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John Kretzmann (Jody) is co-founder and co-director of the Asset- Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute of the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. The ABCD Institute works with community building leaders across North America as well as on five other continents to conduct research, produce materials and otherwise support community-based efforts to rediscover local capacities and to mobilize citizens’ resources to solve problems. The Institute continues to build on the stories and strategies for successful community building reported in his popular book “Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets,” written with long-time colleague John McKnight.
A much-traveled speaker and trainer, Kretzmann brings more than four decades of community-based work and study to his current position. Before founding the ABCD Institute, he worked as a community organizer and community development leader in Chicago neighborhoods, and as a consultant to a wide range of neighborhood groups. He has worked to develop community-friendly policies in the city, and at the regional, state, national and international levels. In addition to his work at Northwestern, he has taught about community development and public policy with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest Urban Studies Program (which he co-founded), Valparaiso University, the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and McCormack Seminary. He serves on a wide range of civic, community and foundation boards. His B.A. is from Princeton University (Magna Cum Laude); his Masters degree from the University of Virginia; and his Ph.D. (Sociology and Urban Affairs) from Northwestern University.
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Deborah Puntenney, Ph.D. is currently the Associate Director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University, a member of the research faculty at Northwestern, and a member of the adjunct faculty at the University of Chicago. She is also operates her own research and consulting firm specializing in the areas of asset-based community development, community based participatory research, program evaluation, and social justice strategies for philanthropic and nonprofit organizations. All of her work emphasizes strengthening neighborhood, nonprofit, philanthropic, and other organizations through the design and implementation of asset-oriented strategies.
Deborah teaches university courses in several topic areas, including the family in a changing society, US social welfare policy, asset-based community development, and gender and the life course. Her research and writing emphasize themes related to community, gender, social justice, and social policy.
Deborah has been working with John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann at the Asset-Based Community Development Institute for almost 20 years, first as a graduate research fellow, then Director of Research and Publications, and now Associate Director. In addition to authoring many of the institute’s publications, Dr. Puntenney has extensive experience working directly with community groups designing community-based participatory research projects, and partnering with them on the implementation of those efforts. Deborah's work with ABCD has taken her in a variety of directions, including exploring the application of asset-based community development principles to nonprofit settings. Her work with the Chicago Foundation for Women was published in the ABCD workbook series in a volume titled Building Sustainable Organizations from the Inside Out. Recently, she and Jody Kretzmann co-authored a chapter in an edited volume by Gary Paul Green, titled Mobilizing Communities: Asset Building as a Community Development Strategy (forthcoming 2009).
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Dacia Chrzanowski, a 2005 graduate of the Master of Public Administration program at the Illinois Institute of Technology, is a Founding Partner of CommUniversity, a social entrepreneurial consulting firm that specializes in customized learning and development experiences for community based groups and institutions, neighborhood schools, parents and students. Areas of expertise include asset mapping and community capacity research, community building workshop and seminar production, community-based student motivation program development, individualized consultations on student achievement, resource mapping, and collaborative partnering.
Dacia is also the Project Manager for the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute at Northwestern University. In addition to overseeing the administrative operations of the Institute, she works closely with renowned community development experts, John L. McKnight and Dr. John (Jody) Kretzmann, to challenge the traditional approach to solving urban problems, which focuses service providers and funding agencies on the needs and deficiencies of neighborhoods. In her role with the ABCD Institute, she has facilitated over a dozen workshops and conducted a number of research projects to demonstrate that community assets, the skills of local residents, the power of local associations, the resources of public, private and non-profit institutions, and the physical and economic resources of local places are key building blocks in sustainable urban and rural community revitalization efforts. Dacia also serves as a Graduate Teaching Assistant to Dr. Kretzmann, Introduction to Community Development (SESP 202).
Previously Dacia served her community as the Executive Director of a small non-profit organization, the School Street Arts Movement, which uses the power of dance, theater, and art therapy to dispel myths surrounding HIV/AIDS and helps high-risk youths make healthy choices regarding their bodies and futures. In addition to supervising the day-to-day operations, she provided leadership and direction to the staff, volunteers and program participants of School Street, and increased and diversified funding sources, including an over 150% increase of funding from new and first-time funders during FY07. During her tenure as Executive Director, Dacia also served as Chairwoman of the Coalition for Adolescent Risk Reduction (CARR), a networking organization of over 200 youth-oriented social service organizations.
In 2007, Dacia participated as a Fellow in the “Step in the Right Direction” program hosted by An-Najah National University, Nablus, West Bank. There, she worked on therapeutic arts projects with children living in the Askr Refugee Camp. Having previously studied French, German and Spanish, she has also completed two semesters of Elementary Arabic at Northwestern and hopes to return to the West Bank in a professional capacity someday.
Currently, Dacia lives in Chicago, with her two rescued animals; Romeo, an abused pit-bull mix, and a gorgeous Domestic Long Hair cat named Cyrano.
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