Kerem Yilmaz has worked in a variety of capacities, from Fortune 500 companies and global philanthropic organizations, to small businesses, and start-up NGOs. Currently he is President of Sprout Solutions, a boutique consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations conceptualize and deliver on long-term, strategic sustainability initiatives. He also serves as Head of Strategy to The Resilience Shift, shaping the organization’s direction to promote greater resilience through influencing policy, driving practice, and sharing key learnings. Previously, he served as Strategy and Operations Director for the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy in Brussels, Belgium. Kerem received his Master of Public Policy from the University of Southern California and Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley.
Bruce Katz and Luise Noring
The Governed City – Cities can tackle climate change if and only if they have institutions with the capacity, capital, and community standing necessary to get the job done. Capable governance and quality finance are essential, but often overlooked, elements of climate solutions.
Bruce Katz is the founding director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Since its inception in 2018, the Nowak Lab has strived to help cities and regions design, finance, and deliver transformative initiatives to drive innovative, inclusive, and sustainable growth. Previously, Bruce served for 21 years at the Brookings Institution, including as vice president and founding director of Brooking’s Metropolitan Policy Program and as the Institution’s inaugural Centennial Scholar. He is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics, and previously served as chief of staff to Henry Cisneros, Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development during the first term of the Clinton Administration and staff director of the United States Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs. In 2008/2009, he co-led the Obama Administration’s housing and urban transition team. Bruce is co-author of The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing our Broken Politics and Fragile Economies (Brookings Institution Press, 2013) and The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism (Brookings Institution Press, 2018). He is also the editor or co-editor of several books on urban and metropolitan issues, and a frequent media commentator.
Luise Noring is Research Director and Assistant Professor at Copenhagen Business School, where she also attained her PhD in supply chain partnerships. In 2016, she founded City Facilitators, which operates out of Copenhagen with clients across Europe and the US. City Facilitators offers niche consultancy specializing in urban governance and finance. Luise’s work is captured in the City Solutions providing vehicles for deepening and accelerating urban problem-solving. The City Solutions offers a source of applied research on the most promising models of urban governance and finance that are emerging to tackle hard economic, social, and environmental challenges and fuel investments and value creation in cities. The City Solutions reveal new institutional models and finance mechanisms covering areas such as urban redevelopment of deindustrialized areas, infrastructure financing, affordable and social housing, devolved municipal power, pooling of municipal borrowing requirements, inclusive growth, climate investments, and pension funds, to name but a few. It aims to speed up the process by which solutions invented in one city are captured and codified and then adapted and adopted to other cities.
Leah Lazer and Nick Godfrey
The Decoupled City – Cities are a critical vehicle for delivering the emissions reductions needed to limit global warming. National governments can drive economic prosperity and address climate emergency by supporting sustainable, equitable cities.
Leah Lazer is passionate about just, sustainable cities. She serves as Research Analyst at the World Resources Institute, where she has authored numerous publications on urban planning, sustainable transportation, climate justice, and the circular economy. With the Coalition for Urban Transitions, she worked as researcher and project manager for a major global initiative supporting national governments to secure economic prosperity and tackle the climate crisis by transforming cities, based on a partnership of more than 35 of the world’s leading institutions and companies. Previously, Leah was part of Siemens’ Urban Development team in London, and a food justice NGO in Philadelphia. She holds an MSc in Regional and Urban Planning Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA in Food System Studies from Tufts University, Massachusetts.
Nick Godfrey is a Senior Adviser for the Grantham Research Institute at LSE. He was formerly the co-founder and director of the Coalition for Urban Transitions, a special initiative of the New Climate Economy, and a major global initiative supporting national governments to secure economic prosperity and tackle the climate crisis by transforming cities based on a partnership of more than 35 of the world’s leading institutions and companies.
The initiative is co-hosted by the World Resources Institute and C40 Climate Leadership Group. Before this, Nick was a member of the Executive Team and Head of Policy and Urban Development for the New Climate Economy, a major international initiative to examine how countries can achieve economic growth while dealing with climate risks led by a Global Commission of 26 former heads of state, finance ministers, CEOs, and thought leaders.
Justin Keeble and Molly Blatchly-Lewis
The Responsible City – A responsible city is guided by a compelling mission and purpose harnessing business to bring environmental and societal value.
Justin Keeble is Managing Director of Accenture’s European Sustainability practice. He has spent 22 years working with companies to harness environmental and social pressures as drivers for business transformation, growth, and innovation. He has worked across consumer industries, financial services, high tech, energy and utilities sectors, and the public sector including municipal and city administrations. He recently built an eco-house in south Oxfordshire where he lives with his wife and three daughters and has a penchant for amateur pugilism.
Molly Blatchly-Lewis is a Strategist within Accenture’s Global Cities, Transport and Infrastructure Practice. She has worked with a wide range of government and private sector clients in the UK and internationally, specializing in sustainability, urban mobility, and emerging technologies such as 5G and digital twins. Her focus is on the role of systems thinking in tackling urban challenges, developing innovative, practical policies and solutions for sustainable impact. Her experience includes working with the World Economic Forum to develop integrated solutions to decarbonize cities; shaping a clean mobility strategy with Transport for West Midlands; driving innovation across construction firms and infrastructure agencies to accelerate decarbonization and enhance communities; helping to grow an innovation ecosystem in East Asia and co-creating a leadership development framework for a global climate change NGO.
Pete Daw
The Energized City – The energized city thinks of energy as something that can be used more efficiently,