Kevin’s work as Executive Director of the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation (WHRF) from 2011-2018 received local honors and was featured in national publications such as The Huffington Post. It was there where he used his diverse background in storytelling and community planning to help a struggling organization develop a new brand and mission and grow from a staff of one contracted employee to seven full-time employees and several interns. Additionally, he grew the foundation’s budget ten-fold and developed a more sustainable and diverse revenue stream. Kevin has led teams in the creation and implementation of dozens of projects ranging from small creative placemaking activities to multi-million dollar real estate deals. These projects have included several public and private partners and a diverse set of public financing tools such as Tax Increment Financing, public loans/grants, and Historic Tax Credits. Kevin earned a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Missouri State University and received a Master’s Degree in Community Planning from the University of Cincinnati with a specialization in urban real estate and neighborhood development. Kevin serves locally on the Board of The Community Development Corporations Association of Greater Cincinnati, Cincinnati Neighborhood Business Districts United, is a member of the Urban Land Institute and was recently named to the 40 under 40 list by The Cincinnati Business Courier.

Joe has 15 years of experience in urban design, architecture, and development. He has directed projects for public and private clients in over 25 states and 7 countries, ranging from targeted pop-up initiatives to billion-dollar developments of city districts. Joe grew up in a small, western resort town. The first city he lived in was not until after high school in Rome, Italy, where he learned the power of walkable neighborhoods, active streets and public spaces, and smartly adapted buildings and neighborhoods. He later settled with his wife in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for ten years, experiencing first-hand how a deindustrializing city went from down and out to up and coming through bottom-up resourcefulness, smart leadership, technology, and an unshakable commitment to neighborhood livability. During that time he led the urban design studio at Urban Design Associates, designing districts, neighborhoods, and cities in North America and beyond. In 2015 he moved to Cincinnati, joining MKSK as a Senior Urban Design and Development strategist, wholly focused in cities from Detroit to Nashville. He co-authored with Kevin Wright the Neighborhood Playbook in 2016 based on their collective experiences before launching together YARD & Company in 2018. Joe graduated summa cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 2005 with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture. He is a co-founder of CNU-Midwest and a frequent contributor to Planning Magazine, Better! Cities and Towns, Planetizen, Smart Cities Dive, and the Congress for New Urbanism. He is a regular lecturer on urban development, placemaking, and the impact of technology on cities.

Matt Jacob is an Associate-Capital Markets with Cushman & Wakefield. He has been there for nearly 11 years and assists buyers and sellers to reach their investment goals alongside the firm's Capital Markets team. Well-experienced with office, industrial, retail and multi-family properties, Matt is licensed in both Ohio and Kentucky. He also works with the team to underwrite commercial real estate transactions in Cincinnati and other Midwestern markets. Matt is experienced in using Argus Enterprise and Excel to project rental cash flows, provide alternate debt/market/ownership scenarios and provide ad hoc analyses (sale/leaseback, lease analysis, ground leases, lease abstracting, rent roll creation, loan payment schedules. summary reports and more). His prior experience has encompassed over 160 million square feet across 1,400 properties, including ~67M SF of Industrial, ~51M SF of Office, ~12M SF of Retail and ~40,000 units of apartments. Assets have ranged in quality from distressed and vacant properties to stabilized and fully-leased assets) and in complexity (from 75-tenant CBD office to 100-building industrial portfolios to single tenant net-leased retail to multi-tiered mixed-use.)