Donté Gibbs, a native of East Cleveland, is the VP of Community Partnerships at The Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park where he works across departments, implementing community initiatives, building partnerships, and developing internal and external engagement strategies; including partnering with Bedrock to develop Skylight Park in Tower City. Gibbs aided in launching Rhythm on the River concert series, welcoming over 22,000 visitors to CVNP over the past 3 years.
He created Donté’s Gift Express®, delivering gifts + holiday cards to over 8,000 East Cleveland families’ homes between 2013–2023. In 2023, Donté’s Gift Express® celebrated 11 years by welcoming 29,000 residents to Tower City for a family fun day. Gibbs + ten other health, civic and grassroots organizations created #Masks4Community: which provided 77,000 free washable cloth masks for Clevelanders and East Clevelanders during the pandemic. In 2020, Gibbs launched #CMNHEngaged with Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Cleveland VOTES where residents could register to vote and complete 2020 U.S. Census – this led to all staff having election day off to vote, furthering efforts of the museum now being free on Sundays for all Cleveland and East Cleveland residents. Gibbs recently received the Ella Mae Johnson Service Award from Case Western Reserve University’s African American Alumni Association.