Taylor Burciaga grew up in Toledo and attended Bowling Green State University where she earned a Bachelors degree in interpersonal communication and public relations. Growing up Mexican American, her parents strongly emphasized involvement in their community through volunteering and participating in community activities and events. After college, Taylor returned to the Toledo area where she worked in the nonprofit sector. At that point she was appointed to the Toledo City Council, both the youngest female and the youngest Latino to hold a seat on City Council in Toledo's history. Eventually she decided her passion was to focus on doing good things for the community rather than politicking. 

Mercy Montgomery is a John C. Engle Local Government Fellow at the City of Hamilton, Ohio. There she does a little of everything: grant writing, community outreach, economic development. It is an 11 month position designated for young professionals who just graduated with a master's degree that gives them a full, well-rounded experience of working for the city and enables them to figure out which areas they enjoy the most and are the most skilled at. The majority tend to stay on an transition into full time positions. This helps drive young professionals to the area and gets them involved. The fellowship also includes housing and Mercy lives right in downtown Hamilton, just a five-minute walk from her office.

Sarah Jane Smith has lived in Cincinnati for 11 years. She majored in Strategic Communications at Miami University. She now works as a recruiter at Insight Global.

Lauren Wiant grew up on the east side of Cleveland and attended Miami University, where she was an English major with a business and Spanish minor. After school she got into real estate services and property management through a family connection, and is now in charge of marketing, programming and events at Cumberland Development, which oversees projects like the 5^th Street Arcades, two historic arcades in the center of downtown Cleveland that were previously underutilized and underprogrammed. 

Amanda Jenne grew up in Berea then left for Columbus and attended Ohio State University where she graduated with a degree in psychology. She now lives in Elyria and is currently a behavioral health technician and the Cleveland Clinic, and also is the Program Assistant at Engage! Cleveland, an organization that works to attract and retain young professionals to the Cleveland area.

Eric DeVries grew up in Indiana and attended the University of Evansville in southern Indiana where he studied marketing and finance. His wife was from Perrysburg, which is what brought him to the area. He now works as a Sales Advisory Consultant for Wells Fargo.

Lorilyn Shandor was born and raised in Youngstown. She attended Youngstown State University and earned a Bachelor's in Business Administration with concentration in nonprofit business management, then went on to earn her MBA in Marketing from Youngstown also. She is now the Gift Planning and Campaign Director at the OPRS Foundation, in addition to being president of the Mahoning Valley Young Professionals organization.

Chelsea Koglmeier grew up in Cincinnati. She studied public policy at Duke University with an emphasis on documentary studies (including film and photography). She spent time living in Philadelphia, North Carolina, and Uganda. She lived on an island, worked on a beach, and helped start a nonprofit in Durham, NC. In all that time she never really returned home for an extended period of time aside from the occasional weekend or holiday. It was that nonprofit in Durham which spurred her return to Cincinnati.

Eric Smer was born and raised in Canton and never left. He attended Kent State University for marketing and business management and has traveled everywhere but, he says, he's a "Stark County lifer."

Jon Harmon grew up in Orange County and moved to Cincinnati to attend the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and also earned an MBA. "I pretty quickly fell in love and got involved," he says. He now works a Legislative Director at the Office of Councilmember Seelbach, the city's first openly gay council member.

Taryn Gress grew up in Boston and went to college at Wooster in Ohio then graduate school at Case Western, where she got a Masters of Science in Social Administration. She worked at Civic Commons for a year and now works at Case Western as the Project Coordinator on the National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities at the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development, which focuses on mixed-income development. She now lives in Parma, a suburb of Cleveland.

Shanon Potts is the Assistant City Attorney for the City of Dayton. Born and raised in Ohio, she jokes that she's "always been a Buckeye girl." She was a PR and communications major at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, then attended law school at Capital University. Though an Ohio native, she had never lived in a downtown area before; now she both lives and works downtown and doesn't even need to drive her car to work. "I grew up in a town surrounded by farms," she says. "I thought I'd give downtown urban living a try. It's been the best thing I've ever done."

Lauren Farnsworth was born and raised in Toledo. She attended Bowling Green State University where she received a degree in journalism, and now is now the Change Leadership & Communications Specialist at Owens Corning. As a Toledo native, Lauren has a life-long knowledge and familiarity with the city and knows all of the many unique cultural and social opportunities it has to offer.

Jennifer Reitz grew up in Lima, about halfway between Toledo and Dayton. She is a speech language pathologist at The Blaine Block Institute for Voice Analysis & Rehabilitation. She earned her Master's of Science at Bowling Green State University and moved to Dayton for her current job. She specializes in voice training and works with singers, actors, and people who do public speaking.

Ashley Basile Oeken is the Executive Director of Engage! Cleveland, an organization that targets young professionals in the Cleveland area. An Ohio native though not originally from Cleveland, Ashley earned her MBA at Youngstown State University and accepted a two-year fellowship in Cleveland after graduating, when she found she really enjoyed the city and especially the downtown area. The organization she had worked for was small and there weren't a lot of social opportunities for young professionals, so she had to get out and get involved in order to meet other people her age and engage the young professional community.