People of AMIBA
Founders and Co-directors
Board of Directors
Erin Kilmer Neel, Interim Chair
Program Officer, One PacificCoast Foundation
Board member, Oakland Grown
Oakland, California
Steve Bercu, Vice President / Treasurer
President, Austin Independent Business Alliance
Austin, Texas
Carla Jimenez, Secretary
Founding member and past president, Tampa IBA
Tampa, Florida
Amy Huerta
Local Business Initiatives Manager
City of Fresno, California
Dana Eness
Executive Director
Stay Local!
New Orleans, Louisiana
All board members are active in leading local alliances.
AMIBA Speakers and Workshop Facilitators
Lily Brislen
(founding director of Think Local Umpqua in Douglas County, OR)
Lexington, Kentucky
Franzi Charen
Director, Asheville Grown Business Alliance
Asheville, North Carolina
Advisory Board
David Bolduc
Co-founder, Boulder IBA
Boulder, Colorado
Betsy Burton,
Co-founder, Local First Utah
David C. Korten
People-Centered Development Forum
Bainbridge Island, Washington
Michael Kinsley
Senior Consultant, Communities & Campuses, Rocky Mountain Institute
Snowmass, Colorado
KayAnn Miller
Financial Advisor, First Security Financial Services
Bozeman, Montana
Stacy Mitchell
Senior Researcher, Institute for Local Self-Reliance
President, Portland Independent Business and Community Alliance (Maine)
Legal Advisor
Stu M. Levit
Bozeman, Montana
Biographies
Jennifer Rockne
Co-Director & Co-founder
Jennifer served as Outreach Director for the nation’s first Independent Business Alliance in Boulder, Colorado for two years before leaving to launch and direct AMIBA in 2001 to address national interest in the Boulder IBA’s successful work. Among her duties was advancing community dialogue on a controversial policy initiative to give citizens greatly increased power over local development, the Community Vitality Act.
As executive director of AMIBA, Jennifer maintains the operation of the organization and is the main contact for most of AMIBA’s community affiliates. She advises on various aspects of IBA operation, including developing relationships with local government officials toward bringing the IBA voice to the table of economic development discussion, strategies to prevent displacement of local businesses.
Jennifer received her BA degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and holds a Masters in Communication from the University of Colorado, where she augmented coursework with classes in non-profit management and public policy.
Jeff Milchen
Co-director and Co-founder
Jeff is an international leader in helping
communities build vital local economies
and enhancing economic opportunity through supporting local independent
businesses and preventing the displacement of local entrepreneurs.
Milchen co-founded the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA),
which helps communities to launch and successfully operate Independent
Business
Alliances. These Alliances work to strengthen and sustain
community-based
businesses while promoting citizen empowerment over community
development.
Milchen pioneered this organizing model, directing the Boulder Independent Business Alliance in CO, starting in 1998. Since 2001, AMIBA has helped seventy of these Alliances form in a diverse range of communities across the U.S. and Canada. AMIBA already has inspired similar organizations and influenced countless others in the growing localization movement.
Milchen's non-profit work followed many years of successfully operating his own start-up businesses. Prior to launching the Boulder IBA, he served as the director of ReclaimDemocracy.org. Milchen's commentaries and articles have appeared in a wide range of publications including The Chicago Tribune, Business Week, The Ecologist, Adbusters, and Inc. Magazine. Milchen is an avid outdoorsman and spends much of his free time in the mountains surrounding Bozeman, MT.
Erin Kilmer Neel
Interim Board Chair
Erin is passionate about supporting local independent businesses and artists since these groups greatly improve the economic health and quality of life of our communities. To that end, she co-founded Oakland Unwrapped!, is the co-Chair of the Board of the Oakland Merchant Leadership Forum (OMLF) and chairs the organization development group for AMIBA's board. She is also a program officer for the One PacificCoast Foundation.
Erin is a graduate of MIT's Master of City Planning program, where she worked with several community development and economic development corporations and developed neighborhood revitalization plans, performed neighborhood economic analyses, conducted research on various community economic development topics, and used AMIBA as a focus of her Masters thesis.
Steve Bercu
Vice President / Treasurer
Steve is co-owner of Austin, Texas, mainstay BookPeople and co-founder and president of the influential Austin IBA. He had spent several decades as a lawyer before investing in BookPeople and ultimately took over the store's management.
Bercu has been an ardent advocate of independent businesses organizing. "I'm extremely interested in the idea that our independence is what distinguishes us from our competition online and off...This is where my business and personal interests intersect."
Carla Jimenez
Secretary
Carla received her BA from Colgate University and JD from Boston University School of Law, and practiced labor and employment law in the University of South Florida's Office of the General Counsel before opening Inkwood Books in Tampa, Florida in 1991. She founded the Tampa Independent Business Alliance in 2003. Community involvement includes participation in the Survivors Teaching Students program of the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance.
Amy Huerta
Fresno native Amy Huerta currently is the Local Business
Initiatives Manager for the City of Fresno where she oversees the City’s
economic development program, based on strategic initiatives to help grow
locally-owned businesses.
During her tenure, Huerta launched the Fresno Regional Independent Business Alliance (operates independently). She also launched and manages the Fresno Food Expo, a regional food show that advances the City's economic development strategy of expanding markets for regional farmers and producers. The Expo provides a platform to exhibit products toa variety of buyers from restaurants, foodservice distributors, government agencies and hospitality venues.
Huerta is a graduate of Leadership Fresno and was a 2010 “40 under 40” recipient. She is past President for La Visionaria Guild, a fundraising arm for the Central Valley Children’s Hospital, and is current President of the Center for Multicultural Cooperation, an after-school technology and media program for kids in underserved neighborhoods. Huerta received her bachelor degree at UCLA and a Masters in Public Administration from Cal State-Fresno.
Dana Eness
Dana Eness was a founding board member of Stay Local!, dedicated to creating a robust New Orleans economy based on strong locally-owned businesses, in 2003 and serves as Executive Director. She also directs The Urban Conservancy, Stay Local’s parent organization. Since receiving her MA in Latin American Studies from Tulane University, Dana worked in non-profit administration, programming, community development and systems building while developing and managing cross-cultural and literacy programs abroad, at Tulane University, and for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Following Hurricane Katrina, Dana took the reins of The Urban Conservancy to address issues related to New Orleans’ sustainable recovery.
Other AMIBA Speakers / Facilitators
Lily Brislen
Founding Director, Think Local Umpqua
Lily Brislen is the founding director of Think Local Umpqua in Douglas County, Oregon, one of the most successful smaller-town Independent Business Alliances. Lily generates rave reviews for making her presentations and workshops memorably fun as well as informative and productive. She has written for rural development groups on many aspects of localization and entrepreneurial development. Lily now resides in Lexington, KY, where she is completing a Master's degree at the University of Kentucky, focused on community development.
Franzi Charen
Director, Asheville Grown Business Alliance
Franzi Charen has been an independent business owner in Asheville, North Carolina for 10 years and co-owns Hip Replacements clothing store. From manufacturing, retail, festival and non-profit work, she is well versed in the diversity needed for a community to thrive. As founder and director of the Asheville Grown Business Alliance she assembled a team that promotes the independent spirit of Asheville through design, social networking and public events. Under her leadership, Asheville's alliance has created a remarkable level of community-wide awareness and engagement.
