Shawn McLearen, Community Panelist

Shawn McLearen is a community real estate developer and consultant. As former Vice President of Real Estate Development for Artspace Projects, he spent a decade cultivating and administering over $100 million in public and private funds necessary to advance multi-policy, community development real estate projects in New York state. Partners, financing structures and regulatory requirements include private foundations, tax credit equity, state bonds, local / state / federal program funds, and community finance banking products.

Since that time he has co-founded Placeful, a non-profit community real estate development company with a mission to foster community space through socially responsible partnerships in finance, agriculture, education and the arts; and New York Hops & Grains (nyhopsandgrains.com) with a mission to bring Craft Beverage farming back to the Empire state. Previously, he co-founded Mixed Palate as a bi-lingual website that promotes sustainable food culture (mixedpalate.com); and Farm to Campfire as a platform to celebrate the produce and producers of the Hudson Valley (farmtocampfire.com). He is an Executive Committee member of the North East Foodshed Finance Alliance (foodshedfinance.org) and Food + Enterprise (foodandenterprise.com), and a Board Member of Slow Food NYC.