An uncommon fellowship for uncommon times.

Join a radically optimistic community of urban innovators shaping better cities and better futures.

The future of cities is not just built; it is cultivated through dialogue, imagination, and a shared commitment to transformation.

WRLDCTY Global Fellows are a small-group at the forefront of the movement to foster the world’s next cities: regenerative, innovative and inclusive places where people and planet prosper.

Join our collective of urbanists, visionaries, artists, policy shapers, business leaders, activists, and innovators whose diverse ideas, perspectives and lived experiences are shaping the future of global cities where humanity can shine.

We believe that the complexity of cities demands both curiosity and courage. Through meaningful exchanges, hands-on explorations, and radical collaboration, we are fostering a better tomorrow.

With a passion for brain health, longevity, and community-driven care, he works to bridge gaps between policy, healthcare, and social impact. Before joining ASA, Rajiv was a Director at the Milken Institute’s Center for the Future of Aging, where he led global initiatives on dementia care, healthy aging, and aging policy. He played a key role in launching the Alliance to Improve Dementia Care, bringing together more than 140 organizations to transform brain health policy and practice. Rajiv is deeply involved in shaping the future of aging. He helps lead ASA’s Innovation and Social Impact Advisory Council and its Legacy Corps. He is also a member of the African Brain Health Network futurist group and is leading work on Longevity Cities - reimagining urban spaces for healthy aging by focusing on brain capital, equity, and the links between climate change and longevity.
Hazleen Ahmad is a neurodiversity advocate drawing from lived experience, an impact investor, and an applied neuroscience researcher. She is dedicated to responsibly communicating applied neuroscience to society, striving to address media misuse and dispel neuromyths. With two decades of experience as a communications expert in the Middle East and Asia, Hazleen has worked with prestigious organisations such as EMAAR Properties and Gulf Finance Investment Bank. Hazleen’s efforts span grassroots initiatives and policy-level advocacy, particularly in Dubai, Singapore, and Hong Kong. She has dedicated herself to fostering opportunities for neurominorities, focusing on youth and women, and bridging the gap between science and society. Through strategic investments in future generations and partnerships with knowledge leaders, Hazleen strives to build resilient communities, promote mental well-being, and safeguard planetary health. She is currently seeking various partners for her social impact initiative, the World Kindness Trust, which aims to champion inclusivity and compassion globally.
Melissa Burton is the Operations Director for Canada and a Principal in Arup’s Toronto office. Previously, she was the Canada Consulting Practice Leader. Melissa’s technical work at Arup focuses on climate modelling and wind engineering applications. She has served as senior technical expert on many international projects where she optimized design and reduced wind loads for large roof structures, buildings and bridges. Melissa has extensive experience using large volumes of data to develop climate models for wind codes, investigating the interaction of wind and the built environment. Melissa comes to the Fellows Circle with an interest in urban futures focusing on inclusivity, leveraging diversity, how we respond to complex climates (geopolitical and environmental), and creating legacy.
Darryl Condon is interested in design that acts as a catalyst for positive social change. He has helped create engaging public spaces across Canada for more than 30 years. Darryl’s work has been recognized internationally for its design excellence with more than 80 awards. He has lectured extensively across North America, South America, Europe, and Australia. Darryl is currently completing a Doctorate of Design from the University of Calgary, where he is researching and developing an advanced practice model to maximize public benefit from community facilities. A key theme he is exploring is how we might take a long-term stewardship view of the built environment.
Steven Cornwell is the Global Director of ERA-co currently living in NYC. Prior to establishing ERA-co he was the CMO of publicly traded development company Howard Hughes Corporation and prior to this he was the CEO and Executive Creative Director of Cornwell Brand & Communications in Australia. Over the course of 20 years, Steven has garnered an international reputation for developing leading brands from a broad range of sectors including real estate, place, culture, consumer retail, media, transit & infrastructure and professional services.
Chris leads a global team in destination placemaking, branding, and marketing. Proficient in trend analysis, visioning, and city planning, he created the World’s Best Cities rankings for over 400 cities in 2016. A respected speaker on tourism, real estate, and urban development, he has also chaired the Urban Land Institute’s Travel Experience & Trends Council and teaches Placemaking at New York University.
Gary Gaston is the CEO of the Civic Design Center, which works to advocate for civic design visions and actionable change with communities to improve quality of life for all, and an Assistant Professor of Practice with the UTK College of Architecture + Design. He co-authored the book Shaping the Healthy Community: The Nashville Plan, which was published by Vanderbilt University Press in April 2016. Gary received the Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society of Architecture and Allied Arts “Silver Medal” award for a “his extraordinary efforts to advance the field of design in the region” in 2016 and was named 2022 “Leader of the Year” by the Young Leaders Council. Gary is a native of West Tennessee where serves as the beekeeper for his family farm. He is passionate about preservation and enhancement of public spaces and expanding opportunities for youth through design-based education in public schools. Gary serves on the Board of Directors of The District and is a member of the Rotary Club of Nashville.
Zahra Ebrahim is the Co-Founder of Monumental. She is a public interest designer and strategist, and an established bridge builder across grassroots and institutional spaces. Her work has focused on community-led approaches to policy, infrastructure, and service design. Prior to Monumental, she built and led Doblin Canada, Deloitte’s Human-Centred Design practice. In her early career, Zahra led one of Canada’s first social design studios, working with communities to co-design towards better social outcomes, leading some of Canada’s most ambitious participatory infrastructure and policy programs.
Zahra is currently an Urbanist-in-Residence at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, and an Adjunct Professor at the Daniels School of Architecture. She has been recognized as a Next City Vanguard Civic Leader, Ascend Canada’s Mentor of the Year, one of WXN’s Top 100 Women in Canadian Business, and most recently recognized as one of the Urban Land Institute’s WLI Champions. Zahra is currently a Board member of the Toronto Arts Council, and Chair Emeritus at Park People. Her forthcoming book, Messy Cities, is set for release from Coach House books in Summer 2025.
As the founder and director of PALO Arq, an award-winning architecture and urban design firm based in Buenos Aires, Emiliano has led transformative projects that seamlessly blend creativity with functionality. Since 2021, he has expanded his impact as the CEO and Design Director of UIO Urban Innovation Office in Boise, Idaho, where he drives groundbreaking initiatives in urban design, strategic planning, and innovation. Additionally, he co-founded UrbS_LA, a pioneering digital platform dedicated to advancing research on public space, mobility, and technological innovation in urban environments. Emiliano’s academic achievements include degrees from the University of Buenos Aires and SCI-Arc in Los Angeles, as well as an MBA in real estate from the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (UCA). He has further specialized in cutting-edge urban topics, earning diplomas in Smart Mobility from MIT and Smart Cities from Austral University. Currently, he serves as a professor of urban design and architecture at the University of Idaho, inspiring the next generation of urban innovators.
A connector and integrator, Heath draws on his background in Landscape Architecture and design management to challenge, lead and connect people, projects and places. Naturally curious, Heath is known as an out-of-the-box thinker with the ability to see and leverage connections across an ecosystem. Having worked on projects across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Middle East and South Africa, specialising in strategy development, integration, business leadership and growth, Heath is passionate about facilitating human-centred projects, fostering collaboration for successful outcomes.

