Melody Chang

Community Planner, Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX)

Melody Chang is a Community Planner with extensive experience in local government, social sector consulting, and direct service. Before joining CPEX, she worked on criminal justice reform in Orleans Parish, focusing on reducing pretrial detention and eliminating the use of money bail. Melody believes that criminal justice reform and effective city planning are deeply interconnected in building a racially and spatially just future—one where all residents, especially those who depend on public resources and services, are fully supported.

Melody is dedicated to improving public spaces, communications, and services that foster a sense of belonging and mutual investment between governments and communities. Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, and the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in City & Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, where she specialized in urban humanities. Passionate about creating playful, participatory experiences, Melody seeks to deepen our sense of place and collective responsibility.

Jessica Dandridge-Smith

Executive Director, The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans

As the Executive Director of The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans (TWC), Jessica Dandridge-Smith has dedicated her life to community advocacy, movement-building, campaign development, and systems change across multiple sectors. Since starting her career as a youth organizer in 2005, she has worked for or collaborated with over two dozen organizations in the Greater New Orleans area and nationally across a range of issue areas and regions. Ms. Dandridge-Smith received her B.A at Xavier University of Louisiana in Political Science and her M.A in International Affairs with a concentration in conflict and security at The New School for Public Engagement in New York City. Ms. Dandridge is a trained facilitator from YPQI, has a certificate in Leadership, Activism, and Civil Rights from Brown University, and a certificate in Kingian Nonviolence Strategies from the Selma Center of Nonviolence. In her current work, Jessica serves on several water, climate, and system-change committees, coalitions, and caucuses at the local, state, and federal levels. Accolades include being named a Gambit 40 Under 40 for New Orleans, an Obama USA Leader, and a Grist Fixer Recipient. She is also a published writer for Designing Knowledge Economies for Disaster Resilience and was featured on the cover of Global Views Magazine in 2026.

Johnnie James II

Founder & CEO, Pursuit of Happiness Farms LLC (PoH Farms)

Johnnie James II is a disciple, husband, 2x girl father, entrepreneur, poet, visionary and sustainability advocate raised in New Orleans and now based in Baton Rouge. He is the Founder/CEO of Pursuit of Happiness Farms LLC (PoH Farms), which holds the exclusive global rights to REEFBUDS®, a patented artificial reef system built with a proprietary nature-based biomimetic concrete, with a 20+ year deployment history and over 11,000 units in the water across the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

By providence, Katrina displaced him to Albuquerque, where God placed angel women into his life, one of whom invited him to join the board of the Sustainable Global Leadership Alliance. Immersed in a community of women deeply rooted in sustainability and healing work, he was brought to the Pachamama Alliance's Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium October 2005 in Santa Fe. It was there his dream changed.

During the symposium, he was given an unexpected vision of New Orleans reborn and completely healed. Grateful, he trained as a facilitator, becoming the youngest in the world, and the first to bring the symposium to the Deep South in 2008 in New Orleans.

In May 2011, he participated in a special mission trip traveling with Pachamama Alliance senior leaders to Ecuador to visit with and learn from the Achuar people whose voice sits at the heart of their mission. REEFBUDS® on the Gulf Coast is a realization of that vision.

PoH Farms operates from a simple thesis: when ecosystems collapse, economies follow. Regenerate ecology, revitalize economies. Here in the Gulf, Louisiana faces three converging crises:

• Every day the Gulf of America swallows over 14 football fields of our coastline

• The dead zone has devastated our ecology and economy for decades

• The nearshore zone, where storms make landfall and communities are most vulnerable, remains a data desert

REEFBUDS® seeks to address all three through living shorelines, carbon sequestration, and real-time data collection. In April 2026, the Wicker Center in Gulfport proved REEFBUDS® can be used for nearshore real-time data collection of the coast of Mississippi. PoH Farms is now pursuing non-dilutive funding for further R&D, including producing REEFBUDS® from local waste available in each community we serve.

Johnnie is the creator of Mardi Bar Wars, a community recycling initiative that diverted over 41,000 pounds of glass from New Orleans landfills during its Mardi Gras 2025 pilot. He is seeking new partnerships to expand Mardi Bar Wars to Baton Rouge and beyond.

He serves as Operations Coordinator at Operation Spark, a nonprofit software training program with a 90%+ job placement rate. His work has been recognized with NOLAvate Black's Tech 30 "Black Excellence Award," and he was recently named an inaugural 64 Parish Passport honoree by the Louisiana Chamber of Commerce Foundation. He is a TEDx Baton Rouge speaker, a Pitch BR winner, and PoH Farms is a Gulf Blue Navigator Cohort IV member.

