Board

Ireland’s President Mary McAleese and her husband Mr. Martin McAleese, center, together with members of the I2UD board and staff.

Board of Directors

Joe Brennan, BS in Marketing, University of Maryland  

In 1974 Mr. Brennan opened up his own construction/development company at the age of 25. Over the next 29 years his company has become the most successful high-end housing developers in Toronto completing well over 500 houses ranging $2,500,000 to $25,000,000 in construction value. In 1995 he opened an office in Palm Beach, Florida. The company has completed many notable projects including the former Kennedy Winter White House and the Firestone Estate that won the coveted Ballinger Award historic preservation. His company has matured to a point where he would like to give back to the community using the skills and experience he has developed in the industry during the last 29 years, with interest in Poland. [top]

John Ciardullo, B.S. in Structural Engineering, (Bradley University), M.Arch, (Harvard)

John Ciardullo studied fine art at the High School for Music and Art in New York City. In his third year, he changed his major to architectural design and earned the school’s architectural award. He went on to study structural engineering at Bradley University, and architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. At John Ciardullo Associates, most of the early work explored the tight parameters of low-budget urban projects. Now, with 33 years and the designs of dozens of schools, libraries, community centers, corporate interiors, private home, and entire communities to its credit, John Ciardullo Associates stands at the head of the field of socially determined architecture. In addition to his architectural practice, Mr. Ciardullo has taught at the university level. His teaching experience includes: Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York: Department of Architecture, Associate Professor teaching Architectural Design Studios and several levels of structural engineering courses. He also served as a Professor and Director of the first year Planning Studio in the City and Regional Planning Department. Columbia University, New York, New York: Associate Professor of Architecture teaching second year Architectural Design Studio as well as Coordinator of the Building Technology curriculum. [top]

Janine S. Clifford, M.Arch, M.Des (Harvard), D.Des (Harvard), AIA, AICP, ASID

Dr. Janine Clifford is Director of the Community Design and Sustainable Research Program at the University of Hawaii’s School of Architecture. She is a practicing architect, urban designer and educator with over 25 years of experience. She is President of Clifford Planning LLC, the community design and planning entity of Clifford Projects Inc. In the past decade, Dr. Clifford has created more than 15 new communities, encompassing over 500 acres of land development and more than 2,000 single and multi-family housing units. She is currently working on one of the largest high-efficiency, green, and LEED ARRA funded projects in the nation with Gensler, San Francisco. As a visiting faculty member, Dr. Clifford has taught a multi-discipline, advanced urban design studio at Harvard University. She is the 2001-2002 Joint Center for Housing Studies Meyer Dissertation Fellow and the School’s first synchronous remote learning doctoral graduate. She also received her Master in Design Studies, with distinction, in Housing and Community Development at Harvard and her Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Hawaii. Dr. Clifford is a licensed architect in Honolulu, New York and New South Wales, and is a certified planner and interior designer. Besides Hawaii, she has worked in Tokyo, Okinawa, New South Wales, Fiji, New York, and Boston. [top]

Gary Haney, Bachelor of Environmental Design (Miami University), Master of Architecture (Harvard)

Gary Haney is a Design Partner at the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP. His design approach often incorporates extensive materials research, environmental simulations, and computational scripting, which help to inform the parameters of each project. This research-intensive approach has enabled him to design buildings of great scale and complexity, including the Qatar Petroleum headquarters complex in Doha, Qatar, Al Rajhi Bank Headquarters in Riyadh, the Al Hamra Tower in Kuwait City, and the Al Sharq Tower in Dubai, which was honored with a 2007 Progressive Architecture award. Mr. Haney also recently completed the LEED-certified U.S. Census Bureau Headquarters, which has won more than 10 major design awards, and the $85-million redesign of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which reorganized and renewed this renowned institution. Mr. Haney is a Board member of the National Building Museum and a member of the International Council of the American Academy in Rome. He has served on advisory boards at the Pratt Institute and Miami University of Ohio’s Department of Architecture and Interior Design and has led design studios at NJIT, Miami University, and Ball State University. He has served as a critic on juries at Columbia University, the Pratt Institute, Catholic University, University of Maryland, NJIT, City College New York, North Carolina State University, and Florida A&M. His design work has been covered extensively in national and international journals, and his drawings have been exhibited at Miami University, the Brooklyn Museum, and the National Building Museum. [top]

