Organizer: Humanitarian OpenStreetmap team
About:
2020 theme is “10 Years of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap: The Past, Present, and Future of Humanitarian Mapping.”
Earth
Wind
Fire
Toa Mata Band RiskMachine is a data mining multimedia performance applied to robotics music. Toa Mata Band uses real historical disaster and climate risk data to create rhythmic music played by a LEGO robot orchestra. During the performance, data will become a live robotic performance, streamed simultaneously in three different On Demand rooms. Each of these rooms is themed “Earth”, “Wind”, and “Fire”, the music of which draws on data related to earth, wind and fire, respectively. An electroacoustic beat will be randomly generated by eight digits, each representing the main musical fractions ; number “1” is a whole, “2” is half note, “4” is quarter note and so on; “0” will be a pause and “9” a stochastic figure generator. The metronome BPM tempo and the sound design of each room will be randomly generated, and new datasets will be included throughout the performance. This performance is an experimental way of representing the earth’s activity and climate changes in music
Toa Mata Band
Lego Robot Orchstra
The Band: Toa Mata Band is known as the world first LEGO® music robots orchestra, made of vintage Bionicle figures. Each band member is built using LEGO Bionicle pieces, a system of electric motors, rubber bands and pulleys connected to the figures’ arms, allowing them to play a rig of different touchable synthesizers, drum machines, smartphones and acoustic percussions. To learn more about Toa Mata Band visit https://www.youtube.com/user/opificiosonico
When our usual way of life gets suspended, fear and discomfort confront us; when what we are familiar with is no longer available to us, we feel ungrounded and anxious about what is to come. When change is an inevitable part of life, what is within our locus of control, and what is not, that we could learn to be at ease with? Between looking back and looking forward, there is the present. Between the ups and downs of life, we can take a pause to notice what is here for us.
Meditation Teacher and Bestselling Author Mingyur Rinpoche and Mindfulness Coach Erin Lee discuss the role of mindfulness in times of disruption and uncertainty, and the possibilities of navigating life’s transitions with greater openness and awareness of our own mind.
Mingyur Rinpoche
Teacher, Author & Master of the Karma Kagyu
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche possesses a rare ability to present the ancient wisdom of Tibet in a fresh, engaging manner. His profound yet accessible teachings and playful sense of humor have endeared him to students around the world. Most uniquely, Rinpoche’s teachings weave together his own personal experiences with modern scientific research, relating both to the practice of meditation.
Born in 1975 in the Himalayan border regions between Tibet and Nepal, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche is a much-loved and accomplished meditation master. From a young age, Rinpoche was drawn to a life of contemplation. He spent many years of his childhood in strict retreat. At the age of seventeen, he was invited to be a teacher at his monastery’s three-year retreat center, a position rarely held by such a young lama. He also completed the traditional Buddhist training in philosophy and psychology, before founding a monastic college at his home monastery in north India.
In addition to extensive training in the meditative and philosophical traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, Mingyur Rinpoche has also had a lifelong interest in Western science and psychology. At an early age, he began a series of informal discussions with the famed neuroscientist Francisco Varela, who came to Nepal to learn meditation from his father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Many years later, in 2002, Mingyur Rinpoche and a handful of other long-term meditators were invited to the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Richard Davidson, Antoine Lutz, and other scientists examined the effects of meditation on the brains of advanced meditators. The results of this groundbreaking research were reported in many of the world’s most widely read publications, including National Geographic and Time.
Erin Lee
Founder and Mindfulness Coach of Mindful Moments Singapore
Erin Lee, founder of Mindful Moments and Light On Life, is a Mindfulness Coach and Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher. She earned her Master of Science degree in Studies in Mindfulness with the University of Aberdeen, UK. Having spent nearly a decade living and working under chronic stress and burnout, Erin is today an advocate of mindfulness as a way of life. She currently lives in Singapore and devotes her time to propagating the seeds of mindfulness and supporting individuals and urban communities in developing skills of mindful awareness for better attentional flexibility, mental resilience, and emotional balance.
Erin works with corporate organizations and educational institutions to deliver mindfulness and mental wellness programs for working professionals, adult learners and youths. She also co-founded The Big Sit – a social meditation event that inspires the use of public spaces for fostering good mental health, and runs Take A Pause, a weekly online mindfulness practice.