Regenerate ecology, revitalize economies. PoH Farms, wherever there's water. Learn more at OperationSpark.org and REEFBUDS.com.

Beaux Jones

President & CEO, The Water Institute

Beaux Jones, a Louisiana native with a deep sense of place, has built his career around the people, landscapes, and challenges that define his home. 

Beaux serves as President and CEO of The Water Institute, an independent non-profit applied research organization working to help communities make better decisions about some of the most complex water and environmental challenges facing people, ecosystems, and economies.

In this role, he brings together law, policy, and science to lead a transdisciplinary team working on issues ranging from coastal land loss and flood risk to water management and climate resilience. Under his leadership, The Water Institute has helped advance major efforts including Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan and the Louisiana Watershed Initiative, and in 2023 launched the Community Resilience Center to more directly connect the science to communities across the Gulf Coast.

Before joining The Water Institute, Beaux made an impact practicing law. He served as environmental section chief for the Louisiana Department of Justice, representing the state and its agencies on environmental, coastal, criminal, and appellate matters. He was a part of the Louisiana Attorney General’s environmental team that helped navigate the Deepwater Horizon disaster and later practiced environmental and coastal law with Baldwin Haspel Burke & Mayer in New Orleans. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Davidson College and his law degree from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at LSU.

Beaux extends his commitment to community and environmental causes beyond his work at the Institute. He previously served as Executive Director of Bike Baton Rouge and was a founding member of Bike Walk Louisiana. He is also an adjunct lecturer at Tulane University’s School of Architecture and Built Environment.

Today, Beaux champions a different way of telling Louisiana’s story—not as a place confronting extraordinary water and climate challenges, but as a place that generates extraordinary knowledge, innovation, and opportunity from this lived experience. As we approach the 100th anniversary of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, an event that continues to have ripple effects on the nation, Beaux is helping to elevate conversations about what the next 100 years could look like if we collectively shape that trajectory with intention, collaboration, and insight.

For PechaKucha’s “Twenty Years, One Louisiana,” Beaux will explore what a century of living and with water can teach us about the choices we make next, and why this moment is an opportunity to imagine a future together in which Louisiana can do more than endure change— we lead the way through it.

Anthony Bernard Kenny, Jr.

Councilman, East Baton Rouge Parish - District 2

Anthony Bernard Kenney Jr. was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Joyce Kenney and Anthony Kenney Sr. He currently serves as the Councilman for District 2 of East Baton Rouge Parish, representing communities across North Baton Rouge. Elected as a first-time candidate at just 27 years old, he is the youngest member currently serving on the Metro Council. In 2025, he was recognized by the Baton Rouge Business Report Forty Under 40 as a rising leader in the Baton Rouge community amongst the best and brightest the capitol region has to offer.

A proud product of North Baton Rouge, Councilman Kenney is a graduate of Scotlandville Magnet High School and an HBCU alumnus of Southern University and A&M College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications (Public Relations). He later earned a Master’s degree in Strategic Communications and Public Affairs from the Louisiana State University Manship School of Mass Communication. While at Southern, he served as Student Government Association President (2018–2019), was a member of the Human Jukebox Marching Band, and is a Spring 2019 initiate of the Beta Sigma Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc..

Prior to elected office, Kenney served as a Legislative Aide to Louisiana State Representatives Vanessa LaFleur and Ted James. He remains actively engaged in the community through leadership with 100 Black Men of Metro Baton Rouge, Forum 225, Bike N Vote, and the North Baton Rouge Economic Development District, where he serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors.

As Councilman, Kenney has focused on infrastructure equity, economic revitalization, workforce development, and youth opportunity. His leadership thus far has helped advance multi-million-dollar roadway rehabilitation projects, including significant improvements in the Banks community, economic development projects, the restoration of neighborhood streets, and the installation of LED lighting to enhance safety and quality of life. He has also supported transformative redevelopment efforts, small-business growth initiatives, façade improvements, and expanded access to community and workforce resources.

 Councilman Kenney is an Amazon Best-Selling co-author of The HBCU Experience: The Southern University System (2nd Edition). He is also an entrepreneur and the founder of the motivational speaking brand “Come to Life” and A.K. Consulting Firm, LLC. 

Driven by service and purpose, Anthony Bernard Kenney Jr. believes his calling is to serve as a bridge and a torch for his generation—connecting communities, empowering future leaders, and building momentum for the future.

Carol Markowitz

Chief Executive Officer, Strongward

Carol Markowitz was hired in February 2025 as Strongward's first external Chief Executive Officer. Drawing on deep experience in strategy and corporate finance at Fortune 500 and earlier-stage companies, she has emerged as a widely recognized transformational leader in the nonprofit sector.