Aline Kradjian, B.S. Urban Planning (Cal Poly, Pomona), MRED (USC), AMDP (Harvard)

Aline Kradjian is President and Founder of The ARD Group in Costa Mesa, California. The firm specializes in development of affordable and market-rate ownership housing. Her real estate practice entails evaluating market conditions, analyzing real estate proposals, raising capital, and overseeing all aspects of the development process for the company. Aline has served on and chaired numerous boards and commissions in Los Angeles, such as Historic Preservation, Design Review, and Workforce investment. [top]

Mary Jane Lawson

Mary Jane Lawson is the Owner and President of M.J. Lawson Real Estate Ltd., in Toronto Canada where she specializes in the sale and leasing of commercial real estate investments. She has spent the past 25 years working in transitional neighborhoods where her marketing expertise has contributed to revitalization and/or repurposing of under-utilized urban buildings. Those projects have included the Ontario Design Center, where she helped transform an outdated drug supply warehouse into Ontario’s first large scale commercial center for interior design. She marketed one of Toronto’s iconic landmarks The Flat-Iron Building in Toronto’s famous St. Lawrence Market neighborhood. She also worked with forward thinking developers to rebrand and market a former piano factory into a vibrant office complex known as Studio City. This building became an incubator building for the burgeoning Dot.com companies in the 1990s and continues to offer creative office space for a host of new businesses today. She worked for several years with the renowned Canadian Architect, Jack Diamond to market his renovated office complex known as Berkeley Castle which was a ground-breaking transformation of a former derelict industrial warehouse into a vibrant office community on Toronto’s eastern downtown core. Through her work with the CTL Group in Toronto she participated in and contributed to negotiations with city planners and private architects to help conceptualize Innovation Square one of the first and largest concepts for a sustainable office tower in Toronto.

In addition, Ms. Lawson has contributed her marketing expertise to various community groups including the Toronto Philharmonia. During her time as a member of the Board of the Philharmonia she rebranded the organization, developed new marketing materials and was an important member of the planning committee for their popular annual fund raiser – the famous Viennese Ball. Ms. Lawson is an American citizen who immigrated to Canada 25 years ago after graduating with a BA in History and Business from Andrews University in Michigan, USA. [top]

Gerard O’Hare, Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Gerard is the Chief Executive of Parker Green Property Development Ltd. He is one of Northern Ireland’s most successful property and business entrepreneurs with a portfolio of developments across Ireland, the UK, Central Europe and the USA. In recent years he has pursued a more independent property investment role and has major investments throughout the Island of Ireland and abroad. He was the catalyst in bringing together the winning consortium bid for Belfast’s Waterfront Lanyon Place in association with the USA Baltimore based Company, EIDC and Dunloe Ewart Plc in 1991. In April 2006 Gerard was appointed Chairman of the University of Ulster Foundation established to assist the University in obtaining funds for its development programme from philanthropic and corporate sources. [top]

Rene Pantalone, B.A. (York University), B.Ed. (York University), AMDP (Harvard)

Rene Pantalone is Director of a number of family owned real estate and development companies in Toronto, Canada, including “National Homes,” a major residential homebuilder; “Forum Development Limited,” a firm that builds and develops retirement residences, commercial projects and infill housing neighborhoods. Mrs. Pantalone was Chair of Montcrest School, an independent, non-profit private school, where she directed overall growth, acquisition of land, and campus development. She served on the Board of Harvard University Graduate School of Design Alumni Council and sits on the Boards of several charities in Toronto. Her education includes B.A. and B.Ed. degrees from Toronto’s York University, and AMDP from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Rene is a Past Governor of the Canadian Olympic Trust, a member of the Canadian Olympic Association and Member of the Toronto Real Estate Board. [top]

Neil St. John Raymond, B.A. (Yale), M.Des. (Harvard)

