KEY STAFF

Stephen W. Coleman, President
Steve Coleman has led Washington Parks & People’s award-winning work since it began as a volunteer neighborhood park crime patrol in 1990. In 25 years of non-profit service, he has been a vice president for development and director of research for a national business association working to reverse the arms race, program director of an international environmental advocacy network founded by Ted Turner, staff officer for a national foundation, a fundraising consultant for environmental media initiatives, a lobbyist with the American Friends Service Committee, and an intern reporter for Public Broadcasting’s MacNeil/ Lehrer Report. Steve has been an elected officer of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, Washington Innercity Self Help (WISH), the Reed-Cooke Neighborhood Association, and the city-wide Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners Assembly. An inspiring speaker and consultant on urban park revitalization, Steve has appeared in media stories about the urban parks movement across the U.S. and abroad. His recent writings about city parks have appeared in Places: A Journal of Environmental Design, and Urban Parks Online. Steve is a Trustee of the City Parks Alliance, has served on the faculty of the American Planning Association’s City Parks Forum and the Urban Open Space Leadership Institute, and appeared as a keynote speaker at Great Parks/ Great Cities Conferences in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Portland (Oregon), London, and Barcelona. Born in India, Steve has lived in Adams Morgan for 22 years.

Behnam Mehrabkhani, Maintenance Chief
Behnam Mehrabkhani has helped train and coordinate thousands of Parks & People volunteers helping in all aspects of park and landscape revitalization and building restoration and construction. He came to Parks & People in 2001 as a refugee from Iran, helping to assist the award-winning exterior restoration of the Josephine Butler Parks Center before he could speak more than a few words of English. Prior to coming to the United States, Behnam supervised a staff of 18 machinists in a Teheran factory and worked as a welder in Turkey. He is fluent in Persian and Turkish.

Garry Meus, Project Director, Planning & Design
Garry serves as an urban designer, landscape architect, and urban planner on WPP’s numerous park plan developments throughout the city.  Garry received his undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture from the Faculty of Design at the University of Montreal, and a Master degree from the Department of Planning and Urban Studies (PLUS) at the University of New Orleans in Louisiana. As part of the URBANA exchange program, he also received an honorable degree from the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico for his research on the effects of urban expansion in North American central cities. His professional experience scales from graphic design, site planning, coordination of urban revitalization projects, and mixed use residential and commercial land development projects. Garry also serves as Adjunct Professor of Advanced Graphics & GIS Workshop for the School of Architecture and Planning at Morgan State University's Graduate Landscape Architecture Program.  He has served as a landscape project manager on numerous projects nationwide and has designed urban landscape projects in St. Louis, New Orleans, Montreal, Baltimore, and Washington, DC.

Kenneth Barbour, Park Assistant
A lifelong DC resident, Kenny assists all aspects of maintenance and improvements at Marvin Gaye Park and the Riverside Center.

Roža Oblak, Program Coordinator
Roža led Parks & People's arts, music, dance, youth, health, and wellness programming for five years. Trained in art therapy and early childhood education, Roža created the event management system for Parks & People's Josephine Butler Parks Center, assisting hundreds of non-profit organizations in using this "greenhouse" for rebuilding innercity Washington. Working in several hospitals, including George Washington University and Howard University, she has practiced and helped develop therapy and wellness programs for patients facing cancer, heart problems, HIV, sickle cell anemia, burn trauma, and mental health needs. Roža is a certified Reiki Master with a private therapy practice in art, flower essence, and reiki. A native of Slovenia, she is fluent in Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and European Sign Language.

Brian Rodgers, Riverside Community Greening & Training
A trained master gardener and six-year veteran of Johnson's Florist and Garden Center, Brian was one of the 2001 co-founders of the Down by the Riverside Campaign and Watts Branch Community Alliance. Brian is a lifelong resident of Ward 7 and has been a leading advocate for community greening east of the River. He is a graduate of Denison University with additional experience in youth development.

Autumn Saxton-Ross, PhD, Assistant Director for Health in Parks
Autumn leads the Heart & Soul program in parks east of the River, based at Parks & People's Riverside Center.  She is responsible for leading park-based health and fitness programming, improvements, health impact research, and policy advocacy.  Autumn completed her  Ph.D. in  Sociology from Howard University, and focused her research on health disparities in African American populations, physical activity and urban communities. Autumn is an experienced recreation and health educator, having served in the parks departments of both the District of Columbia and Montgomery County, as well as being a former Physical Education and Health teacher for DC Public Schools.  Originally from Kansas City, MO, she has lived in DC for 15 years and is a resident of LeDroit Park.  She is active in the National Recreation and Park Association and a volunteer coach for Girls on the Run in Far Northeast Washington, where she previously  taught at Drew Elementary School. 

Ian Tyndall, Director of Planning and Design
Charged with heading the planning and design for DC’s longest city park, Ian Tyndall is an experienced and respected landscape architect, planner, and urban designer, having planned parks and public spaces in cities across the United States and the world including Edinburgh, Paris, and Taiwan. His master plans and landscape designs include the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art, the Goddard Space Flight Center, and DC’s Marvin Gaye Park. He began his career with the Office of Dan Kiley, a landscape architect with a national and international clientele, which became Kiley/Tyndall/Walker. He later formed his own firm, Ian Tyndall Landscape and Urban Design, with an emphasis on international projects, and then launched the firm of Symbiosis. In 2000, Ian developed the master plan for the Botanical Park of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Taiwan. This 11-hectare urban botanical park is in the center of Taiwan’s third largest city. It features landscapes from seven distinctive ecosystems of Taiwan, a 36-meter-high greenhouse, public parking, and an office building.

Ian’s interests are in places suffused with a calm and generous spirit, where natural resources are conserved and celebrated. A 15-year resident of Washington, Ian has been a Visiting Critic at many universities in the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland and earlier was an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Ian received his Masters of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and his DA in Architecture from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in his native Scotland.