Learn about Google’s Flood Forecasting Initiative from the head of the program. Sella Nevo walks through the advances made around flood maps and early warning alerts.
Sella Nevo
Senior Software Engineer, Google
Sella Nevo is a tech researcher committed to enacting large-scale effective social impact, and specialises in machine learning, research & development and tech management. Currently, Nevo is leading the Google Flood Forecasting initiative, alongside several humanitarian and environmental efforts at Google. He also teaches Applied Ethics and Information Security at Tel Aviv University, and advises on VC investments in startups advancing the UN’s sustainable Development Goals.
Stacie Chan
Global Product Partnerships Manager
Google
Stacie Chan leads Search and Web Product Partnerships at Google for the Asia-Pacific region. She most recently moved from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to Asia to work with partners in high-growth markets. Before Partnerships at Google, Stacie worked on the Google News team, supporting news publishers around the world. Prior to Google, she was a journalist in San Francisco covering everything from politics to technology; and before that, an actress in Los Angeles, where she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award.
In the year 2030, a small coastal community is hit by twin crises: a typhoon and an earthquake, in quick succession. The impact that these disasters will have depend on many different variables. What if we can make different decisions in the year 2020 or 2025 to alter the outcome for this community? In this interactive game, you take on the role of scientists, politicians and emergency services personnel, to see if you lessen the impact of a disaster on this community.
This performance is brought to you with support from Google.
David Finnigan
Artist & Game Designer
David Finnigan is a writer, theatre-maker and game designer from Ngunawal country, Australia. He works at the intersection of science and art, producing theatre shows that explore concepts from climate and earth science. David has worked as resident artist at research institutions including CSIRO, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, University College London and the Earth Observatory Singapore. He is a Fellow of the Churchill Foundation and the Australia Council for the Arts.
Creating Change Through Music: Two talented artists, from two different cultures and generations, play music to raise awareness about natural hazards and climate change. Dr. Lucy Jones, who is also a renowned Californian seismologist, will perform her piece, “In Nomine Terra Calens”, or “In the Name of a Warming Earth”, to reflect on the effects of climate change. Tafa Mi Soleil, a young Haitian singer and artist, will share with us a song she created to help spread the word of disaster risk reduction and preparedness in her local country. Over 5 million Haitians have heard this song already! The two women will then have a conversation about their work in connecting science and art in service of creating a more resilient world.
The video was shot with the artists in both Port Au Prince and Los Angeles, and was directed by Emiliano Rodriguez Nuesch from Pacífico. This performance was made possible with support from FM Global.
Tafa Mi Soleil
Singer and Composer
Tafa Mi-Soleil, whose full name is Evenie Rose Thafaina Saint Louis, is a 22-year-old soul artist, born in Fort Jacques, Haiti, first known for her collaboration on albums by D-Fi Powèt Revolte and other Haitian rappers. Her first single Mizik Sove Vi m Pt 2 who announced her solo career was a great success with more than 2.5M views on Youtube in the space of 6 months. She just released a single “Chita Tann Ou” and is currently working on her EP “Reponn” which is due to be released next December. Tafa is also a stylist, she has her own line of fashion clothes and accessories. She also makes painting, she is a writer, plays and dances. Tafa is a member of the Evazyon Mizik label, of which she is a founding member and where she works as a producer. In 2020 Tafa co-created a song to spread the word of disaster risk reduction and preparedness in her local country, which impacted more than 5 million Haitians already.
Dr Lucy Jones
Scientist and Musician
Dr. Lucy Jones is the founder and Chief Scientist of the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society, with a mission to foster the understanding and application of scientific information in the creation of more resilient communities, and a Research Associate at the Seismological Laboratory of Caltech. With a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese Language and Literature from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Geophysics from MIT, Dr. Jones has been active in earthquake research for decades, furthering earthquake risk reduction, including 33 years of federal service with the US Geological Survey. Her work at the USGS included developing the methodology for estimating the probability that an earthquake will be a foreshock to a bigger event, leading the creation of a national science strategy for natural hazards research, creating the first American major earthquake drill, the Great ShakeOut, that has expanded to now encompass over 60 million participants around the world in 2019 and writing over 100 published papers on statistical seismology and integrated disaster scenarios. Her pioneering science was recognized with the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal (one of just eight awarded to federal employees in 2015), the Ambassador Award from the American Geophysical Union, the Distinguished Service Award from the US Department of Interior, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Western States Seismic Policy Council, and the 2000 Alquist Medal and the 2017 Distinguished Lecture Award both from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.
