Lifetime Achievement Award

Lifetime Achievement Award

Karen Pittman

Karen Pittman has made a career of starting organizations and initiatives that promote youth development – including the Forum for Youth Investment, which she co-founded with Merita Irby in 1998.

A sociologist and recognized leader in youth development, Karen started her career at the Urban Institute, conducting studies on social services for children and families. She later moved to the Children's Defense Fund, launching its adolescent pregnancy prevention initiatives and helping to create its adolescent policy agenda. In 1990 she became a vice president at the Academy for Educational Development, where she founded and directed the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research and its spin-off, the National Training Institute for Community Youth Work.

In 1995 Karen joined the Clinton administration as director of the President's Crime Prevention Council, where she worked with 13 cabinet secretaries to create a coordinated prevention agenda. From there she moved to the executive team of the International Youth Foundation (IYF), charged with helping the organization strengthen its program content and develop an evaluation strategy. In 1998 she and Rick Little, head of the foundation, took a leave of absence to work with ret. Gen. Colin Powell to create America's Promise. Upon her return, she and Irby launched the Forum, which later became an entity separate from IYF.

Under their leadership the Forum has made good on its tag line – moving ideas to impact – by leading the charge to create ready youth, ready communities and ready leaders. This work is anchored in the Forum's broad Ready by 21 initiatives and implemented through its core team and three affiliates: the Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality, Community Systems Group and SparkAction.

Karen has written three books and dozens of articles on youth issues, including as a regular columnist in the youth development newspaper, Youth Today. She is also a respected public speaker and has served on numerous boards and panels, including those of the Kauffman Foundation, the Educational Testing Service, the National Commission on the Senior Year of High School, the National Center for Children in Poverty, JCPenney Afterschool Fund, National Collaboration for Youth, and the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation Board. She currently sits on the America's Promise Board of Trustees and YouthBuild USA.

Karen has been honored with the National Commission for African American Education Augustus F. Hawkins Service Award (2002), the American Youth Policy Forum Decade of Service Award for Sustained Visionary Leadership in Advancing Youth Policy (2003), the Healthy Teen Network Sprit of Service Award (2007), The Non Profit Times' Power & Influence Top 50 (2009), and most recently, was named one of the 25 most influential leaders in afterschool by the National Afterschool Association.

Lifetime Achievement Award

D. Kenneth Patton

D. Kenneth Patton is a renowned real estate consultant and developer with more than 35 years of experience synthesizing livability and economic development. Ken began his career in urban economic development as a neighborhood activist in Brooklyn. Since then he has served as dean of NYU Schack Institute where he over­saw the graduate program triple in size. More recently, he served as interim special advisor for Schack.

Prior to his work at NYU he served as COO of Helmsley-Spear Inc. and was the first full time president of the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY). In his role with REBNY, he worked with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to convert the Urban Action Development Grant Program to one of subordinate loans.

Ken has also served as the New York City's Econom­ic Development administrator and as the Commissioner of Commerce under Mayor John V. Lindsay. As commissioner, he created more than 16,000 jobs by leading the construction of Hunts Point Market, South Street Restoration and assembling 2,000 acres of land for urban industri­al parks and downtown development in New York City's outer boroughs. He also was instrumental in the renovation of Yankee Stadium and the acquisition and development of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Ken remains active in civic life, currently serving as a trustee for the New York City Police Foundation and is on numerous other boards, in­cluding the Pratt Institute and the Theater Development Fund. He serves on the board of the Community Preservation Corporation and is Director of the Bryant Park Business Improvement District. His years of contributions to urban economic development serve as the framework for his message that successful community revitalization requires active involvement in all sectors and that cultural, civic and design elements are even more important today as society migrates from the manufacture of goods to the focus on services and media.

Lifetime Achievement Award

The Lifetime Achievement Award honors individuals who have shown a extraordinary dedication to civic service. Through their commitment to improving livability for all, these individuals have made significant improvements to communities and improved the quality of life for all citizens.

Jaquelin T. Robertson, FAIA is a world renowned architect and urban designer.

As Dean of the University of Virginia School of Architecture from 1980 to 1988, Jaque hosted influential forums bringing together many of the country’s highest-profile architects and planners and inspiring hundreds of budding architecture students. The school’s Jaquelin T. Robertson Visiting Professorship in Architecture allows students to be instructed by the most talented architectural educators from around the country.

With his good friend Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, South Carolina, Jaque cofounded the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, a leadership forum for mayors to see urban design as an issue needing their focus. The Mayors’ Institute, now in its 27th successful year, is a nationally recognized gathering for Mayors to discuss best practices for improving the quality of life in their cities through excellence in design and planning.

In 1988, Jaque co-founded the architecture firm Cooper, Robertson & Partners with his Yale School of Architecture classmate, Alexander Cooper. Jaque and his firm have played key roles in award-winning works, including Battery Park in New York City, the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia, and the master plan for the planned community of Celebration, Florida.

An innovative American architect and urban designer, Jaque understands the interconnected nature of planning and architecture and the impact it has on the human experience. By reviving traditional styles of architecture and modernizing them with touches specific to each building’s environment, he masterfully uses the built environment as a vehicle for change and revitalization.

Lifetime Achievement Award

The Lifetime Achievement Award honors individuals who have shown a dedication to extraordinary civic service with a commitment to improving livability for all.

Henry R. Richmond is being honored for his leadership as the cofounder of 1,000 Friends of Oregon. Richmond cofounded the organization in 1975, and his leadership and example incited the growth of 1,000 Friends across state-lines, creating a national network of 1,000 Friends organizations advocating for sustainable communities, the protection of farmland and forests, and the conservation of natural resources.

As a 32 year-old attorney, Henry R. Richmond founded 1,000 Friends of Oregon in 1975 with noted environmentalist and then-Governor Tom McCall to protect the state’s new land-use law and advocate for sustainable communities. With the grassroots financial support of 1,000 Oregon residents pledging $100 per year, 1,000 Friends won dozens of court rulings protecting the law and built a diverse coalition of homebuilders, farmers, timber companies, and high tech companies.

Richmond’s incredible foresight in creating this unique organization to protect Oregon’s progressive land-use laws was key to shifting the dialogue and ensuring the protection of the state’s natural beauty, productivity, and overall livability. The broad coalition he helped build was essential for continued legislative support and implementation in 36 counties and 241 cities. Forty years later, the law remains a success — each city has an urban growth boundary (UGB) and 25 million acres of farm and forest land are protected outside of UGBs.

Richmond has created one of the most effective leadership devices for land-use management in the country today. He is seen as a founder of “smart growth” policies across the country, improving the quality of life for countless communities throughout the nation.