Our Advisory Board
The SBAN Advisory Board includes representatives from diverse sectors, organizations, geographic regions, and backgrounds who advise the leadership and staff on all phases of the work. They include nationally and internationally renowned scholars, nonprofit leaders, and small business advocates that bring experience in economic and community development, entrepreneurship, commercial real estate and finance, commercial gentrification, and related issues.
Anna Marie Cruz
Derek Peebles
Derek excels in building peer networks, driving policy changes, and aligning resources for place-based economic solutions. By leveraging private and philanthropic investments to achieve social impact goals, he advances equity while ensuring sustainable outcomes.
Dionne Baux
Dionne Baux serves as the Director of Urban Programs for Main Street America. Dionne leads the initiative to broaden the Center’s offerings and engagement in urban neighborhood commercial districts. Dionne has over a decade of experience in project coordination in the fields of urban economic development and commercial district revitalization.
Joyce Pisnanot
Joyce Pisnanont serves as the Deputy Director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development. Joyce has over 15 years of experience working with Asian Pacific Islander community development organizations, including for several National CAPACD members in New York, California, and Washington.
Levar Martin
Emma Gonzalez Roberts
Emma Gonzalez MacRoberts is the Chief Operating Officer of TREND Community Development Corporation, a non-profit whose mission is to strengthen urban neighborhoods and build wealth for low-and moderate-income community investors. Roberts has over a decade of experience advancing community development through a non-profit affordable housing developer, city government, a social health tech start up, and academic research. She received a master’s in city planning from MIT where her research focused on equitable economic development tools and practices.
David Johnson
David Johnson is Business Development Officer for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). He has eight years of experience in the CDFI lending world, including the last four years at LISC. He has worked with organizations that support microlending, business coaching, and resource connection to marginalized small business owners. David’s passion is centered around connectivity and the ecosystem of entrepreneurs and resource providers, and how we can all align to support the sustainability of underserved small businesses.
Donovan Rypkema
Loretta Lees
Loretta Lees, Ph.D., is a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Leicester, UK. She is co-organizer of The Urban Salon, a London forum for architecture, cities, and international urbanism, and The Leicester Urban Observatory. She is also chair of the London Housing Panel (co-funded by the Greater London Assembly and Trust for London). Lees is an international expert on gentrification and urban policy, and has just completed a 3-year project on gentrification-induced displacement from council estates in London.
Stacey Sutton
Stacey Sutton, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy and the Director of Applied Research and Strategic Partnerships at the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Through her research on community economic development, Sutton examines questions related to neighborhood racial transition, gentrification, and small business survival; solidarity economy ecosystems and worker-owned cooperatives; infrastructures and ideologies of Black liberatory zones; and racially disparate effects of place-based city policy and planning.
Gregory Reaves
Greg spent more than 30 years working at all levels in corporate and private industries. He graduated from Howard University, Washington, D.C., with a bachelor’s in chemical engineering and began his career with McNeil Consumer Products Company. Greg then joined Merck and Co. Inc., where he received eight promotions and became a member of the research division executive committee. He joined a midsize real estate development company, where he became COO and a member of the executive team. In 2008, Greg co-founded Mosaic Development Partners, and together with his partner, Leslie Smallwood-Lewis, they have developed over $750 million in real estate projects and have created hundreds of construction and full-time jobs. Mosaic currently has $7B in real estate in its pipeline.
Elijah Davis