Kaori Enjoji
Journalist
Host of UR2020
From the early outbreak aboard a cruise ship to the abrupt fall of the country’s longest serving prime minister, Kaori Enjoji spent most of 2020 in Japan reporting about the pandemic and its social, political and economic impact for CNN.
After graduating from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she joined Reuters as a correspondent to work in the Tokyo and London bureaus. She later switched to television to serve as CNBC’s bureau chief based in Tokyo. Storytelling has been her passion since she first saw the World Press Photo exhibition as a teenager growing up in Amsterdam. Kaori was raised on three continents and is bilingual in English and Japanese. She is also proficient in Dutch and French. She reports for print, television and online media by melding those languages and cultures in an unscientific mix. She is currently working on a documentary project to mark the ten years since the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In her free time, Kaori enjoys being beaten in a good game of shogi by her teenage son.
The widespread prevalence of racism in our society and institutions shapes disaster risks. Mechanisms of differentiation based on race are determinants in the social construction of vulnerability and exposure, perpetuating systemic patterns of exclusion and privilege. By overlooking reality, people and organizations often fail to notice racism, or anticipate the risks this can engender and entrench. We can do something about it… But how to initiate constructive conversations on the difficult intersection of race and risk?
Hop into this interactive session with literaryperformer Regie Gibson and risk-takers Janot Mendler de Suarez and Pablo Suarez. We’ll ignite some sparks with a selection of cartoons created during earlier UR2020 sessions. Finally, building on “meaning-making” lines co-created by UR2020 participants, Regie will deliver a Spoken Word performance on anti-racism, inclusion and resilience.
This plenary has been organized by Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and World Bank’s Social Sustainability and Inclusion Global Practice. It builds off a World Bank Anti-Racism workshop developed by World Bank’s Social Sustainability and Inclusion Global Practice.
Pablo Suarez
Associate Director for Research and Innovation,
Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre
Pablo Suarez is associate director for research and innovation at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, as well as visiting fellow at Boston University, and artist in residence at the National University of Singapore Lloyd Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (NUS IPUR). He has consulted for the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, Oxfam, and about twenty other international humanitarian and development organizations, working in more than 60 countries. His current work involves creative approaches to climate risk management – ranging from self-learning algorithms for flood prediction, to collaboration with humorists to inspire thinking and action. Pablo holds a water engineering degree, a master’s degree in planning, and a Ph.D. in geography.
Janot Mendler de Suarez
Technical Advisor, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre
Janot Mendler de Suarez consults with the World Bank, serves as Technical Advisor & Caribbean focal point with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, and is a Visiting Research Fellow with Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. As an expert facilitator, practitioner and policy advisor, Janot is an innovator in transformation management, collective intelligence, pioneering the use of serious games and creative arts for effective learning and dialogue, and has co-designed and facilitated game-enabled processes to support a variety of World Bank activities. Janot acts for racial justice, facilitates conversations on race and served on the Metro Boston Race Amity taskforce, culminating with the governor’s proclamation of Massachusetts Race Amity Day, encouraging cities and towns to develop programming.
