Cynthia Gentry, Living Playgrounds
25 years ago, I left a job at an international consulting firm to paint rainforest murals in a children’s hospital in Atlanta, in Sarajevo right after the war, at Camp Twin Lakes in Rutledge, GA, and many other places. I never looked back. Seeing the profound effect that play, nature, and beauty have on a child’s life has led to a career of designing and building nature-based play environments for children at Living Playgrounds.
Since 2011, I have advocated for the child’s right to play by serving on the Executive Board of the International Play Association (IPAworld.org). Through my work with IPA I serve as Editor of PlayRights Magazine, which is distributed to our membership all over the globe. Before Living Playgrounds, I founded Play Atlanta (formerly the Atlanta Taskforce on Play) and led the City of Atlanta to apply for and win Playable City USA status with KaBOOM!.
Sustaining my devotion to the cause of play in nature and children’s rights over the years has become only easier with the addition of five miraculous grandchildren to my life. I grew up in Atlanta and now live outside of town in the midst of an out-of-control garden with my husband, super dog, and a slew of hummingbirds and other creatures.
Our Collaborators
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Mario Cambardella - ServeScape
A landscape architect and former urban agriculture director of Atlanta, Mario built ServeScape to disrupt the garden store industry by providing a larger selection of locally-grown plants delivered to individuals, commercial, and public sites.
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Tiffini Euguene Jones, Ph.D.
A long-time professional and student in the area of sustainability, Tiffini is an Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Kennesaw State University. Her area of focus for her Ph.D. was curriculum development for Sustainability Science and STEAMS: Science, Technology, Engineering, Liberal Arts, Mathematics, and Sustainability.
A graduate of Spelman College, Tiffini is devoted to the Atlanta community and an exciting addition to the Living Playgrounds Collective. She is the justifiably proud mother of three extraordinary sons: one just graduated from Harvard (where he was Captain of the football team), one is now a Morehouse Man, and the third is forging his own path still in high school.
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Jodi Lox Mansbach - Play Lark
Urban planner, art historian, developer, sustainability director, nonprofit and communications professional, my natural curiosity and fearlessness have led me back to the playground where it all started. I led the team that designed and built Skyline Park on the roof of Ponce City Market with a 3-story slide built into the iconic PCM sign and opened Atlanta City Studio, the City of Atlanta's first pop-up urban design center incubating new ideas about the design of the City and engaging the community in the process.
A New Jersey native, I've lived in Atlanta for the past 25+ years after living in Chicago and Washington DC. I love to travel, grow dahlias and look for mushrooms as well as spend time with my family (husband, three now-adult kids and a dog) in the north Georgia mountains.
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Allen Peterson
Allen has been making outdoor public sculpture, commissions, and other artwork for decades. His work is in various collections, including Fulton County Public Arts, the Nature Conservancy, and The Savannah College of Art and Design.
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Brian Pound
With 25 years of experience in the playground industry, Brian has built one-of-a-kind play structures all over the Southeastern US. He's driven by the creative element and the joy that he knows play brings to kids.