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Dan Jones

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Dan holds degrees from Yale University (B.A., M.F.) and Indiana University, Bloomington (Ph.D.). He spent the first half of his working life in the fields of education and business management. In addition to founding and managing his own business, he taught World History and the History of the American West at the University of Louisville, and a series of Honors Seminar that ranged from “The American West through Film, Literature and Art,” “The Park and the City,” “Winter Botany in The Parklands of Floyds Fork, and “The World of 2050.”  In 2004, he founded 21st Century Parks, Inc. a nonprofit corporation created to bring fresh vision to the development and preservation of new public parklands. Their current project, The Parklands of Floyds Fork, is one of the largest new metropolitan parks projects in the country: a visitor-and-donor supported public park system in the last major undeveloped section of Metro Louisville.  Today, The Parklands spans over 4000 acres and has hosted over 36,000,000 visits since 2011. Dan is now the retired CEO of The Parklands, but continues to serve as Board Chair, where he supports fundraising, planning, design, construction, and operations of the new parks. He is married, with four children, and enjoys hiking, skiing, running, reading, and most recently, birdwatching!