Regie Gibson
Literary Performer
Regie Gibson has lectured and performed widely in the U.S., Cuba, and Europe. In Italy, representing the U.S., Regie received both the Absolute Poetry Award (Monfalcone) and the Europa en Versi Award (LaGuardia di Como). He’s received the Walker Scholarship for Poetry from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Brother Thomas Fellowship from The Boston Foundation and two Live Arts Boston (LAB) Grants for the production of his first musical The Juke: A Blues Bacchae in which he uses Euripides’ tragedy to explore African-American music and spirituality. Regie has performed with the Sharnier Theater in Hanover, Germany, The Lexington Symphony Orchestra, and has composed texts for The Boston City Singers, The Mystic Chorale and the Handel+Haydn Society. He has served as consultant for both the National Endowment for the Arts “How Art Works” initiative and the “Mere Distinction of Color”— a permanent exhibit examining the legacy of slavery and the U.S. constitution at President James Madison’s historic Montpelier home. Regie was a Poet-in-Residence at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and is Poet-in-Residence at Lexington’s Cary Memorial Library. He is the author of Storms Beneath the Skin—which received a Golden Pen Award, and the creator of The Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy— a theatrical, literary-concert focusing on the life, works, and modern influence of William Shakespeare. He is the lead singer, lyricist, and percussionist for Atlas Soul— a multicultural, global-funk, world music ensemble, and is a creative on a team of scientists and members of the Red Cross-Red Crescent helping to craft language regarding issues of climate change. He holds an MFA in Poetry and teaches in the English department at Clark University.
Emily Flake
Artist
Emily Flake began cartooning for The New Yorker in 2008 and has had more than a hundred cartoons published in the magazine since. Her cartoons, essays, and illustrations have also appeared in Mad, the New York Times, the New Statesman, the Wall Street Journal, the Globe and Mail, and in many other publications. She is the author of “Mama Tried” and her newest book, “That Was Awkward: The Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug,” published by Viking in 2019.
“Feggo” Felipe Galindo
Artist
“Feggo” Felipe Galindo, creates humorous art in a variety of media, including cartoons, illustrations, animations, fine art & public art. Born in Cuernavaca, Mexico, he resides in New York City. His work has been exhibited and published worldwide including in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, MAD, Private Eye and The New York Times, among many others.
Yasin Osman
Artist
Yasin Osman is an award-winning Toronto-based photographer and cartoonist. In 2015, Osman founded Shoot For Peace an art mentorship program in Toronto for boys & girls, blending his background in education and passions for youth empowerment, art and photography. In 2018 Yasin started a webcomic series called ‘Grandpa Ali & Friends’ that later got published as a comic book under the same name. Today, Osman works as a youth worker by day while juggling photography and making cartoons. His work can be seen in The New Yorker & Reader’s Digest.
With media attention dying down, support networks advancing to their next crisis, and relief budgets drying up, the after-effects of a crisis often generate additional mistrust and despair. Those most affected are often those that are already most vulnerable, who can be feeling long-term and concentrated effects of loss of home, food shortages, devastating health effects, lack of economic opportunity. In order for leadership to keep or regain the trust of their communities, they need to have support and communications systems in place long after the immediate effects of the crises have passed.
Christy Davis
Executive Director of the Lien Centre for Social Innovation
Singapore Management University
Christy Davis is Executive Director of the Lien Centre for Social Innovation at the Singapore Management University, and Editor in Chief of its flagship publication, Social Space. She brings more than 25 years of experience across the private, public and social sectors. Prior to joining the Centre, Christy founded Asia P3 Hub, a multi-sector partnership hub hosted by World Vision International, whose aim is to tackle effects of poverty and collectively create solutions to benefit families and communities.
Immediately following the 2004 Asian tsunami, Christy made the jump from the corporate to humanitarian sector, working with UNDP as a private-sector partnership advisor. She has come to be an enthusiastic proponent of traditional and unconventional collaborations and “combinatorial innovation”, where each stakeholder brings to the table their unique assets. She believes that when combined in new ways, this co-creation approach can yield innovations to solve existing problems.
Christy was part of the first cohort to graduate from the Singapore Management University’s Master of Tri-Sector Collaboration in 2015, and also holds an Executive MBA from Sasin Graduate School of Business Administration, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Originally from the US, she has made her home across four countries in the Asia Pacific for 30 years.
Margie Warrell
Best-selling Author, International Speaker on Courage in Leadership, and Media Commentator
Best-selling Author, International Speaker on Courage in Leadership, and Media Commentator. Margie Warrell is on a mission to embolden people to lead more bravely and create a more courageous, equitable world.
Margie’s insights on courageous leadership have been shaped by her work background in Fortune 500 business, coaching and psychology along with her work with trailblazing leaders from Richard Branson to Bill Marriott and organizations such as Google, NASA and the United Nations Foundation. Due to complete her PhD in the interplay of gender, power and leadership this month, Margie is an honoree of the Women’s Economic Forum and Ambassador for Women in Global Business who is a passionate advocate for the advancement of women in leadership.
