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Guests

Dan Gilmartin (Executive Director & CEO – Michigan Municipal League)

Dan Gilmartin is the executive director & CEO of the Michigan Municipal League. Through his work with communities, Dan is recognized as a national leader in the fields of urban revitalization, placemaking, and local government reform and transportation policy.

Under his leadership, the League was recognized by Crain's Detroit Business as a "Cool Place to Work" in 2011. Model D Media recently referred to him as “an urban thinker with an eye for the small, oft-unnoticed changes that can make ‘places’ out of streets and buildings.”

Dan serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the National League of Cities and as a member of the Michigan Future, Inc. Leadership Council. He also served for four years as the lead advocate for Michigan’s communities in Lansing and in Washington, where he concentrated on a number of key issues including transportation, land use and urban redevelopment.

In 2010, Dan added radio talk show host to his resume as host of The Prosperity Agenda on News/Talk 760 WJR, which is Michigan’s highest rated talk station and can be heard throughout the Midwest and Canada. He is a frequent blogger and a contributing author to the book The Economics of Place, and a frequent speaker on matters pertaining to “place.”

Dan is a Michigan kid, a Detroit native (and booster) and currently resides in the historic downtown of Northville, Michigan with his wife Lori and two young sons.

Mary Beth Graebert (Associate Director for Programs and Operations – Land Policy Institute)

As Associate Director for Programs and Operations for LPI, Mary Beth is responsible for managing the administrative functions of the Institute, for helping existing programs to become sustainable, and for developing innovative initiatives to meet new policy needs. She plays an active role in research projects, including a multiple-partner effort for "Rebuilding Prosperous Places in Michigan," and in outreach initiatives, like the Legislative Education Program, which seeks to put policy-relevant research from universities into the hands of decision makers at the state level. Mary Beth is a Co-Coordinator of the People and Land (PAL) Initiative, a collaborative partnership funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation that provides a conduit between academics, regions, and land use and economic development stakeholders. Prior to her role in programs and operations, she served as the Institute's Program Development Manager and Research Program Coordinator. Mary Beth has a Bachelor's degree in International Relations from Michigan State University and a Master's degree in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota.