Dr. Yonette Felicity Thomas is the founder and president of UrbanHealth360, an organization of multidisciplinary thinkers centered on a people-oriented, community-focused approach to urban health. Dr. Thomas is a globally acknowledged thought leader, urban health champion, and an advocate for valuing the health of women and girls as an economic imperative. A social epidemiologist/medical sociologist by training, she has served as the chief of Epidemiology at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the National Institutes of Health, held academic positions at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Howard University, and as a vice president for research. She founded Borjoner International and Strategic Transitions to influence the progress, health, and wellbeing of individuals and communities across the world. As a founding board member of Women’s Economic Imperative (WEI), she leads the organization’s focus on the health of women and girls as an economic value. Her work as global advisor for Evidence for Sustainable Human Development Systems in Africa (EVIHDAF) and the Centre for Urban Health and Development within the Asian Institute of Poverty Alleviation (CUHD-AIPA) extends her focus on the global south and the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals in this last decade. She is the Associate Editor for Women and Girls for Cities & Health. She is a founding board member of the International Society for Urban Health (ISUH) and recently led the organization into sustainability by serving as the inaugural executive director (as a board member) and has served as a science advisor for urban health to the New York Academy of Medicine. She is a founding board member and former vice president of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) and served on the Steering Committee of the National Hispanic Science Network on Drug Abuse for more than a decade. She served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Revisions to the Common Rule for the Protection of Human Subjects in Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences. Her primary research and publications have focused on the social determinants of health, health disparities, the health of women and girls as an economic value, the social epidemiology of drug abuse and HIV/AIDS and the link with geography, including edited volumes: Geography and Drug Addiction, Crime, HIV, and Health: intersections of Criminal Justice and Public Health Concerns.

Clare is global practice leader for cities at Mott MacDonald. She is passionate about using cross-disciplinary synergy and integrated systems thinking to enable more people to be accommodated in urban areas for less cost, consuming less energy, materials and water, emitting less CO2, and cutting waste, while achieving an enhanced quality of life. She brings a practical understanding of sustainable development drivers and processes at both macro and micro level, gained through nearly 30 years as a low-energy engineer in the built environment. Combining this with engagement at policy level, she is able to bring insight into the technical, political, financial and behavioural aspects of sustainable development, particularly in areas of energy efficiency and thermal masterplanning in the built environment. Her role is often to lead stakeholders through a process of objective setting and risk assessment, where her ability to apply clarity and sensitivity in the fast-moving cities area allows decisions to be taken in an informed manner despite a lack of precedent or future certainty. In particular, working for both private-sector developers and city municipalities has given her a valuable understanding of how to align objectives and optimise outcomes.

Carlota Sáenz de Tejada (PhD) is a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal). With a background in Architecture and Urban Planning, her work focuses on housing, health, and urban resilience. She has collaborated on national and international projects with institutions such as the Barcelona City and Provincial Councils, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and the World Health Organization (WHO). Carlota is also a collaborating professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) in the Master’s Degree in Planetary Health, and has been involved for over ten years in educational, translational, and scientific outreach activities related to urban health.

Audrey de Nazelle is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London. Her work, at the intersection of environmental sciences, health behaviour, transportation, and urban planning, aims at guiding decision-makers towards health-promoting built environments and policies. Much of her research has been on the relationships between active travel and air pollution (exposures, health risks and benefits, and societal engagement). Dr de Nazelle holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Environmental Sciences, a Maîtrise in Mathematics from the University of Paris VI Pierre et Marie Curie, and she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (now ISGlobal), Barcelona, Spain.

Mark is a researcher and practitioner with 20 years’ experience. He works across the fields of public health, urbanism, and architecture. His work addresses wider determinants of health, focused on promoting holistic wellbeing, and reducing health inequalities. Mark has recently completed his doctoral research, Healthy Streetlife, undertaken during the Covid-19 pandemic observing the impact of the street environment on health. This research has been based at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments, UWE Bristol. As the founder and director of Urban Habitats Mark’s practice work encompasses population health across a spectrum of topics and methods. This includes working at a whole country scale with the WHO Collaborating Centre on Investment for Health and Wellbeing at Public Health Wales. He works at all urban scales including community co-design and addressing community agency as a determinant of health. With a background in practice and industry Mark has been involved in the delivery of over £2 billion of capital investment in social infrastructure. Mark has experience with a broad range of stakeholders across the urban health ecosystem from many different systems and sectors. Happiest whilst on a bicycle Mark is an optimistic gardener and lives in Cardiff, Wales with his family.

Magali Thomson is an architect working at Great Ormond Street Hospital, one of the world’s leading children’s hospitals. Here, she is setting out vision for a climate-resilient, healthy and child-friendly street, a healthy hospital street. She is particularly interested in preventive approaches to health and the impact our environment has on children’s health outcomes. She recently completed an Executive MSc in Cities at the London School of Economics, graduating with a Distinction. Her thesis focused on how children and their carers are impacted by air quality in Lewisham. She is also a built environment expert at the Design Council, a healthcare expert at the NLA and has positions on Design Review panels in Design South East, Southwark and Brighton. She previously led a successful education team to deliver award-winning schools at Marks Barfield Architects, where she was a director.

A chartered town planner and developer, Harry specialises in pre-planning / strategic sustainability, wellbeing, and energy work. His interests lie in social sustainability, wellbeing and loneliness. He has won awards for research exploring the linkages between pro-environmental behaviour and happiness. He believes there is an opportunity to employ robust social science methods to better understand the true impact of development. He is also a WELL AP.

Helen Pineo is an urban planner, Research Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington and Honorary Associate Professor at University College London. Her research focuses on how development, regeneration and urban policy can support health and sustainability. She contributes to the evidence base about why and how to do healthy urbanism by using transdisciplinary approaches and amplifying the needs of under-represented communities and the planet.

Siobhan Morris is assistant director, Grand Challenges at UCL. Responsible for a broad portfolio working with academics and external partners to facilitate impactful research, interdisciplinary innovations, and cross-sector collaborations, Siobhan is an experienced knowledge broker. Cultivating and managing strategic high-level relationships and leading award-winning research projects, she specialises in equalities and structural inequities and has published extensively on intersectional inequalities in the UK.