J. D. Snyder is a leading expert on community and regional economic development. He previously conceptualized and headed up the U.S. EDA-funded East Michigan and Eastern Upper Peninsula Regional SME Exporting & Bi-National Strategies project.  He was also the project director for the USDA-funded Northern Michigan Capital Access Project and the nationally-recognized, US EDA-funded project to support Northern Michigan innovative regional planning in the global knowledge economy. Under his supervision, the latter project produced six Collaborative Learning (Co-Learning) White Papers and the Northern Michigan Knowledge Economy Indicators report (2009). He has conceptualized, developed, and managed a diverse range of projects from demonstrations of recycling automotive plastics with the Detroit 3’s Vehicle Recycling Partnership to investigating the feasibility of recycling urban wood waste for new secondary market applications. He served as an environmental advisor to Michigan Governor James J. Blanchard (1984-89) and Director of the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes (1989-90).  As a member of the Great Lakes Commission, he headed up task forces on spill emergency response preparedness and soil erosion/control. He has an M.S. in Resource Development from Michigan State University and a B.A. in history from Wayne State University in Detroit.