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.