Join us for our next Breakfast Speaker in 2025!
For the Love of Parks & Trails
Greater Oklahoma City Parks and Trails Foundation seeks out inspirational speakers and community development experts to speak on unique opportunities for Oklahoma City parks and trails. The goal of these events is to re-inspire the relationship between city and citizen.
2024 Speaker: Dr. Robert Zarr
Dr. Robert Zarr, MD, MPH is the Founder and Medical Director of Park Rx America (PRA), a national non-profit. Dr. Zarr believes that nature-rich areas should be accessible to all and incorporated into our daily routines, and that spending time in and around nature is the single most important first step to improving both human and planetary health. PRA is committed to educating healthcare professionals and the public, and to providing the tools to meet each individual’s unique needs.
Before relocating to Ottawa, Canada in 2021 he worked for 20 years as a board-certified paediatrician at Unity Health Care in Washington, DC, where he cared for low-income and immigrant populations. He previously served as advisor to the National Park Service on park prescriptions. Dr. Zarr continues his work at Unity as a physician researcher.
2023 Speaker: Garner Stoll
Stoll has extensive experience in Urban Planning and Community Development. While working for Lincoln, Nebraska and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, he spearheaded the development of city-wide trails plans, which both have since been substantially constructed.
Stoll is also known for his work in Austin, Texas on “Imagine Austin,” that city's first comprehensive plan in 30 years. Imagine Austin won the 2014 Sustainable Plan Award from the American Planning Association. His work in Parker, Colorado included collaborating with the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation on trails and active living demonstration projects. In Fayetteville, Arkansas, he worked on a master plan to transform State Highway 71 through Fayetteville into a walkable multi-mode corridor, which is currently under construction.
2022 Speaker: Dan Biederman
Dan Biederman is the founder and president of BRV Corp., as well as co-founder of Grand Central Partnership, the Chelsea Improvement Company, 34th Street Partnership, and Bryant Park Corporation; he currently serves as the President of the latter two of those downtown management organizations. Mr. Biederman and BRV consult public and private parties on, among other things, the art of downtown management, economic development, and public space activation and rehabilitation in New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Newark, and a host of other cities in various countries.
Biederman Redevelopment Ventures emerged from the work of BRV's Mr. Biederman at Bryant Park in Manhattan. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, Bryant Park was New York’s most dangerous park. Mr. Biederman formed a non-profit corporation dedicated to turning the park around and signed an agreement with the City of New York to take over the financing, security, sanitation, maintenance, and programming of the space.
BRV brings the “Bryant Park model” to cities around the country and world. BRV works closely with mixed-use developments, professional sports franchises, universities, downtown districts, existing and to be developed parks, and more to create vibrant public spaces for the public to enjoy year-round. BRV’s work creates value, generates revenue, and increases the health of the surrounding communities.
Mr. Biederman has written, lectured, and taught extensively in the field of urban management, Business Improvement Districts, and self-financing neighborhood redevelopment projects; his publications include articles in Urban Land and the Harvard Business Review. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton, and with distinction from the Harvard Business School.
Mr. Biederman and his work have received over 40 local, national, and international awards, including the first-ever William E. Simon Lifetime Achievement Award in Social Entrepreneurship from the Manhattan Institute in 2007. He is married to the fine arts lawyer Susan Duke Biederman, and has two children, Robert and Brooke.
2021 Speaker: Dr. John Crompton
John L. Crompton holds the rank of University Distinguished Professor and is both a Regents Professor and a Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence at Texas A&M University. He is the author or co-author of over 20 books and a substantial number of articles which have been published in the recreation, tourism, sport and marketing fields. In 2006, the city of College Station named a new 16-acre neighborhood park, John Crompton Park. Dr. Crompton served 4 years as a city council member for College Station from 2007-2011, and was Mayor Pro Tem in 2010-2011. He was again elected to the city council in 2019 and currently serves in that position.
Dr. Crompton is a past recipient of the National Park Foundation’s Cornelius Amory Pugsley award for outstanding national contributions to parks and conservation; the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Colleges National Teacher of the Year Award; the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) Distinguished Professional award; the NRPA National Literary award; the NRPA Roosevelt award for outstanding research; the Distinguished Colleague and the Distinguished Teaching awards of the Society of Park and Recreation Educators; the Travel and Tourism Research Association's Travel Research and Lifetime Achievement awards; Senior Fellow of the World Leisure Academy; Elected Fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism and, Minnie Stevens Piper Professor for excellent teaching in the state of Texas.
2019 Speaker: Peter Kageyama
Peter Kageyama is the author of For the Love of Cities: The Love Affair Between People and Their Places and the follow up, Love Where You Live: Creating Emotionally Engaging Places. Kageyama is a Senior Fellow with the Alliance for Innovation, a national network of city leaders that is dedicated to improving the practice of local government. Since speaking to them in 2013, Peter has become a special advisor to America In Bloom. He is an internationally sought-after community development consultant and grassroots engagement strategist who speaks all over the world about bottom-up community development and the amazing people who are making change happen.