Ted Raymond is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Raymond Property Company in Boston, Massachusetts. He has been actively involved in the financing, development, marketing and property management of real estate in the Boston area and elsewhere for over 36 years. In 1969, Ted completed his first major real estate development project; the restoration and adaptive use of 21 Merchants Row in the Faneuil Hall area of Boston. The project marked the beginning of a long and successful series of restoration and adaptive use projects as well as newly constructed developments, for which he has won numerous awards. These include awards from the Boston Society of Architects, the Victoria Society of America, the American Institute of Architects, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Trained as an architect at Yale and Harvard, Raymond has extensive experience in the public process and imaginative conceptual solutions to complex projects. He has participated as a teaching assistant and lecturer in various Real Estate related courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. [top]

John M. Sanger, Esq., B.A. (Harvard), J.D. (Harvard), MCP (Harvard)

John M. Sanger is a founding principal of the San Francisco law firm of Sanger & Olson. The firm specializes in real estate law, including land use, environmental clearances and development entitlements. Before founding Sanger & Olson, he was a partner in the real estate department of Pettit & Martin, where he handled a variety of real estate transactions, complex land use matters and some land use litigation. Previously, he owned and managed an urban planning, economic and development-consulting firm, providing service to private and governmental clients for over fifteen years, primarily in the western United States. He has authored a number of development plans, zoning ordinances, market and financial studies, and an ordinance providing for development rights transfers to preserve historic buildings. [top]

Clemens Sels, Agricultural Science (University of Bonn, Germany) Economics, (University of Cologne, Germany)

Clemens Sels does not follow the conventional rules of property development. He prefers an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable approach and is not afraid of challenges in this business. Sixteen years ago he started with one building for a small group of European clients and went on to expand his company to three offices with over 40 employees. He is the President of CTL Group, which is active in the development, management, syndication and financing of real estate investments in Canada with over 120 commercial and residential properties under its management. Clemens is an innovative developer interested in the discovery and preservation of historic buildings, and has successfully revitalized forgotten downtown properties into economically viable projects. He is an advocate of a balanced approach to development and has pioneered the design for the first sustainable office tower in Toronto, which is now approved by the City of Toronto. Innovation Square is a complex of three towers in downtown Toronto, designed for high-tech tenants featuring innovative and leading edge sustainable technologies of natural systems and renewable energy. [top]

Cathy Simon, B.A. (Wellesley), J.D. (Harvard), MCP (Harvard)

Cathy J. Simon founded SMWM in 1985 and served as its President and Director of Design until joining with Perkins+Will in 2008. Under her leadership, the firm became a nationally recognized practice in architecture, planning, and urban design and was honored with numerous professional distinctions, including the 1999 Firm Award given by the AIA California Council. As an architect, Cathy has established a significant record of commissions throughout the country. She is devoted to the physical and social viability of cities, and her projects are distinguished as extraordinary settings for interaction, inspiration and delight. Her design philosophy has resulted in buildings that have a distinctive sense of place and remarkable success as common ground for diverse populations. In the Bay Area, her signature projects include the Ferry Building, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Slow Food Nation Master Plan. As a recognized authority on waterfronts, she has produced plans for Piers 92-94 in Manhattan, as well as Pier 1, Piers 27-31 and Seawall Lot 337 in San Francisco. Cathy’s work includes master plans and architecture at Harvard, New York University, Bard College, and Stanford’s Knoll and new Redwood City satellite campus. One of Cathy’s personal focuses, and a celebrated part of her work, has been the design of civic, institutional, educational and cultural projects.[top]

Advisory Board

Nadia Beiser, B.A. in Urban and Regional Planning (Clark University), M.Arch. (Harvard)

Nadia Beiser has been involved in the real estate development field since 1975, as a developer, construction project manager, architect, and land use planner. She is currently a self-employed real estate developer in Bozeman, Montana. Ms. Beiser started her own design firm in 1980 and completed over 25 solar heated residential projects, plus numerous state building renovations to increase energy conservation or to permit handicapped accessibility. Since 1986, Nadia Beiser has been responsible for the planning, design, development, construction, and marketing of 46 residential, commercial, industrial and mixed-use subdivisions from 4 to 235 lots each. Working with engineering, scientific, legal and accounting professionals has permitted Nadia to optimize her own professional strengths: organization, presentation, market-targeted design, and budget planning. [top]

