Date: Tuesday, October 17 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Location: Piedmont Park, Visitors Center
TopicPark Pride: Engaging Communities to Activate the Power of Parks
Speaker: Park Pride Executive Director Michael Halicki

Park Pride is increasingly gaining recognition as a leading city parks organization that is at the forefront of the urban parks movement in the United States. Through advocacy, volunteerism and capital improvements, Park Pride is helping communities leverage the power of parks in neighborhoods throughout the City of Atlanta and DeKalb County. Michael Halicki, Park Pride’s executive director, will share Park Pride’s story and ways parks and greenspace contribute to our vision for healthy, vibrant cities (i.e., parks were described by early park advocates as “the lungs of a city”).

The LAI Blog post, LAI Atlanta Fall Meeting, provides meeting notes.

In addition to the meeting notes, The IMPACT Blog article, The Power of Parks, chronicles the history of public parks, the substantial value of parks on many levels, ParkScore park rankings, and Park Pride’s impressive work supporting parks in Atlanta and Dekalb County.  The LAI Atlanta Fall meeting is featured along with an LAI overview; the Elemental Impact FB album, Lambda Alpha International, includes a pictorial recap of the fall meeting.

Michael Halicki is the Executive Director of Park Pride, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that engages communities to activate the power of parks. Working with over 100 Friends of the Park groups, Park Pride provides the leadership and services that help communities realize their dreams for neighborhood parks. As Executive Director, Halicki leads the management of staff and programs, board support, fundraising, public relations, and program development. He comes to Park Pride from Southface, a non-profit supporting green building and sustainable design, where he served as the organization’s first chief operating officer. Prior to Southface, Halicki held senior leadership roles for two well-known Georgia-based environmental nonprofits, the Clean Air Campaign and the Georgia Conservancy, and worked as a senior consultant at Ahmann, a public policy communications firm. He also serves as vice chair of the board of directors for EarthShare of Georgia.