Cornell Carney
Cornell Carney is a 17, soon to be 18, years old African American young man who has been doing amazing things in his community. He is the President of his school's Student Government Association; the Editor-in-chief of his school's newspaper; a founding member of the Greater New Orleans Youth Leadership Council; a founding member of the Young Planners Network; he participated in the CNN/Spike Lee documentary entitled "Children of the Storm" and he is a youth leader for the Katrina Leadership Project. Recently, Cornell has participated and presented at the national conferences of the Planners Network, National League of Cities, PolicyLink, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After graduating from O. Perry Walker High School, Cornell will attend Tulane University in New Orleans where he plans to major in Political Science and Public Policy. It is Cornell's dream to become a public servant. Consistent with that dream, he wants to eventually run for Mayor of New Orleans and maybe even Governor of the State of Louisiana. Cornell's favorite proverb is "Without a vision, the people shall perish."
Roger Hart
Professor Roger Hart has been Co-Director of the Children's Environments Research Group (CERG) at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York for the past 20 years. CERG has two major overlapping strands of work. The first is a focus on the planning, design and management of children's physical environments. The second is a broader concern with fulfilling the rights of children, sometimes without a specific focus on the physical environment. As a result, he increasingly collaborates with international children's agencies, in particular UNICEF and the Save the Children Alliance in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Dr. Hart's recent books include Children's Participation and Cities for Children for UNICEF and Play Gardens for the Design Trust for Public Space. Translations of his work have appeared in Japan, Thailand, China, Turkey, Spain, Italy and France.
Dr. Hart has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the Ecole d'Archtiecture, Universite de Montreal. Dr. Hart is also a pilot and aerial photographer. He used these skills in researching the use of aerial photographs in elementary school education while studying at the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.