Programme Committee

Jeremy Myerson has been academic, author and activist in design for more than 40 years. He co-founded the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design in 1999, and was its director until 2015. Last year, he received emeritus professor status at the RCA, and he continues to direct his own venture, the WORKTECH Academy, which provides a forum for academics and practitioners to share new ideas on the future of work and workplace. He is the author of more than 20 books on a wide range of subjects in art, design and architecture, and he has curated many national design exhibitions. He has been at the helm of the Healthy City Design Programme Committee since the Congress’ inception in 2017.

Rachel Cooper OBE is distinguished professor of design management and policy at Lancaster University. She is a director of ImaginationLancaster, an open and exploratory design-led research centre conducting applied and theoretical research into people, products, places and their interactions, and also chair of Lancaster institute for the Contemporary Arts. Professor Cooper’s research interests cover: design thinking; design management; design policy; and across all sectors of industry, a specific interest in design for wellbeing and socially responsible design. She has published extensively on these topics, including books 'Designing Sustainable Cities'. She was founding editor of The Design Journal and also founding president of the European Academy of Design. She is currently president of the Design Research Society.

Michael joined the Impact on Health Programmes team in June 2019 and works on its emerging cross-programme approach. Before this, he worked for several years at some of the UK’s largest charities, across education, ageing, health and civic engagement, among other areas. His particular interest is in the causes and effects of inequality.

Giselle Sebag (MPH, LEED AP) is executive director of the International Society for Urban Health. She is a globally recognised urban health leader with 15 years of experience advising governments, multilaterals, NGOs and private-sector companies to develop sustainable, inclusive and resilient cities that promote and enhance resident health. Prior to joining the International Society for Urban Health, Giselle was a public sector consultant at Bloomberg Associates, where she advised cities developing evidence-based urban health solutions with the aim of improving the lives of the greatest number of citizens. Previously, Giselle was vice-president of programs at the Center for Active Design (CfAD), where she oversaw the development, planning and implementation of innovative programs such as Fitwel, a leading certification system committed to building health for all, developed in partnership with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to implement environmental design and operational changes that support healthier workplaces, homes and communities. Prior to that, Giselle was head of the built environment portfolio at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), where she selected, managed key relationships, and advised Fortune 500 companies, governments, multilaterals, philanthropic foundations and NGOs in strategic planning, partnership building, and evaluation of their healthy cities ‘Commitments to Action.’ Giselle holds a Master's of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, joint M.Sc. degrees in international cooperation and urban development from the Technische Universität Darmstadt, and international cooperation in sustainable emergency architecture from the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, and bachelor's degrees in architecture and government from the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Architecture (UTSOA) and College of Liberal Arts.

Through the initiative, Carolyn and her colleagues seek to translate scientific knowledge and tools to different sectors and stakeholders, increasing impact in society. Carolyn's previous roles include public health consultant and scientific writer, while she has also helped run emergency health programmes in Uganda and Angola. She has an MPH from Johns Hopkins School Public Health, and a master's in psychosocial intervention from the University of Barcelona.

Rhiannon Corcoran is a professor of psychology and public mental health at the University of Liverpool. She studies the psychological, social and environmental mechanisms that underpin mental distress and wellbeing. Seeing prosociality as the essential ingredient of community and culture, Rhiannon uses diverse methods to explore the benefits of interventions aimed at its improvement. As a founding member of the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health, Rhiannon is particularly interested in the role that our places have in determining mental health and wellbeing. With her husband and urban design practice partner, Graham Marshall, she directs the research arm of the Prosocial Place Research and Practice Programme. She has worked on several national programmes, such as the NHS Healthy New Towns Initiative and with DLUHC, DCMS and Design Council.

Marcus is editor-in-chief of the Cities & Health journal. Marcus is former associate professor and deputy director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments at the University of the West of England, where he worked for some 20 years. His mission is to integrate the disparate scales of healthy urban places, linking work, neighbourhoods and communities with city policy to regional planning, and national and international initiatives. See LinkedIn for his full CV details.

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.

Rebecca Morley is an expert in improving the health of underserved places and populations. The substance of her work is on the factors outside of the healthcare system that affect health, such as the places people live, work, and play, and people’s ability to access the services and supports they need to thrive. Over five years, Rebecca helped the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) develop $55 million in grant programming for gender equity; community power; sustainable and equitable urban development; water; parks and urban greening; green infrastructure; and food justice. Before launching her consulting practice, Rebecca was director of the Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the RWJF and the Pew Charitable Trusts. She was director of the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) between 2002 and 2014, where she led efforts to create safer and healthier environments for all people, with a special focus on children and communities who are disproportionately burdened by environmental public health risks. Ms. Morley also worked for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and in the United States Senate.

