TOWN SQUARE is an unusual consultancy founded by Jerome Barth. Jerome honed his place-making skills at two of the most-beloved public spaces of our era--New York’s Bryant Park and The High Line. Jerome’s role in fine-tuning maintenance, creating programs, and raising operating revenues helped the park become financially self-sustaining while elevating the status of adjacent commercial properties. At the High Line, a city park managed by a non-profit organization, he served as Chief Operations Officer, overseeing a transformed elevated railway that attracts more than 7 million visitors a year and contributing to the fine tuning of the operations and programs of the original “Park in the Sky," now a model for developments worldwide.

Jerome’s extensive travels and broad understanding of multiple cultures inflect his professional experience, giving him rare expertise in the realm of public space creation and management. He is ideally equipped to help government agencies, commercial developers, and non-profit enterprises unlock the potential of spaces they own and realize lasting value for themselves and the public they serve.

 After moving to New York City in 2009, Sara positioned herself as a leader in public space management through positions at business improvement districts (BIDs)--the entities that contract with the city to maintain major parks and plazas. She specializes in cultivating public engagement through developing small- and medium-scale programming--such as book clubs, art lessons, and recreational amenities--in partnership with local businesses and entrepreneurs.

In 2012, Sara joined Jerome's team at Bryant Park. There, she developed a passion for park maintenance and logistics through the oversight of the hiring and training of Bryant Park’s 35-person team of sanitation workers. She revamped the process of capital inspections, then applied the same data-driven approach to standardizing the back-of-house events set-up and scheduling procedures.

Sara joined TOWN SQUARE to apply her love of public space to a broadened range of projects. Today, Sara lives in Ditmas Park where she enjoys picnicking in Prospect Park.

Rob Tallia is a freelance writer, editor, photographer, and project manager. Born in New Jersey, he has spent most of the past twenty years in New York City writing about the urban experience for the guidebook series Not For Tourists, which he co-founded in 1998. He has also written for Rand McNally, Frommer's, and Visit California, worked as a food photographer for Zagat, and spent a year at Google as a cartographic and information design consultant.

He began his professional career in New York as a Research and Development Director for the Princeton Review, and most recently published the first edition of the Not For Tourists Guide to Madrid. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1989 with a triple major in Journalism, English, and History.

Ms. Pennyfeather has over 15 years of experience in brand marketing, digital media, and event production. Before joining Town Square, Angela led the marketing and communication efforts for the Fifth Avenue Association, where she collaborated with luxury retailers to produce events, culture, and programming on the world's most iconic street. In November 2020, Angela was accepted into CORO's Neighborhood Leadership Program to explore ways to develop a deeper understanding of policy and decision-making in the city, influence meaningful change, and address complex challenges across NYC's commercial corridors. Angela spent most of her career at Coney Island, specializing in creative marketing and branding. She had the privilege of leading and developing high-impact campaigns, which resulted in revitalizing the brand.

Angela holds an MBA in Marketing from Metropolitan College and a BA in Communications from Hampton University. She enjoys exploring New York City with her family in her spare time to discover street murals, new cuisine, open street activations, and more.

Karolyn Chamberlin has two decades of experience in the field of business and economic development – working at the local, state, and international levels across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

She has worked with a wide range of industry sectors, including: advanced manufacturing, clean tech, biopharma and medical technology, ICT, food and nutrition, furniture, textiles, and apparel.

Karolyn’s foreign direct investment work includes award-winning business attraction work for the Greater Geneva Bern area, Abu Dhabi Investment Office, the Bogota Chamber of Commerce, and the Bolivia Investment Promotion Agency, as well as several US states and cities. Her community development work includes outreach to immigrant entrepreneurs in West Philadelphia and manufacturers across the five boroughs of NYC, the creation of business improvement district in Central Brooklyn, and managing micro loan programs for entrepreneurs in Indonesia. In addition, Karolyn served as Head of Mentorship for an accelerator program for early stage life sciences startups in NYC, Westchester and Connecticut. Her advisory services to startups and small business owners in the life sciences, retail, food and manufacturing industries, have helped to obtain financing and increase business revenues by up to 400%.

Karolyn has a Masters in Urban Planning degree with an international development planning specialization from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and a Bachelor of Arts in French and anthropology from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She also has a Certificate in Clean Energy from the NYU School of Professional Studies. Karolyn is a native English speaker, fluent in French, and has a working knowledge of Spanish and Bahasa Indonesia.

When not scooting her kids around her beloved neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens, she also serves on the board of The Bronx is Blooming, a non profit dedicated to cultivating environmental stewardship, and as a steering committee member of the Friends of Rosemary’s Playground.