Before joining Strongward, Ms. Markowitz served as turnaround COO and CFO for Loyola University New Orleans, where she strengthened the university's financial stability and oversaw approximately $200 million in capital improvements. She also led the university in implementing a new enterprise resource planning system.

Previously, Ms. Markowitz was the founding Executive Director of the New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute, a postsecondary culinary school built on New Orleans' rich culinary heritage, established to make world-class culinary training more widely accessible.

She holds a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Alyssa Portaro

Executive Director, Habitat Recovery Project

Alyssa Portaro is a farmer, mother, and the Founder and Executive Director of Habitat Recovery Project, a Southwest Louisiana nonprofit working at the intersection of science, community, and culture. Her work brings together fishermen, scientists, artists, families, and frontline communities to restore habitats, document environmental change, and build locally led solutions. Through her emerging Ecology of Democracy framework, Alyssa explores how belonging, collective care, and meaningful participation can strengthen both ecosystems and civic life. She is a two-time recipient of the National Wildlife Federation’s EcoLeader Award and a two-time nominee for the FracTracker Alliance Community Sentinel Award.

Laura Settlemyer

Founding Principal, Levee Civic Solutions

Laura Settlemyer has spent over two decades working at the intersection of law, policy, community development, and public finance, with a particular focus on vacant and abandoned properties and the complicated systems that create them and determine what happens to them.

Today, Laura is the Founding Principal of Levee Civic Solutions, a New Orleans-based policy and legal consulting practice that works with cities, land banks, community land trusts, and other partners—including right here in Baton Rouge—to turn difficult properties and complex policies into practical solutions. She also serves as Chief Operations and Legal Officer at Reimagine Development Partners, a mission-driven real-estate development firm that invests in adaptive reuse projects that need doing but have fallen through the cracks of our financial markets.

Before starting Levee Civic Solutions and joining Reimagine Development Partners, Laura spent nearly five years as In-House Counsel and Chief Legal Officer for the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, running the legal department for a state agency with a $10 million budget and negotiating major property deals across the city. Before returning to New Orleans, she founded and led the Hartford Land Bank, Connecticut’s first, and served as Hartford’s first Director of Blight Remediation, where she worked closely with residents and became known around town as “the Blight Lady.” In those roles, Laura worked with her team and Hartford residents to rethink the city’s approach to vacant and abandoned properties, ultimately cutting their number in half. She also worked with lawmakers and partners across the state to write and pass Connecticut’s landmark land-banking and vacant-property receivership laws. Earlier, she advised land banks across Michigan for the Center for Community Progress, with much of her work focused in Flint and Detroit.

Laura’s legal career began in New Orleans as a law-student volunteer working with community organizers in the Lower Ninth Ward four months after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and the federal levees failed in New Orleans. After law school, she moved to the city, practicing first as a commercial litigator focused on federal government contracts and later as a city attorney under Mayor Mitch Landrieu, working on contracts, housing, code enforcement, and post-Katrina recovery.

Her work since has included drafting laws and policies, building organizations and programs, testifying before legislatures, teaching and speaking about redevelopment, and working with communities to figure out what actually works.

Laura holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law and an A.B. in Economics from Harvard University. She lives in New Orleans, near Bayou St. John.

Elizabeth “Boo” Thomas, Fasla

President & CEO, Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX)

Well-versed in community-driven land use planning and implementation, Thomas has led successful revitalization efforts across the region since obtaining her Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from LSU. Retired in 2018, Boo served as the founding CEO of the Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX). Thomas has been an advocate for smart and sustainable growth in Louisiana throughout her career. Prior to the founding of CPEX in 2006, Thomas led Plan Baton Rouge, the revitalization of the downtown area, and was the founding Executive Director of the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance.

In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, she led CPEX in facilitating the Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan, which was the largest planning effort ever undertaken in Louisiana and set national records for public participation (over 27,000 residents participated). 

In September 2009, Thomas and CPEX were awarded the Olmsted Medal by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) for “incredible leadership and set the standard for bringing community members and leaders together to work toward a shared vision for future growth and development.

Maria Zeringue

Director of Folklife Program for the Louisiana Division of the Arts

Maria Zeringue currently directs the Folklife Program for the Louisiana Division of the Arts. From 2017 to 2025, Maria Zeringue served as the Folk and Traditional Arts Director at the Mississippi Arts Commission, where she managed the online publication Mississippi Folklife. Before moving to Mississippi, she worked for Traditional Arts Indiana. Outside of work, she is currently learning pottery and has also taken classes in weaving and printmaking. She is passionate about instant photography, comics, music, and art of all kinds.