Larger Landscape Conversation: Place-Based Philanthropy

Rip Rapson is president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation, a private, national foundation founded in 1924, which is dedicated to expanding opportunities in America’s cities through grantmaking and social investing. Since his appointment in 2006, Rapson has led the foundation to improve the economic, social, cultural, and environmental conditions of urban life through investment in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services, and community development in Kresge’s hometown of Detroit. Using a full array of grant, loan and other investment tools, Kresge invests more than $160 million annually to foster economic and social change. Nationally, Rapson has strengthened the philanthropic sector’s role through convening, collaborating, and supplementing community development activities in cities across the country. A veteran of urban policy and philanthropic leadership, Rapson began his career as a legislative assistant to U.S. Rep. Don Fraser, where he oversaw development and passage of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act of 1978. Rapson served as the deputy mayor of Minneapolis from 1989 to 1993 and was the primary architect of its neighborhood revitalization program, a 20-year, $400 million effort to strengthen the city’s neighborhoods. In 2025, he published Drawn to Challenge: Stories of Creative Leadership in the Public Interest (with Doodles), a collection of real-world stories that explores how principled leadership can spark innovation, preserve communities, and drive meaningful change across shifting challenges of contemporary civic life. 

Kira Strong is the Senior Program Director of the High Line Network. The Network’s mission is to support a community of 46 infrastructure reuse projects across North America in creating transformational and inclusive public spaces. The Network explores how to create a world where people have access to vibrant public spaces that center local communities, build civic connections, support environmental resilience, and foster equitable community development. Previously she served as the Executive Director for the City of Philadelphia’s Rebuild Initiative, a historic investment of over $600 million to improve parks, recreation centers and libraries across the City, and as the Vice President of Community and Economic Development for the People’s Emergency Center, a non-profit community development corporation in Philadelphia. She has been honored with the City & State PA 2024 Above & Beyond award, and as a 40 Under 40 by The Philadelphia Business Journal.
 

Kristy Edmunds is the Director of MASS MoCA. Throughout her career, she has prioritized creating conditions for people to thrive and grow. Since taking the helm at MASS MoCA, she has made catalytic shifts in programming, led an inclusive, strategic planning process that culminated in a seven-year vision for the museum’s next phase of evolution and sustainability, and attracted significant funding for new initiatives. Prior to MASS MoCA, from 2012 to 2021, Edmunds was the executive and artistic director of UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance in Los Angeles, where she transformed the organization into one of the nation’s most innovative platforms for producing and presenting contemporary performing art. Before that, she served as the inaugural artistic director for the now critically heralded Park Avenue Armory in New York, from 2009 to 2012. Edmunds was bestowed with the honor of Chevalier (Knight) de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 2016 and was the inaugural recipient of the Berresford Prize from United States Artists in 2019.

Charles Waldheim is an American Canadian architect and urbanist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Waldheim’s research examines the relationships between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. Waldheim is author, editor, and co-editor of numerous publications on these topics, including Landscape as Urbanism: A General Theory and The Landscape Urbanism Reader. Waldheim developed the theory of landscape urbanism in response to the industrial economies and emergent ecologies of the American city. On this topic, he curates Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Future of the American City initiative.\

Waldheim is John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he directs the school’s Office for Urbanization. He also serves as Ruettgers Curator of Landscape at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where he convenes the Larger Landscape Conversation. Waldheim is recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, the Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Sanders Fellowship at the University of Michigan, and the Cullinan Chair at Rice University. He has been visiting scholar at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany.