Revitalization & Business Initiative

sub·scrip·tion [suhb-skrip-shuhn]
Conference Keynote Speakers
Dan Gilbert, Founder and Chairman, Quicken Loans

As Founder and Chairman of Detroit-based Quicken Loans and its family of more than 40 companies, Dan Gilbert will discuss his commitment to making downtown Detroit a vibrant urban core where young professionals live, work, and play. Dan is also majority owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.

Quicken Loans Inc. is the nation’s largest online lender and a top-five retail home lender in the United States. Quicken Loans closed a company-record $29 billion of home loan volume in 2010. The company, which employs more than 5,000 people nationally, was named highest in customer satisfaction among all home loan lenders in the United States in a benchmark study by J.D. Power and Associates for 2010 and 2011. Quicken Loans is also regularly recognized among the best places to work by Fortune, the Detroit Free Press, and Computerworld Magazine.

The company moved 1,700 team members into Detroit’s Compuware building in 2010, followed by 2,000 more creative thinkers who moved into the Chase Building in fall 2011. By early 2012, more than 4,000 Quicken Loans team members will work in downtown Detroit. Dan also serves as Vice Chairman of the non-profit, M-1 RAIL initiative, formed to lead the vision and implementation of light-rail transportation in downtown Detroit.

Robert C. Paul, Chief Executive Officer, Compuware Corporation

As Chief Executive Officer of Compuware, Bob Paul is the strategic leader of all company operations, with a focus on delivering continued profitable growth. He is also a member of the company’s Board of Directors.

Bob joined the company in 2004 through its acquisition of Covisint and was most recently Compuware’s President and Chief Operating Officer. In this role, he led the company’s products and services operations, as well as a number of other key operational, strategy, and marketing functions. Through a successful strategic plan, a significant reengineering of operations, and key divestitures and acquisitions, Compuware has returned to a position of growth, leading the company to a top-ten tech stock performance in 2011.

Bob has also served as CEO of Covisint, a provider of SaaS-based collaboration solutions. Prior to his Covisint days, Bob's experiences include serving as the President of Future 3, a provider of supply chain management procurement applications for the auto industry. Bob was also President and COO of Coherent Networks, Incorporated (CNI).

In addition to his dedication to Compuware, Bob is an active industry citizen. He speaks on IT and healthcare trends at business schools and industry events all over the world and chairs a number of charity programs in the region. Bob also sits on the Governor of Michigan’s Healthcare IT commission.

In the past year, Dan’s downtown Detroit real estate investments have included the Madison Theatre, Chase, Dime and First National buildings, among others—all part of his “Detroit 2.0” initiative—a commitment to making downtown Detroit a high-tech entrepreneurial hub along “WEBward” Avenue.

Toby Barlow, Chief Creative Officer, Team Detroit and Global Creative Director, Ford Motor Company

After graduating from the Great Books program at St. John's College in Santa, Fe, NM, Toby began his career at Hal Riney & Partners in San Francisco. Since then he has worked on accounts as varied as Absolut Vodka, Barnes & Noble, The Sundance Channel, Debeers Diamonds, Kleenex, Doctors Without Borders, and See's Candies.

He created the award winning animated film series Billy Collins Action Poet (bcactionpoet.org) and The Plimpton Project (plimptonproject.org.) His 2008 novel, Sharp Teeth, was featured on NPR's Weekend Edition and was also rated one of the top 20 LA noir stories by the LA Times and won the prestigious Alex Award.

He has written for The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and the literary journals N+1 and Gargoyle. Detroit's Metro Times newspaper once named him "Best Candidate for Intergalactic Ambassador of Detroit" and in 2009 Real Detroit named him one of the top 100 reasons to love Detroit.

He lives in downtown Detroit and suggests you do the same.

Tony Goldman, Chief Executive Officer, Goldman Properties

For forty years, Tony Goldman has been recognizing the value in depressed, undervalued urban areas, reconstructing and transforming declining historic districts into popular, thriving global destinations. Goldman has been recognized as the driving force behind the transformations of the Upper West Side, the Wall Street Financial District and Soho in New York City, Center City in Philadelphia, and South Beach in Miami Beach. The New York Times dubbed Goldman “the granddaddy of South Beach, who time and again is credited with recognizing the potential in the crumbling pastel treasures of Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue.”

His most recent undertaking is the transformation of the warehouse district in Wynwood, Miami’s emerging arts district. Acquiring 25 properties in Wynwood, Goldman is overseeing a master plan to create an artistically driven, tasteful, and architecturally exciting pedestrian neighborhood.

Goldman’s uncanny instinct for recognizing urban trends goes hand in hand with a creative approach to revitalizing down trodden neighborhoods. The synergy of this multifaceted approach has become his hallmark. He translates the pioneer’s excitement of discovery into sound financial investments, while respecting, enhancing and embellishing the historic architecture and cultural roots of all the districts he undertakes. Together with daughter Jessica Goldman Srebnick and son Joey, the three Goldmans are the family principals of the innovative company.

He is the founder and chairman of Miami Beach’s Ocean Drive Association and a member of the National Board of Trustees of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, as well as a past two-term chairman of both the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Historic Hotels of America. He recently received the Louise Du Pont Crowninshield Award, the highest accolade bestowed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation

Annis N. Brown, Executive Director, Teach for America-Detroit

Annis N. Brown is a native Detroiter and a graduate of Detroit Public Schools.  She attended Michigan State University as an undergraduate majoring in education.  After graduating, she joined Teach For America and taught seventh and eighth grade English Language Arts and Social studies in the South Bronx.  While teaching, she earned a Master’s in curriculum and teaching from Fordham University.

She then went on to work for The New Teacher Project as part of their teacher training and support team for the New York City Teaching Fellows. Following her time in New York, Annis returned to Michigan to enroll in a doctoral program in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy at Michigan State University. In addition to conducting research on the achievement gap, she taught undergraduate courses at MSU and supervised student teachers in the field.

Currently serving as the founding Executive Director of Teach for America Detroit, Annis leads a team of 17 staff members who support nearly 200 TFA teachers in over 50 schools across Metro Detroit with an annual operating budget of approximately $5 million. Her work in Detroit also includes the Future Teachers for Social Justice program, which serves high school students from over twenty Detroit Public Schools, and the Skillman ‘Good Schools’ initiative.