A board member of Forbes School of Business & Technology and sought after global speaker, Margie has learned a lot about over-coming fear and navigating uncertainty since her childhood growing up on a small farm in rural Australia. Due to relocate from Singapore to Washington DC this December, Margie walks her talk when it comes to living bravely, most recently summiting Mt Kilimanjaro with her husband and their four children. Margie’s released her fifth book on the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic You’ve Got This! The Life-Changing Power of Trusting Yourself.
Jonathan Hursh
Founding Partner
Utopia
Jonathan Hursh is the Founding Partner of Utopia, an urban innovation group for emerging cities. Utopia aims to build the urban ecosystem for emerging cities and their slums by establishing a network of CITYLabs across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Jonathan is an advisory board member of Harvard’s Master of Design Engineering program, an advisory board member of the World Economic Forum’s Urbanization Initiative, and a recipient of the World Economic Forum’s Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Anupam Yog
Advisor, Global Cultural Districts Network
Anupam Yog is a creative strategist with experience in competitive positioning of countries, cities, destinations and places. Passionate about urban innovation, Anupam is an avid community organizer and champion for walkable cities. He was invited by Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities to join their Young Leaders Group in 2018.
In a career spanning nearly two decades, Anupam has held leadership roles in high growth environments across the public, private & social sectors. He has crafted and implemented global campaigns for Brand India, most notably at the World Economic Forum in Davos, successfully positioning India as the “fastest growing free market democracy”; for Brand London in Beijing, Mumbai and Delhi; and led economic diplomacy & investment marketing initiatives in the UK, EU, USA, Japan, Brazil, China and ASEAN. He has also successfully helped launch Virtuous Retail, an institutional property development company that owns and operates a portfolio of ~ 6 million square feet of branded, community focused, new age retail destinations in major Indian cities.
Anupam was recognized as one of India’s leading urban innovators by Metropolis, World Association of Major Metropolises in “Indian Cities: Managing Urban Growth”. He has been invited to share his vision of alternative urban futures at SAIS – The Johns Hopkins University and the World Bank in Washington DC. He has co-developed and teaches, as guest faculty, an executive education course on ‘Inclusive Citymaking’ at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (NUS) in Singapore.
Leaders must understand how to engage with their communities when uncertainty is high, leveraging collaboration among different sectors to understand and communicate the true effects of the crisis. A strong crisis communication strategy is able to, in real-time, get across the realities of the predicament, addresses emotions and challenges faced in the community, and emphasizes the leadership commitments. It provides necessary information and instils confidence in recovery.
Lauren Sorkin
Executive Director
Global Resilient Cities Network
As Global Resilient Cities Network’s Executive Director, Lauren oversees global efforts to strengthen cities in the face of the complex and interconnected challenges they face. Leading a Team of urban resilience professionals in London, Mexico City, New York, and Singapore in collaboration with Chief Resilience Officers in 40 countries, her work builds on the unique capacity, breadth and legacy of the 100 Resilient Cities Program to enhance the resilience of communities and critical infrastructure. She also serves as an advisor and spokesperson on urban resilience, sustainable finance, climate risk, stakeholder engagement, and urbanization trends.
Previously with the Asian Development Bank, Lauren led the Bank’s first ever climate change investment plan before moving to the ADB’s Vietnam Office to mainstream climate risks and opportunities in the country’s US$7 billion portfolio. Before joining the ADB, she led knowledge management efforts for two USAID programs: the Eco-Asia Clean Development and Climate Program in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam; and the Initiative for Conservation in the Andean Amazon in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. She has published work on biofuels, climate change, infant mortality and HIV/AIDS.
Lauren holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Tufts University and a Master of Science in Environment and Development from the London School of Economics. She is also a certified holistic health counselor and yoga instructor. She speaks fluent Spanish and Hebrew.
Craig Kesson
Chief Resilience Officer
Cape Town
As Executive Director of Corporate Services Craig’s portfolio is broad. 11 directors report to Craig with a complement of 2,000 staff and total operating budget of US$150 million. Craig is also the Chief Data Officer and Chief Resilience Officer for the organization. In the latter role Craig led the strategic responses to the Cape Town water crisis in 2017 and COVID-19 in 2020. Recently, this includes the economic recovery programme for the City.
