Joseph P. O'Neill is the youngest person to serve as the President of NRPA having been elected at 35 years of age. Joe has been active in the profession since his junior year in college at the University of Delaware in 1975. He has held numerous positions in Delaware Recreation and Park Society and in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of NRPA from which he was elected to the National Board of Trustees for two terms. During this time Joe served as the Director of the Kent County DE. Parks and Recreation Dept. and the Superintendent of Recreation and Special Facilities for the New Castle County De. Dept. of Parks and Recreation. He completed his Masters Degree from Temple University in 1982.
In 1989 Joe and his wife Mary and three children, moved to Maryland where he became the Enterprise Division Chief for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission in suburban Washington DC. Joe became President of the NRPA in 1991-1992 and served the NRPA Board of Trustees for 9 years. He has continued to serve the profession as an adjunct professor at several colleges , the Park Maintenance School and the Supervisory School at Oglebay Park in Wheeling, West Virginia, as Chair of the Maryland Recreation and Park Society's Finance Committee and Conference Program Committee and as a member of the American Academy of Parks and Recreation Administration since 1991.