Reverend Dennis Dillon
Reverend Dennis Dillon is Pastor of the Brooklyn Christian Center and initiator of Black Church Means Business Conference. As the pioneer and publisher of The New York Christian Times, he has worked to lead one of the largest Black homeownership initiatives in the country, guiding more than ten thousand people to become home owners since 1992. Noted for challenging and negotiating with corporations and banking institutions to reinvest hundreds of millions of dollars in the Black community. He sits on the boards of a number of corporate and not-for-profit organizations, and has developed successful concepts and programs that embrace community economic empowerment.

Ruth Goldstein
Ruth Goldstein has been a community activist since moving to her Fort Greene neighborhood in 1970; Fort Greene Association Board Member for most of its 36 years, Chair during struggle for neighborhood Landmark designation. Ruth has served on a number of boards including the Brownstone Revival Coalition, Preservation Volunteers, and was a founding board member of the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project. She was the founding chair of the Fort Greene Park Conservancy ( FGPC) and is currently chairing the FGPC’s Martyrs’ Monument Centennial Committee -- a three day international commemoration event in 2008.

Jezra Kaye
Jezra Kaye has been a Prospect Heights resident since 1981, and is a founding Steering Committee member of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, and worked as a full-time volunteer on DDDB’s public relations efforts for its first three years. Jezra is a speaker coach and speechwriter with 18 years of corporate and non-profit communications experience and she is President of Communicate with Power and Ease, working with business, professional and non-profit clients; formerly a creative director/writer charged with creating major internal meetings for Fortune 500 companies.

Bob Law
Bob Law is a Brooklyn native, community activist, radio innovator and entrepreneur. Served as VP of programming at New York’ s WWRL radio for 3 years, and was host of Night Talk, for 20 years, the nations first Nationally Broadcast Daily Black radio talk show. Bob founded the Namaskar Capital Assistance Program which developed and managed a loan program for Black owned small businesses; he is the owner of Namaskar, Bob Law’ s Health and Wellness Shop, and Bob Law s Seafood CafÈ, both in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Bob is active as one of the principle PowerNomics organizers, a campaign for economic development for Black America and he is currently Chairman of the board of The Queens New York based Black Spectrum Theatre.

Ron Shiffman
Ron Shiffman is a professor at the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment at the Pratt Institute, director emeritus of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development, and from 1990-96 was a commissioner on the New York City Planning Commission. He has received numerous awards from community based organizations, national advocacy groups including local and national awards from ADPSR [Architects, Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility], the local chapters of the AIA and AICP, the Municipal Art Society. He has been a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners [AICP] since May 1985 and in April 2002 became a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners.