Malaika Rivers is the Founder & President of Pontem Resources. She helps businesses and governments work together to imagine and build great places. She works with a wide variety of changemakers — from CEOs to city mayors — to find cost-sharing strategies for pressing development needs.

With a focus on transportation, mobility, connectivity, and placemaking, Malaika’s work builds physical infrastructure as well as sustainable organizations to support it. Having worked for and with real estate developers, consulting firms, governments, and planning organizations, she crafts strategies that bring vision, process, funding, and politics together to achieve healthy ROIs.

Malaika’s work includes the billion-dollar, sports-anchored, mixed-use development models of Centennial Yards (Atlanta Hawks) and The Battery Atlanta (Atlanta Braves). She is the foremost expert on Community Improvement Districts (CIDs). Having formed and led CIDs over decades, Malaika advises on how these development tools effectively channel infrastructure funding into commercial centers.

Malaika is a 100 Influential Women to Know, a Georgia 500, and a 25 Power Women to Watch. She received her B.S. from Virginia Tech and her C.M.E. from Harvard Business School. She frequently contributes to various media outlets and publishes forward-thinking reports, including how CIDs may be positioned at the forefront of smart cities and digital transformation.

Malaika’s drive to conquer challenging terrain for her clients extends to her personal life. Whether hiking mountains or exploring deserts, Malaika is in constant pursuit of the way forward.

Joining the Pope & Land Team in July 2012, Mr. Armstrong is primarily involved in the development, marketing, leasing and management of commercial real estate. He is the current Chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), the regional planning and intergovernmental coordination agency for the 10-county area including Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, Dekalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale counties, as well as the City of Atlanta.

Prior to joining Pope & Land, Mr. Armstrong, as a senior vice president, worked with Duke Realty Corporation for nearly 22 years where he played a leadership role in building Duke Realty’s Atlanta Office portfolio from about 460,000 SF in 1990 to more than 4.5 million SF through development and acquisition.

Mr. Armstrong holds a bachelor’s degree from Purdue University. He is a member of several key organizations in the commercial real estate industry, including the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), the Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors, CoreNet and the Urban Land Institute (ULI).

Emory Morsberger took the helm as Executive Director of Gateway85 CID on April 15, 2019. Emory comes with a long history of involvement in the development, management and growth of community improvement districts in Georgia, including his involvement with the Tucker Summit CID and Lilburn CID, as president. He was instrumental in forming the Gateway85 CID (formerly Gwinnett Village CID) in 2005, where he also has served on the board of directors. He has a strong vision for the area and will continue to gain momentum with his plan for the future of the largest CID in Georgia.