Top
About Strong Towns

Strong Towns is a
non-profit, non-partisan organization that helps America's towns achieve financial strength and resiliency.

We travel the nation and the digisphere to promote a complete understanding of the costs that are associa­ted with our communities' methods of growth, and we advocate to address those costs via productive changes in our pattern of development.

Search this Site

Board of Directors

We are very proud of our volunteer Board of Directors, some very special people who are devoting a significant amount of their time and resources each month to building Strong Towns.

President, Faith Cable Kumon, AICP.

Cable Kumon brings rich experience in strategic partnerships, urban design, community planning, and private development to the Strong Towns board.  Faith is a Partnership Manager at Smith Partners, serving four public-private partnerships in the Minneapolis area focused on neighborhood improvements and future transit projects.   She spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Berlin, Germany, completing an international comparison of sustainable neighborhood rating systems and learning about a different way to build cities.  Faith is active in the Congress for New Urbanism, the Urban Land Institute, the American Planning Association, and the U.S. Green Building Council. She has a Master’s degree in Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a B. A. in Architecture from the University of Minnesota. Faith lives in south Minneapolis with her husband, Jim.

Vice-President, Ryan Kelley, CNU-A; urban planner.

Kelley is currently a land use planner at Hennepin County working on policy development with Hennepin County communities. He previously interned in the City of St. Paul's Department of Planning and Economic Development managing projects on a range of zoning and planning topics. Prior to his graduate studies he was a consultant for the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts and a program officer with ServeMinnesota. In addition to board service with Strong Towns he serves on the Fulton Neighborhood Association Board and the organizing committee of New Urbanism Minnesota. He resides in Minneapolis with his wife and two Miniature Schnauzers.

Treasurer/Secretary, George Orning, retired.

Formerly with the University of Minnesota, Department of Natural Resources, Legislative Staff, Legislative Commission on Minnesota’s Resources, Widseth Smith Nolting and other positions throughout a long and distinguished career. Orning has recently served on the boards of Minnesota Waters and 1000 Friends of Minnesota.