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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In her role with IWBI, Dr Angela Loder is responsible for identifying, directing, and managing evidenced-based research that supports the WELL Building Standard. As a research scientist, strategic planner, and educator, Dr Loder brings over a decade of experience in interdisciplinary research and partnerships around occupant health, wellbeing, and the built and natural environment. Prior to joining IWBI, she ran her own consulting firm, working with municipal, regional, and federal governments on urban planning, sustainability, and health. Projects included community outreach on values around the urban forest for Boulder Urban Forestry; writing and implementing a $1.6 million dollar state-funded Active Living and Healthy Eating grant for Jefferson County, CO; and a federal interdisciplinary project linking energy conservation, occupant comfort, and behaviour. Her doctoral research looked at the impact that visual and physical access to a green roof in Chicago and Toronto had on office workers’ concentration, stress, and creativity – this was the first large-scale multi-method study on the health impacts of green roofs. Dr Loder is a Canada-US Fulbright Scholar, a board member of the Institute for the Built Environment at Colorado State University, adjunct faculty at Denver University, and part of the first cohort of WELL Faculty and a WELL AP. Dr Loder has presented her research at numerous international conference and published in academic and popular media. She holds a collaborative PhD from the University of Toronto in Health Geography and Centre for the Environment.

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.

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.

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.

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.