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Ellen Pope helps launch new initiative as fellow

WASHINGTON - Tamar Shapiro will assume leadership of the German Marshall Fund's Comparative Domestic Policy program which helps local leaders develop innovative strategies for their communities by building a network of practitioners who share best practices across the Atlantic. Currently the director of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute and the Governors’ Institute on Community Design at Smart Growth America, Shapiro will bring to GMF a great deal of experience working with state and local leaders to facilitate sustainable development and growth. During the past five years, she has provided policy advice to governors and state officials around the country. Recently, she helped to convene state officials from over 30 states with federal officials for high-level discussions of the new federal Sustainable Communities Partnership and its impact on states, regions, and communities. An attorney by training, Shapiro spent several years practicing law at Klein Hornig, LLP focusing on affordable housing and community development. She also was a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow in Berlin, where she worked at the Berlin Administration on Urban Planning and Environment as well as the German Institute for Urban Affairs. This summer she will return to Germany as a McCloy fellow in environmental affairs researching urban revitalization strategies in former East Germany. “Tamar Shapiro’s background and experience will be an enormous asset to GMF and help to take the already strong CDP program to the next level,” said Craig Kennedy, president of GMF. Shapiro has a B.A. from Harvard College, an M.Phil from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She will assume her new position on August 30.

After five years of directing GMF’s Comparative Domestic Policy program and twelve years at GMF, Ellen Pope will be taking on a new challenge. While becoming the executive director of Otsego 2000, an environmental advocacy and historic preservation non-profit in her hometown of Cooperstown, New York, she will continue to work with GMF as a non-resident fellow, effective July 1, 2010. In this capacity, she will support the Comparative Domestic Policy program by working closely with Tamar Shapiro on developing and managing its new Cities in Transition initiative. This initiative is a three-year effort to connect the leaders of five critical cities in America’s rust belt region – Flint, Detroit, Cleveland, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh – with the best practices and urban innovations that have emerged from several of Europe’s older industrial cities in the areas of land reutilization, shrinking urban footprints, transportation, education and workforce development, and transformation of manufacturing industries.

Over the past few years, Ellen Pope and her team have built the Transatlantic Cities Network, a cluster of 12 American and 13 European cities that share experiences and best practices across the Atlantic in an attempt to improve living conditions in urban areas. The new Cities in Transition initiative builds on these experiences and focuses on the older industrial heritage within the transatlantic space. “Ellen Pope had led the Transatlantic Cities Network to success, and she will now be key to CDP’s new initiative to help cities re-imagine themselves for the 21st century”, said GMF-President Craig Kennedy. In her new role at GMF, Pope will work with the CDP director, staff, and fellows to ensure the robust development of a regional network of leaders working together toward future sustainable growth and quality of life.