Jackie Carrera, President & CEO
Jackie Carrera is an advocate for strong communities with a focus on parks, recreation and urban environmental issues. Ms. Carrera has extensive experience working with volunteers, community planning, developing and administering programs and fundraising. Ms. Carrera currently serves as the President & CEO of the Parks & People Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Baltimore, MD where she has been instrumental in the development of a 15-mile urban greenway, community forestry and watershed restoration programs, and numerous youth sports and camp programs which continue to be integral to the revitalization efforts of some of the city’s most underserved communities. She served as the chair of Revitalizing Baltimore, a US Forest Service urban and community forestry project and is a co-principal investigator for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, a National Science Foundation-funded, long term ecological research project. Currently, she is working on the development of a green career ladder that includes environmental education and job training programs for Baltimore’s youth, and an extensive 9-acre park restoration project in Baltimore’s crown jewel, Druid Hill Park. Early in her career, she was a community organizer for Maryland Save Our Streams and worked in a soup kitchen and community outreach center in Colorado.
Ms. Carrera serves as a board member or appointee of local and state-wide organizations including: 1000 Friends of Maryland, Baltimore City Heritage Area, Baltimore Chesapeake Bay Outward Bound and the Greater Mondawmin Coordinating Council. She was a founding member of the City Parks Alliance where she served on the board until 2011 and was co-chair for Governor O’Malley’s Partnership for Children in Nature’s Community and Public Lands Working Group. Most recently, she represented the Chesapeake region in preparing for the Obama Administration’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative and the Urban Waters Initiative. She served on a national task force initiated by the US Forest Service, Vibrant Cities and Urban Forests: A National Call for to Action. Ms. Carrera was voted one of the Daily Record’s Maryland’s Top 100 Women and 100 Most Influential Marylanders by The Maryland Daily Record and was named the 2008 University of Baltimore Distinguished Social Entrepreneur. Ms. Carrera is a graduate of the Greater Baltimore Committee Leadership Program and the Weinberg Fellows Program. She earned a BA, Business Administration degree in Finance from Loyola College in Maryland.