As one of DIALOG’s partners, Antonio’s career has been built at the intersection of design disciplines. As DIALOG Chair, his mission is to leverage the collective creativity and innovation within DIALOG to continue delivering design solutions to the many challenges we face globally – from climate change and equity to social wellbeing. Antonio’s project work has spanned communities from Halifax to Victoria, from Iqaluit to Mérida. A common thread has been the integration of diverse perspectives, through a creative process, for purpose-driven outcomes. As a result, Antonio is internationally recognized for creating transformational and vibrant urban spaces that support their social, economic, and environmental context.
Andrew King is recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in design excellence, applied design research, teaching and cultural discourse. King’s work has been consistently published in international art and architecture journals and recognized with international design awards. He was selected one of Canada’s “design leaders” by the Globe and Mail in 2003 and has received four Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence. In 2012 he had the unprecedented honour of being awarded two American Institute of Architecture Progressive Architecture (P/A) Awards of Excellence in the same year for projects of very divergent scales and briefs. In 2017 he was elected to the College of Fellows of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, and in 2003, the Canada Council for the Arts Prix de Rome Laureate.
Charles Landry facilitates complex urban change projects. He works with cities around the world to help them make the most of their potential and is widely acclaimed as a speaker, author, and innovator. An international authority on using imagination in creating self-sustaining urban change, Charles has worked and given talks in over 60 countries and helped shift how we assess and harness possibilities in reinventing cities. He has written more than a dozen books, most recently The Civic City in a Nomadic World. His best-known work is The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. Charles is also the founder of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival (Berlin).
Iain Montgomery is a provocateur, but more professionally known as a strategist and founder of Now or Never, a firm that helps companies dither less and do more. His work sits at the intersection of strategy, innovation and behavioral science, helping established institutions navigate change, not just incrementally, but with some audacity. He works with executive teams to reboot their innovation efforts, rethink their category and make sharper strategic bets because in an era of disruption, playing it safe is the riskiest thing you can do. This includes imagining new futures, designing new propositions and finding distinctive signature moves. Beyond the corporate world, Iain is also deeply immersed in urban innovation, specifically how cities and infrastructure can act with more of a Challenger mindset through his podcast and writing with Challenger Cities. He believes that whether it's a multinational firm or a municipal transit network, the biggest obstacle to change usually isn’t money or technology, but a mindset.
Paul Owens (London, UK)
Co-founder & Director, BOP Consulting
Paul Is Co-Founder and Director of BOP Consulting, an international consultancy practice for culture and the creative economy. Paul has over thirty years' experience of research and consultancy in the fields of cultural, urban and economic development. His interests and expertise lie in the field of creative entrepreneurship, urban cultural policy, cluster development and innovation. He has pioneered new ways of understanding the cultural and creative economies of cities and regions and helped to design new policies and support structures to foster culture and creativity. Working with the Mayor of London, he grew and managed the World Cities Culture Forum (WCCF), a network of 40 of the world's major cities sharing best practice on managing culture within urban policy in cities all over the world. Paul is currently leading BOP's latest global initiative BOP500 – which is developing the world's most comprehensive database of cultural indicators covering 500 cities.
Samantha leads Hassell's ambitious global change strategy in sustainability and regenerative practice. She works with a diverse team of industry leaders to embed our Sustainability Framework across all areas of our practice, building capacity in our people and processes and driving innovation in sustainable and regenerative design. With extensive experience in senior leadership roles internationally, Samantha’s work has spanned 20 countries, delivering sustainable and regenerative design and business strategies for the commercial and residential sectors, healthcare, retail, universities, large-scale infrastructure projects, and both private and government organisations. Before joining Hassell she designed and implemented Development Victoria’s inaugural sustainability strategy and spent almost 15 years at global sustainable development firm Arup, working across many of their global locations including Sydney, Singapore, Los Angeles, and Melbourne.
Jasmine Palardy (Calgary, Canada)
Founder, The Good Future Collective & Director, WRLDCTY
Jasmine is a community builder who specializes in innovative engagement methods that encourage imagination and collaboration. Her career has been spent balancing the worlds of innovation, tech and design to bring diverse groups together to envision and build better places - from innovation districts to main streets, parks, alleys, higher education labs, cultural institutions and more. She combines strategic foresight, human-centric design, storytelling and memorable moment-making to create programs that build capacity for community transformation and more resilient cities.
Manas Rath is the Founder of LEAP Cities, a long-term accelerator for high-potential, growth-stage businesses that are solving India’s urban problems. He is also co-founder of the Mumbai Donut CoLAB, a collective action effort to make Mumbai more Liveable + Sustainable. He holds degrees from MIT and the Sloan School of Management. His current focus is on ‘Level Six Leadership’. Manas has worked extensively in the social and environmental sector with BORDA, Dasra, and the Dutch WASH Take-a-Stake Impact Fund. Earlier, he worked at Avendus Capital (Private Equity and M&A Investment Banking), raising capital from global investors like Blackstone and Warburg Pincus and closing cross-border M&A deals. As a mentor, he brings extensive exposure to domains around sustainability, urbanisation, and basic services, as well as experience in strategy, business models, PPPs, building stronger teams, and venture capital.
Saravanan is experienced in addressing complex urban and social development challenges. He has co-authored both the Soft Power Index as well as the Good Governance Index, while also contributing as an analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Safe Cities Index. He previously completed his civil service stint with the Ministry of National Development (MND) Singapore, where he led the indices research team to measure and benchmark Singapore’s liveability to account for the impacts of the pandemic.
Anupam Yog is a pragmatic urbanist and creative strategist with over 20 years of experience in research, design, and urban innovation. As the Managing Partner of XDG Labs, a platform for incubating ideas and companies that focus on the built environment, Anupam works with a diverse portfolio of projects and partners that aim to create positive social and environmental impact. Anupam’s mission is to develop a "Conscious Cities Index", which explores the connection between community well-being and a city's urban design. Anupam is passionate about placemaking for healthy cities and initiated The Big Sit, a social meditation movement that reimagines the relationship between people and place.