Claudia López

Mayor of Bogotá

Claudia López was elected Mayor of Bogotá in October 2019 and started her mandate on the 1st of January 2020. She became the city’s first female and also the first openly diverse Mayor in Bogotá’s history. She has an emphatic focus on environmental, social and anti corruption issues.

Mayor López was a Senator of the Republic of Colombia between 2014 and 2018 and the vice-presidential candidate in the 2018 presidential election for the Green Alliance party. As a senator, she set an example in the fight against corruption, with results never seen before, she became a prominent figure in the political arena. The public recognizes her tenacity and enormous capacity for collective action, which led her to make her way into academia and public service, becoming the first woman to be elected by popular vote to Colombia’s second most important office.
Mayor López is a finance and international relations graduate from Universidad Externado de Colombia, holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration and Urban Politics from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University.

Janette Sadik-Khan

Principal, Bloomberg Associates & Former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation

One of the leading voices on urban transportation policy, Janette Sadik-Khan is internationally respected for her transformative redesigns of New York City streets and rapid-implementation strategies that are being replicated today in cities around the world. ​She was Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation from 2007–2013 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, leading one of the most sweeping revitalizations of the city’s streets in a half-century.

​She currently advises mayors of cities around the world as a principal at Bloomberg Associates, a philanthropic consultancy established by Michael Bloomberg to help cities around the world improve the quality of life of their citizens. She assists mayors and their teams in developing street redesigns in cities from Los Angeles to Mexico City to Rio and Athens.

​As chair of the National Association of Transportation Officials (NACTO), an organization of transportation commissioners and directors in 38 cities, she led the development and publication of NACTO’s Global and Urban Street Design Guides and the Urban Bikeway Design Guide. The new standards in these documents have been recognized by USDOT and adopted by 40 cities worldwide.

​Sadik-Khan was a Senior Vice President of Parsons Brinckerhoff, a leading international engineering firm. Previously, she worked in Washington, D.C., as a Deputy Administrator at the US Department of Transportation. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from Occidental College, and a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law.

Hélène Chartier

Director of Urban Planning and Design, C40 Cities

Hélène Chartier is the Director of Urban Planning and Design at C40. The team she leads develops programmes and activities that support cities to accelerate sustainable and resilient urban planning policies and design practices.Her team leads the C40 Land Use Planning Network, which supports cities to institutionalise climate action through urban planning regulations; the Reinventing Cities competition, which delivers decarbonised and resilient urban regeneration projects; as well as the Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods programme and C40’s workstream on 15-minute cities.

Hélène previously served as an advisor to the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo. She also worked for the Paris Urbanism Agency and the global consulting firm Arup. Hélène holds a Master’s degree in science and engineering from the École Centrale with a specialisation in building and civil engineering. In the past 15 years, Hélène has lived and worked in Paris, London and New York.

Ole Scheeren

Architect and Principal, Büro Ole Scheeren

Ole Scheeren is a German-born architect and principal of Büro Ole Scheeren. His landmark projects shape the way we interact with our cities and generate new social narratives through a bold vision of architecture as highly connective and integrative environments.

Kimberly Driggins

Executive Director, Washington Housing Conservancy

Kimberly Driggins is the Executive Director of the Washington Housing Conservancy (WHC). Launched in 2018, WHC preserves affordable workforce housing, prevents displacement, and promotes economic mobility, especially for moderate to low-income African Americans and other people of color. WHC is committed to creating thriving, inclusive, mixed-income communities throughout the D.C. region.

Ms. Driggins has an extensive background in urban planning and real estate development and prior to her appointment at WHC, she served as Director of Strategic Planning/Arts and Culture for the City of Detroit’s Planning and Development Department for three years. Ms. Driggins also served as Associate Director for Citywide Planning for the District of Columbia’s Office of Planning from 2008-2015.

Jeff Speck

City Planner & Writer

Jeff Speck is a city planner and author who advocates internationally for more walkable cities. As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, he presided over the Mayors’ Institute on City Design and created the Governors’ Institute on Community Design. Prior to his federal appointment, Mr. Speck spent ten years as Director of Town Planning at DPZ & Co., the principal firm behind the New Urbanism movement. Since 2007, he has led Speck & Associates, an award-winning private design consultancy serving mainly American cities.

Signe Kongebro

Global Design Director, Urbanism, Partner, Henning Larsen

Signe Kongebro is the Global Design Director of Landscape and Urbanism and founder of Henning Larsen’s sustainability department. She has been a member of Henning Larsen’s management since 2008 and is one of the driving forces behind the practice’s growing focus on sustainability in construction and resource-conscious design. In her work, Signe pioneers new methods for reducing carbon on an urban scale, as evidenced by Henning Larsen’s Fælledby project – winner of the Urban Design category of Fast Company’s 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards.

Bjarke Ingels

Founding Partner, BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

Bjarke Ingels founded BIG—Bjarke Ingels Group—in 2005 after co-founding PLOT Architects and working at OMA in Rotterdam. Bjarke defines architecture as the art and science of ensuring our cities and buildings fit with the way we want to live. He was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People.

Thomas Heatherwick

Founder, Heatherwick Studio

Thomas Heatherwick is a British designer whose prolific and varied work over two decades is characterized by its ingenuity, inventiveness and originality. Defying the conventional classification of design disciplines, Thomas founded Heatherwick Studio in 1994 to bring the practices of design, architecture and urban planning together in a single workspace. Based in London, Heatherwick Studio focuses on designing for the human experience and is currently working on approximately 30 projects in ten countries, including new headquarters for Google in Silicon Valley and London (in collaboration with BIG); Toranomon-Azabudai — a six-hectare mixed-use development in the center of Tokyo; and Airo – an electric car that cleans the air as it drives. The studio has recently completed Little Island, a park and performance space on the Hudson River in New York; the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town; and Coal Drops Yard, a major new retail district in King’s Cross, London. His forthcoming book, Humanise, will be published by Penguin.

Vishaan Chakrabarti

Architect and Author

Vishaan Chakrabarti is an architect and author. He is the founder of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism. In 2018 he was named a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Chakrabarti served under Mayor Bloomberg as the director of planning for Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11.

Jeanne Gang

Founder, Studio Gang

Jeanne Gang is an American architect and the founder and leader of Studio Gang, an architecture and urban design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Gang was first widely recognized for the Aqua Tower, the second tallest woman-designed building in the world.

Richard Florida

Urbanist, Professor, and Author

Richard Florida is a researcher, professor and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU’s Schack School of Real Estate. He is an author of several global bestsellers, including the award-winning The Rise of the Creative Class and The New Urban Crisis. He is an entrepreneur, as founder of the Creative Class Group which works closely with companies and governments worldwide.