Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Network

Building rural assets to build rural livelihoods

The Aspen Institute: Community Strategies Group

On this page:

Kelly Malone

John Molinaro

Janet Topolsky

The RDP Team

Contact us:
Kelly Malone, 202.736.5804
John Molinaro, 202.736.5856
Janet Topolsky, 202.736.5848

Kelly Malone

Kelly Malone is a Program Associate for the Aspen Institute's Community Strategies Group (CSG), where he is involved in just about every facet of CSG's work including program design and planning, grants management, and publications production. He is responsible for all the logistical arrangements necessary to convene CSG's various peer-learning events, and manages the day-to-day requirements for the program.

Prior to joining CSG in 1996, Kelly spent three years working with The Institute's Henry Crown Fellowship Program as a program associate where he was involved in helping to recruit new members and create the program curriculum for what was, at that time, a new, young executive program focused on values-based leadership. Prior to that, he worked in corporate relations in the Washington office of the multinational public relationship firm of Fleishman-Hillard, Inc. and later with the Marketing Department of the Associated Press where he worked in promoting AP's radio, television and wire services.

Kelly is originally from rural Indiana and is a graduate of Indiana University.

John Molinaro

As associate director of the Community Strategies Group, John Molinaro helps lead the program's efforts to build rural philanthropy, support the economic success of rural families, and develop more strategic ways to use public and private policy to build rural America. John formerly served as Vice President of West Central Initiative, a hybrid rural community foundation that also serves as a community development corporation in rural Minnesota. He also served as Executive Director of a nonprofit organization serving children and families, and as a metropolitan planner.

John holds a Masters in Community and Regional Planning from North Dakota State University and a Bachelor of Arts in writing from the University of Pittsburgh. John is a Certified Economic Development Planner and a Certified Housing Development Planner, and has served as a policy fellow at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. John has served as an appointee to the Minnesota Governor's Workforce Development Council, where he chaired the Systems Excellence Committee.

Janet Topolsky

Janet Topolsky is director of the Community Strategies Group (CSG) of the Aspen Institute. At CSG, Janet helps design or manage a host of learning initiatives for community practitioners and decisionmakers that address economic development, resource stewardship and community capacity building issues.

Sponsored by The Ford Foundation, RDPLN focuses on building the capacity of statewide and regional community foundations to do strategic grantmaking and endowment building that will enhance the economic security of low-income rural families and the vitality of the communities where they live. Besides having worked extensively with eight individual community foundations since 1993, Janet's recent work with community foundations has also included learning design and facilitation for the Africa Foundations Learning Group, a learning cluster of start-up indigenous local foundations from several African nations; the Social Capital Community Benchmark Initiative, a collaboration of 40 community and private foundations that funded a simultaneous "benchmark" measurement of social capital in their respective communities; and various program and strategic planning retreats for individual foundations or foundation alliances. In former work at CSG, Janet helped manage the Community Capacity Building Learning Cluster and worked with seasoned researchers and practitioners to develop written products on a range of rural development topics. While at CSG, Janet has also assisted the Assets Program of the Ford Foundation in designing and facilitating two of its bi-annual worldwide staff meetings.

Prior to joining REPP in 1993, Janet worked independently as a development policy analyst, writer and editor. Her clients included the Commission on the Future of the South, the U.S. Department of Labor, Jobs for the Future, the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, the Joyce Foundation, the Corporation for Enterprise Development, and the National Performance Review. From 1985-1990, she was director of communication for the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a national nonprofit research, consulting and demonstration firm focused on state and local economic and human investment innovation. At CFED, she managed the development of its groundbreaking annual Development Report Card for the States, edited the periodical The Entrepreneurial Economy Review, and helped in the early stage planning of pioneer Individual Development Account programs. In 1983-84, Janet served as special assistant to the director of the Michigan Department of Commerce; and in earlier years, she worked as a political organizer and youth advocate. She holds a B.A. from Michigan State University (1976) and a Master of Public Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan (1983).