The Civic Power of Greenways - Great Rivers Greenway

Meet Our Panelists

Shaughnessy H. Daniels, Director of Civic Engagement, Great Rivers Greenway

Shaughnessy Daniels is the Director of Civic Engagement at Great Rivers Greenway, where she leads the agency’s efforts to gather critical input to guide planning and implementation for greenway projects. Shaughnessy’s career has been focused on strengthening communities and the people that live within them. She has a long history and broad range of experience in non-profit development, community and capacity and local civic efforts. Prior to joining Great Rivers Greenway Shaughnessy served as Vice President of Community Supports at St. Louis Arc, a local non-profit that supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and Vice President at Urban Strategies Inc., a national non-profit that provide social and economic supports families affected by broad-scale community redevelopment. Shaughnessy also served as Assistant to the President at St. Louis 2004, a citizen-based initiative to launch major regional revitalization projects including Great Rivers Greenway! Shaughnessy is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of the University of Missouri-St. Louis where she earned a B.A. in communications. She also holds a graduate certificate in Organizational Leadership from Saint Louis University.

Jon Jon Wesolowski, Content Producer and Public Speaker, the happy urbanist

Jon Jon is an avid urbanist, national speaker, and content creator passionate about decoding what makes spaces great. His TikTok channels have garnered over 8.6 million likes and 406k followers. After spending eight months abroad exploring cities, he continues to advocate for better urban spaces.

Rodney Crim, CEO & President, St. Louis Economic Development Partnership

Rodney Crim is the CEO and President of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, a regional economic development organization for St. Louis City and St. Louis County. The organization provides business attraction, retention and expansion services, facilitates innovation and entrepreneurship and owns and manages four business incubators. The organization also sponsors a World Trade Center, develops and manages strategic real estate projects, facilitates the connection between businesses and workforce providers and leads a number of initiatives. These initiatives include the Mosaic Project, an effort designed to make the region more welcoming to foreign born and the St. Louis Promise Zone, an initiative to address the most distressed areas of St. Louis City and St. Louis County.

Rodney has enjoyed a career in the public and private sectors in Minneapolis, Chicago and St. Louis including Pillsbury, The Musicland Group, Ameriprise, Microtron, Shorebank and the St. Louis Development Corporation before joining the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership. Rodney has a passion for economic development and is involved on local and national boards that focus on improving quality of life and economic development.

Rodney’s education includes a Bachelor’s in Accounting and a Master’s in Business Administration. He is a Certified Economic Developer, Certified Economic Development Finance Professional, Certified Public Accountant (Inactive) and a Harvard Senior Executive in their State and Local Government Program.

Mallory Rukhsana Nezam

Founder, Justice + Joy | CAIR Lab

Curator of Partnerships and Programs, FORWARD 8: CIVIC HEALTH (out now!)

mallorynezam.com | coaching

Mallory Rukhsana Nezam is a cross-sector culture-maker who loves cities and believes that we have the tools to make them more just and joyful. Through her interdisciplinary practice, Justice + Joy, she engages stakeholders across sectors to de-silo the way we run cities and build new models of creative, cross-sectoral collaboration. As a co-founder of the Cross-sector Artists in Residence Lab (CAIR Lab), she helps embed artists in government and other sectors. She also serves as the Curator of Partnerships and Programs for FORWARD by Forecast Public Art, a publication and conversation series spotlighting how artists are critical problem solvers addressing urgent issues of our time.

She has helped build inaugural arts & culture teams from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council of Boston to Transportation for America. Raised in St. Louis, MO, she founded St. Louis Improv Anywhere and co-founded the St. Louis Artivists. She was a 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellow, a 2019-2020 inaugural Practices for Change Fellow at Arizona State University and a Cultural Policy Fellow at the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. She holds a Master of Design from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She seeks to be in every room she’s not supposed to be in.