Marco F. Cocito-Monoc, Ph. D.

GNOF’s regional initiatives are overseen by Marco Cocito-Monoc, who has been working in this capacity since the summer of 2007. Marco has extensive experience in community revitalization and economic development, having been executive director of Baltimore’s Southeast Community Development Corporation for four years and, prior to that, having led economic development initiatives at the municipal and regional levels. While in Baltimore, Marco created the largest bi-lingual, HUD-certified housing counseling program in Maryland, led a Healthy Neighborhoods revitalization program that succeeded in organizing and improving over 350 blocks in diverse sections of the city, led a commercial corridor revitalization initiative, and was part of a state-wide philanthropic and non-profit consortium that created a flexible refinancing system for homeowners who had been victimized by sub-prime lenders and were in danger of losing their homes.

Prior his time in Maryland, Marco was director of economic development for the City of Covington, Louisiana. In that capacity, he championed smart growth and mixed income housing by working to shore up housing quality and demand in various “neighborhoods in the middle” and by making the revitalization of that city’s historic downtown a departmental priority (which bore fruit in the form of 90 net businesses gained therein). He also helped launch Covington’s ambitious, nation-wide branding and marketing campaign, while working to promote its creative economy. A great proponent of developing Covington’s role within the wider metropolitan area, Marco was an active member of the New Orleans Regional Planning Commission, helping that entity to craft the Crescent City’s first urban Main Streets program.

Marco’s background in economic and community development was enriched by earlier work in Hammond and Houma, Louisiana, where he directed the former’s Downtown Development District and the latter’s Main Street program.

Marco earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in political science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and his doctorate in history from the University of Cambridge in England, where he was also a research and teaching fellow at Magdalene College. In 2006, he completed a course in “Outcome Measurement for the Effective Management of Non-Profit Organizations” at the Harvard Business School. In 2008, he was named a Hull Fellow by the Southeastern Council of Foundations. He has spoken extensively on issues related to community development, has published numerous articles and has translated the works of the renowned contemporary philosopher, Luce Irigaray.