Staff

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Co-Director
Gene Krebs (gkrebs@greaterohio.org)
Gene Krebs spent three years on a local school board, eight years in the Ohio House, and has served four years as a county commissioner. While in the Ohio House he chaired the Economic Development and Small Business Committee, and served on the Finance and Appropriation Committee and the Farmland Preservation Task Force. He saw ten of his bills and many amendments passed into law.

He has also been published in national media on farm policy, and indeed ran the family farm operation for several decades. Gene is on the board of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, and the Ohio Math and Science Coalition. He was a Watchdog of the Treasury Award recipient for 1996, 1998, 2000, and received the Star Award from Miami University for outstanding volunteer work. In addition he was the recipient of the Friend of the Taxpayer Award 1997. He is a former inter-collegiate fencing coach. Since leaving state political office he has served on the Joint Committee on High Technology Start-up Business, Sales Tax Holiday Study Committee, and the Eminent Domain Task Force, all by legislative appointment.

Co-Director
Lavea Brachman, JD, MCP (lbrachman@greaterohio.org)
As a Co-Director of Greater Ohio and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Lavea Brachman manages the Restoring Prosperity to Ohio Initiative as well as several other regional or statewide initiatives, including ReBuild Ohio, a statewide vacant property redevelopment coalition, and a multi-jurisdictional watershed restoration project launched by the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation in Northeast Ohio’s Maumee River watershed. Lavea serves on the National Vacant Property Campaign Advisory Committee as well as the Ohio Department of Development’s Strategic Planning Advisory Committee.

After practicing environmental law at a Washington, D.C. law firm, Lavea was a partner with a Cambridge, Massachusetts consulting firm advising Fortune 500 companies on brownfield redevelopment strategies. Since then, Lavea has dedicated her work to the non-profit and public sectors. While at the Department of Energy (DOE) in the Clinton Administration, she worked on redevelopment and community involvement strategies for decommissioned DOE sites. As director of Ohio work at the Delta Institute, Lavea worked with community leaders to promote local watershed and brownfield redevelopment projects.

Before returning to Ohio, Lavea was a Visiting Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and taught in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT in Cambridge, MA, where she developed, taught workshops and wrote about the role of community development organizations in brownfields development and neighborhood revitalization efforts. Lavea graduated from Harvard College and The University of Chicago Law School, and received a master’s in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Associate Director
Peg Grannis, Ph. D (pgrannis@greaterohio.org)
Peg recently joined the staff of Greater Ohio. As Associate Director she helps administer the Restoring Prosperity to Ohio Initiative, a multi-year effort to advance an urban and economic development policy agenda to revitalize Ohio's cities, towns and regions and prepare them for a 21st Century global economy. Peg has an extensive background in urban planning with experience working on a broad array of planning projects ranging from community development and economic development efforts to large-scale, state-wide planning initiatives.

Most recently, she served as Executive Director/Economic Development Director for a county-wide Community Improvement Corporation, a non-profit organization created to foster civic and economic development efforts throughout the county. Peg also served as Program Manager for OSC, a statewide research and education facility. While at OSC, she administered a long-term consulting contract with the Ohio Department of Administrative Services and participated in conducting statewide technology assessment for Ohio and other states. Peg has conducted a wide range of urban and community research products and has published articles related to urban design policy, programming and practice. She has taught urban planning and design courses in City and Regional Planning, as well as planning, programming and design courses in Natural Resources.

Project Coordinator
Ann Seller (aseller@greaterohio.org)
Ann Seller recently joined Greater Ohio as the Project Coordinator in efforts to reach out to and revitalize Ohio communities. She spent her childhood in Lima, Ohio where she graduated as valedictorian from Shawnee High School. From there she relocated to DePauw University earning her BA in Conflict Studies with a minor in Spanish. She then pursued her MSc in Global Politics at the London School of Economic and Political Science in order to expand her education into the international realm focusing her dissertation on the dynamic religious and economic relationships existent in Palestine.

Ann spent much of her education abroad living in both Argentina and in Spain for a semester while also embarking on a two-week educational trip to Senegal all in efforts to develop her knowledge of cultural practices and social structures present throughout the world. Upon completion of her education, Ann worked as an International Sales Manager at the Cincinnati engineering company, The Modal Shop, and then went on to work as a Field Manager for Environment Ohio. She is an alumna of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

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