Cities: Engines of Transformational Change
Speakers
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Executive Director, Nossas
Alessandra Orofino is the Executive Director and Co-founder of Nossas, where she develops tools and methodologies for activism and participation. She is also the director for Greg News, HBO’s only comedy news show in Brazil.
Nossas was born out of Alessandra’s experience with Meu Rio, a city-based community of hundreds of thousands of members that work together to impact local politics. Prior to founding Meu Rio, Alessandra worked at Purpose, a partner organisation of Meu Rio, where she set up the company’s office in Brazil. She holds a degree in Economics and Human Rights from Columbia University and was a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts, contributing to their pioneering program in Design for Social Innovation.
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Founder and President, The Global Parliament of Mayors Project
Benjamin R. Barber is a Senior Research Scholar at The Graduate Center, CUNY, Founder of the Interdependence Movement, and Walt Whitman Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University. Dr. Barber is the author of 17 books, including the classic Strong Democracy, the international best-seller Jihad vs. McWorld and his new book If Mayors Ruled the World. Dr. Barber appears frequently in broadcast media and domestic and international news publications, and he consults regularly with political and civic leaders in the U.S. (President Bill Clinton, Governor Howard Dean) and around the world. He writes and speaks on a wide variety of questions connected to democracy and citizenship, including the arts, education, globalization, terrorism, and the new politics of the Middle East and North Africa.
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Head of Editorial Partnerships + Special Projects, BBC World Service Group
Emily leads high profile projects across the BBC. These include Crossing Divides - a pan BBC multi-platform season about bringing people together in a fragmented world across lines of faith, politics, ethnicity, and generation as well as SoICanBreathe – a BBC News multi-platform season about tackling air pollution. She also directs the BBC Komla Dumor Award for African Journalists. Emily leads the solutions-focused journalism project at the BBC, kick-starting a culture change inside the organisation. This has been achieved via seasons, and delivering workshops from Nairobi to Delhi to Birmingham, toolkits and blogs and speaking at many events and conferences. She previously served as an award-winning broadcaster and editor at the BBC, reporting and producing for the BBC across 5 continents. Emily has been a Visiting Fellow at the Skoll Centre, Said Business School, University of Oxford, a Senior Advisor to the Skoll Foundation and has written for The Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, Economist and the FT, plus hosts panels globally. Emily is also a BBC Executive Coach, and on the board of The Wingate Foundation.
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Mayor, City of Cali, Colombia
Born in Cali, Colombia, in 1937
-Medical Doctor from Universidad del Valle
-Master of Science in Hygiene
-Doctor in Public Health from Harvard University
My career has spanned academic life, social development and public service:
ACADEMIA:
-Professor, Chair of department, Dean of the Medical School and President of UNIVALLE
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT:
-President of the Carvajal Foundation in Cali
-Creator of VALLENPAZ, a non-profit corporation currently restoring peace and economic prosperity in the conflict-ridden mountains of South-Eastern Colombia
PUBLIC SERVICE:
-Mayor of Cali 1992-1995
-City Council Member 2008-2011
-Re-elected Mayor in 2012, currently in office
Last year I was the first recipient of the ROUX PRICE, created by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (Seattle, WA) to acknowledge the use of the global burden of disease approach to develop intervention policies.
The Price acknowledged the use of reliable data to reduce Cali´s crime rates in 1993, Cali during the war between the Cartels; the same method has been successful in reducing crime at this time, when large criminal organizations are fighting over the territorial control of micro-traffic.
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Sue Riddlestone is Chief Executive of Bioregional, and a Skoll, Schwab and Ashoka award-winning social entrepreneur.
Sue co-founded Bioregional in 1994, who initiated the iconic BedZED eco-village in London, where Sue lives and where Bioregional has its headquarters.
Sue and the team work with partners to create homes, communities and eco-products and services which enable us to live a good life with a sustainable carbon footprint, within in the natural limits of our one planet.
To further scale their work, Bioregional systematised their approach to create a sustainability framework called One Planet Living which has been used in over $30billion of real-estate development. As well as by municipalities, cities, organisations and companies around the world from Mexico to China, the USA and Australia.
For system change, Sue draws on the work of Bioregional and partners to change policy and industry practice from zero carbon policy to eco-towns. Sue was a London Sustainable Development Commissioner from 2002-2014.
Sue was actively involved in creating the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with a formal role as UN NGO focal point for Sustainable Consumption and Production, where Sue and the team succeeded in securing text and targets for the SDGs, particularly for Goal 12.
Sue is a founding board member of global social entrepreneur network Catalyst 2030 and chairs the work to foster partnerships with governments and recognition of social entrepreneurs at the UN and national level.
In 2013 Sue was awarded one of the UK’s highest honours, an OBE, for her work on sustainable business and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