Ismail Serageldin, B.S. (Cairo University), MRP (Harvard), Ph.D. (Harvard)

Ismail Serageldin is the first Director of the Library of Alexandria in Alexandria Egypt, a distinguished University Professor at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and serves as chair and member of a number of advisory committees for academic, research, scientific and international institutions and civil society efforts. He has worked in a number of capacities at the World Bank since joining in 1972: Economist in Education and Human Resources (1972-76); Division Chief for Technical Assistance and Special Studies (1977-80), and for Urban Projects in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (1980-83); Director for Programs in West Africa (1984-87); Country Director for Central and Occidental Africa (1987-89), Technical Director for all Sub-Saharan Africa (1990-92), and Vice-President for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (1993-98). In addition, he was active in promoting NGO-Bank relations, and served as Co-Chairman of the NGO-Bank Committee (1997-99). He has edited or authored over 45 books and monographs and 200 articles, book chapters, and technical papers on various topics. [top]

Roger Kallman, B.Arch (Miami University), M.A.U.D. (University of Minnesota), MRP (UNC)

Roger Kallman is the Consulting Partner for all urban and regional planning studies undertaken by SOM London’s Planning Studio, and planning issues in respect of all architectural projects. His work encompasses land planning, urban design, transportation planning, new town and campus planning, feasibility studies, environmental assessments, historic preservation and adaptive reuse studies. Roger joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in 1971, was elected as Partner in 1989. Roger moved to the UK when he helped to establish SOM’s London office, in 1986. Roger has had extensive experience in the master planning of award winning, large-scale developments in both urban and countryside settings. Prior to this work, he undertook the role of resident SOM representative for the Dublin Transportation Centre study. Subsequently he lived in Cork, leading preparation of the Greater Cork Area Land Use/Transportation Plan. The Planning Institution of Ireland recognized his contribution to the Greater Cork Area by electing him an Honorary Life Member in 1996. In addition to his work in Europe, Roger has been engaged in projects around the world for both public and private sector clients. He served as Senior Planner for the Chicago Central Area Plan and on numerous projects in the Far East, Central Asia and the Middle East. He recently lead the Planning Studio in the preparation of the regeneration strategies for the City of Newport in South Wales and Victoria Harbour in Hartlepool, while also directing a Master Plan for INSEAD, a graduate business school, outside of Paris. [top]

Aziza al-Hibri, B.A. in Philosophy (American University of Beirut), Ph.D. in Philosophy (University of Pennsylvania), J.D. (University of Pennsylvania Law School)

Azizah Y. al-Hibri is a professor of law at the University of Richmond. She has written extensively on issues of Islamic culture and law, approaches to democracy, as well as on human rights in Islam. She has also guest edited a special volume on Islam by the Journal of Law and Religion. Presently, she is completing a book on The Islamic Marriage Contract in American Courts.

Professor al-Hibri is internationally active exploring the possibilities of cooperation in connection with various women’s issues in developing countries. She has lectured in numerous countries on topics relating to Islam, democracy, women’s rights and Muslims in the United States. Professor al-Hibri has traveled widely throughout the Muslim world in support of Muslim women’s rights and acted as a consultant to the Supreme Council for family Affairs in Qatar in the development of that country’s personal status code. She has visited 13 Muslim countries and discussed with their religious, political, and women’s leaders. Professor al-Hibri is interested in women’s participation in their communities, as well as in micro-enterprise projects to improve low-income family budgets. She believes in training programs directed to women to improve urban management and development. In addition to her teaching and professional activities, Dr. Al-Hibri is founder and president of Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights (www.karamah.org). She has also served on the board of director and advisory boards of numerous non-profit organizations. Dr. al-Hibri is member to the New York Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, and the American Bar Association.

Among the most important awards received recently by Dr. Azizah Y. Al-Hibri are: Virginia First Freedom Award, Council for America’s First Freedom (2007), Dr. Betty Shabazz Recognition Award, Women in Islam (NY), 2006.[top]