Chair of the Board
Juanita Hardy has a passion for fostering healthy, thriving, and equitable places to live, work, learn and play through her work with individuals and businesses. Hardy has over 45 years of business experience, including 31 years with IBM, where she retired in 2005, and nine years in the real estate industry. She also has over 35 years in the arts as a nonprofit leader, trustee, and patron of the arts.
Hardy was Senior Visiting Fellow for Creative Placemaking for Urban Land Institute (2016-2018), a global non-profit committed to responsible land use. Since this position, she has served as an ULI consultant on creative placemaking and recently appointed as an equity advisor (June 2021).
Hardy held leadership positions with IBM that spanned software development, systems engineering, and management consulting. After retiring from IBM, Hardy founded Tiger Management Consulting Group, an executive coaching and business consulting services firm. Hardy’s client portfolio includes both for profit and non-profit organizations, including Right Management, a global human capital development firm, where she has served as an executive coach since 2006.
Hardy is the former Executive Director of CulturalDC (2013-2015), a nonprofit that provides space for artists and creative placemaking services for real estate developers. She co-founded Millennium Arts Salon, an art education initiative, in 2000. She has been an avid collector of fine art since 1985.
Hardy was recognized as a Minority Business Leader by the Washington Business Journal in 2010. She is an accomplished writer and public speaker. Her articles and essays have appeared in magazines and journals in the US and abroad. Her recent writing includes a pentalogy of articles on creative placemaking in Urban Land magazine. She is one of the authors of ULI’s 2020 Publication “Creative Placemaking – Sparking Development with Art and Culture.”
Hardy is a member of the ULI Placemaking Council and will serve on the leadership team for the 2021-2022 fiscal year. She is a member of the board of directors of the Mosaic Theatre Company based in Washington, DC and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation based in Baltimore, MD. Hardy received a BS degree in Mathematics from Livingstone College in Salisbury, NC (1973). She did graduate work in operations research at George Washington University in Washington, DC (1974-1975) and in business entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (2005-2006).