul Davidoff. He also wrote or contributed to plans that won statewide awards form the APA’s New Jersey Chapter and New Jersey Future.

Before joining the Foundation in 2023, Leo had created and led two organizations that helped grow the field of creative placemaking around the United States: Creative Placemaking Communities and The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking. He has also taught at several universities: Rutgers, The Ohio State University and The New School.

He is the co-editor of Diálogos: Placemaking in Latino Communities, and author of Leading from the Middle: Strategic Thinking for Urban Planning and Community Development Professionals. He is a co-founder of the Latinos and Planning division of the American Planning Association (APA), and is an advisor to the APA’s Arts and Planning Division.

Born in Argentina and raised on Staten Island, Leo has been a Jersey guy for more than 25 years. He lives in Maplewood.

Danielle De Laurentis has been directing programs and funds at The Northern New Jersey Community Foundation (NNJCF) for over a decade. She is involved in all aspects of the organization, working to improve community life in the Northern NJ region by galvanizing and connecting people around various issues such as pediatric obesity, gentrification, downtown revitalization, and environmental protection. She also leads ArtsBergen, NNJCF’s regional arts initiative to strengthen the arts community and connect communities to the arts.

Danielle is a graduate of Rutgers Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy’s Master Practitioner in Creative Placemaking intensive yearlong program. She champions creative placemaking, leading the public and community-based art initiatives of the Foundation to integrate art and culture into municipal planning, address critic issues, and honor lesser-heard voices in communities. Under her direction, NNJCF has become a leading organization producing public art in Bergen County. She oversaw large-scale installations such as The Black Women’s Mural, celebrating the role of Black suffragists in the passing of the 19^th Amendment, Flood Theater, a co-created sculpture to raise awareness of the devastation of severe area flooding, and The Demarest Place Mural revitalizing an underused alleyway while branding civic pride. She is passionate about both the participatory art process and creating interactive public art that instills belonging and encourages play and connection.

Danielle earned a dual BA in Communications and Art History from Fairfield University and completed a post-graduate program in Communication Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Named 2022 National Mental Health First Aid Coordinator of the Year by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, Stephanie Hartman has been a Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) Coordinator since November 2017 and a MHFA instructor since November 2016. She currently works in her coordinator capacity at CBH Care, a non-profit community mental health agency in New Jersey. As coordinator, Stephanie works with other certified instructors to deliver MHFA courses (Adult, Youth and teen) as well as maintaining her role as an instructor. She connects with school districts, community groups and businesses to plan and implement initiatives based on these courses for personnel, young people/students and community populations. Additionally, she serves as a resource for entities within the State and beyond regarding the MHFA curriculum, best practices, implementation strategies and the web based course portal.

Beside her role as MHFA Coordinator, Stephanie works with the Director of Community Engagement and Special Projects at CBH Care to increase community awareness of resources and information regarding mental health.

Prior to her role at CBH Care, Stephanie served in the same coordinator/instructor capacity at the Bergen County Department of Health Services – Division of Mental Health. The position which was created in Fall 2017 was a direct result of the increased interest by the public in learning how to help someone who may be experiencing a mental health challenge, living with a mental illness or having a mental health crisis as well as the operational arm of the Stigma Free Initiative the County launched in 2014. During her tenure Stephanie oversaw a training corps of 30 instructors, organized more than 80 courses in MHFA (Youth and Adult) many at no cost, secured a spot in the National Council tMHFA pilot program during the 2019-2020 school year, worked with an advocate to include MHFA FIRE/EMS on the State’s approved continuing education course listing and connected with hundreds of County residents providing resources and information that would help connect them, loved ones, co-workers, friends, etc.to needed information and services.

Before joining the BC Division of Mental Health Stephanie served as a program analyst in the BC Department of Health Services – Office of Alcohol and Drug Dependency. Her professional experience prior to government was as an educator for 11 years to preschool aged students, a non-profit manager and non-profit work in Development/Special Events