Caroline Paradise is head of design research and associate director, leading Atkins’ Research & Innovation team, targeting applied research to support growth areas and answer client challenges with innovative solutions. She is a qualified architect with a PhD in Architecture, and 15+ years' experience in applied research in the built environment industry. Central to her role is driving the research and innovation agenda across the practice through collaborative projects and thought leadership, under themes including stakeholder engagement, end user briefing, health and wellbeing, and digital technology. A significant amount of her time is devoted to supporting design teams with intensive stakeholder engagement to develop detailed briefs that accurately capture client aspirations. She has been involved in a variety of projects across a number of sectors, including education, residential and transportation, supporting design development as part of project teams as well as leading standalone research and innovation projects.

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 an experienced practitioner, researcher, and director at Urban Habitats. He has over 20 years’ experience in the built environment, infrastructure, and real estate sectors. In 2018, he founded the practice to focus on bringing together work across public health, urban design, and creating healthy and sustainable communities. Trained as an architect and having led multidisciplinary project teams, Mark has a firm grip on how such investments are driven: his experience extends to direct involvement in the delivery of over £1bn of such investment. Mark’s doctoral research, Healthy Street Life, is based at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments. This research looked at the impact on the streets where people live and their health and wellbeing, and also related to the experiences of people and place during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mark is a visiting lecturer at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales where he teaches on health + place. He has contributed to health impact assessments for Public Health Wales on the impact of climate change and circular economy approaches.

Over a career in research and policy, José Siri has developed and applied systems approaches to urban and planetary health, focusing on leveraging science for healthy development, devising simple systems tools to catalyse better decision-making, and improving understanding of complex challenges. His experience, which spans five continents, includes time at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health, and the Wellcome Trust, and extensive engagement with researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, along with policy briefs and commentaries in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the Global Sustainable Development Report. He currently consults for the World Bank and the World Health Organization and holds advisory roles with the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, Future Earth, CDP, and a variety of urban and planetary health research projects. His work has touched on urban studies, climate and health, sustainable development, systems thinking, transdisciplinarity, epidemiology, ecology, infectious disease, public health, and malaria control.

Helen Pineo is an urban planner and research associate professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington. 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. With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Helen is currently leading Change Stories, a research project that uses ethnographic methods to learn from the cultures, narratives and contexts that have supported shifts to equitable and sustainable development. She is co-investigator on a study investigating the health and health equality impacts of housing converted from non-residential buildings in England, funded by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research. Her past research has used participatory, systems thinking and other methods, to study: overcrowding and Covid-19, integration of health objectives in new property development, conceptualisation of multi-scalar health impacts of urban environments (see Healthy Urbanism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), evidence use in government policy and decision-making, and urban health indicators and their use by planners. Helen’s teaching and postgraduate supervision covers a broad range of healthy and sustainable urban environment topics. Her outreach activities include collaboration and advisory work with international organisations, including the World Health Organization, the NHS England Healthy New Towns Programme, the Dubai Land Department, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society, and the Obesity Health Alliance, among others. Prior to joining UW in 2023, Helen lived and worked in London for 16 years. Most recently, she was an associate professor at University College London. Previously, she worked as an urban planner for more than a decade on new developments and planning policy in the UK and internationally.

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.

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.

At HDR, Dr Brittin leads a transdisciplinary team of social, health, and behavioural scientists whose work informs optimal planning and design decision-making. A public health research scientist by training, Jeri is passionate about designing systems and environments that promote positive and equitable outcomes. Jeri’s work focuses on wellness and behavioural outcomes related to buildings, campuses, neighbourhoods and cities, as well as transportation systems. She maintains an active national and international research collaboration network, has published numerous articles, and serves on several national committees focused on design and health.

As director, sustainability at NORR, Blake leads the firm’s global programme to achieve the AIA 2030 Commitment and the Structural Engineering (SE) 2050 Challenge. He believes the alignment of clients, cities and countries adopting the UN Sustainability Development Goals will help advance the ultimate objective of decarbonisation. Over the past 20 years, Blake has been ingrained in change agency, from traditional sustainability (resource conservation, smart planning, density, walkability) to resiliency (mitigating the risks of severe weather due to climate change) to health and wellbeing (designing to promote physical, emotional, and cognitive optimisation) to equity (universal accessibility and beyond). His professional footprint has helped to humanise architecture. Blake’s passion for sustainability transcends from the office to the classroom. He is a lecturer at the Boston Architectural College and sits on the Advisory Board of UMASS Dartmouth.