Nadine Burbar
Deputy Chief Resilience Officer, Ramallah
Nadine Burbar is the Deputy Chief Resilience Officer and Head of Strategic Planning and Local Economic Development for the Ramallah Municipality in Palestine. In this role she is responsible for developing the strategic development and investment plan, as well assessing municipal performance. She works to execute public private partnerships and liaise with city stakeholders to ensure engagement and active partnership. She also manages a portfolio of investment projects. Prior to her work at the city, Nadine was with an internet service provider, Mada Al Arab. In her marketing role here she set the scope, implementation, management and review of internet campaigns. She’s a researcher, a marketing expert, and city practitioner with a master’s degree in competitiveness and innovation from the Universidad de Deusto. As well as Bachelor degree in business administration from Birzeit University.
Dr. Reuben Abraham
CEO, IDFC Institute
Reuben Abraham is CEO of IDFC Foundation and IDFC Institute, a Mumbai based think/do tank focused on state capability and political economy issues. He is a non-resident scholar at the Marron Institute at New York University, and a senior fellow at the Milken Institute in Singapore. In addition, he is a Senior Advisor to Swiss Re and an Honorary Advisor to the New Zealand government at the New Zealand Asia Foundation.
Before IDFC, he was a professor and Executive Director of the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions (CEMS) at the top-ranked Indian School of Business (ISB). In 2012, he was named to Wired Magazine’s “Smart List 2012: 50 people who will change the world.” In 2013 and 2016, he was a Fellow at the Legatum Institute in London. He was selected as a Young Global Leader for 2009 by the World Economic Forum, where he currently serves as vice-chair of the South Asia regional board, and on the Global Futures Council on The Future of Cities and Urbanisation.
He is a member on the boards of India’s Centre for Civil Society; Advocata, a Sri Lankan think tank; THNK, The Amsterdam School of Creative Leadership; Climate Policy Foundation India; and on the investment committee of Endiya Partners, an Indian deep-tech venture fund. Recently, he joined the steering committee of GSM Association’s (GSMA) Interact Group. For a decade, he served as an independent director at the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF) in New York, a global impact investing pioneer. He was also a long-serving member of the International Advisory Board of Unicredit Bank, Italy’s largest bank. He completed his M.A., M.Phil and Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York
In midst of a crisis, it’s too late to begin developing a communications plan. It is necessary that leadership, be it government or private sector leaders, develop a system to communicate ahead of a crisis. Constituents expect more preparation and guidance than ever in the face of impending disasters, with more demands on the public sector to be prepared for the risk of pandemic, natural hazards, and disruption of general service.
We saw, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, that those governments with a systems response plan in place, that had engaged in scenario-building based on past learnings, had built trust in the government, and with communities with a deeply-ingrained sense of civic responsibility, have weathered the storm best.
Dr. Olivia Jensen
Lead Scientist
LRF Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk, National University of Singapore
Dr Olivia Jensen is a social scientist specialising in water and environmental policy with a focus on urban Asia. She joined IPUR in 2018 as Lead Scientist overseeing the Institute’s work related to Environment and Climate. She holds a joint appointment as Senior Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy’s Institute of Water Policy, where she has worked from 2014.
Dr Jensen’s research is concerned with the spectrum of urban environmental risks and the design and evaluation of policy interventions to strengthen the resilience of urban communities. Her current projects include water risk governance in Asian mega-cities; the role of citizen science in assessing and managing environmental risks; and the design of effective communication strategies for risk management in areas of high vulnerability and high exposure to flood risks.
Jo Ivey Boufford
Dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
Jo Ivey Boufford, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Global Health at the New York University School of Global Public Health and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine. She is President Emeritus of The New York Academy of Medicine and Immediate Past President of the International Society for Urban Health (2017-9). She served as Dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University from June 1997 to November 2002. Prior to that, she served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from November 1993 to January 1997, and as Acting Assistant Secretary from January 1997 to May 1997. While at HHS, she was the U.S. representative on the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) from 1994–1997. She served in a variety of senior positions in and as President of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), the largest municipal system in the United States, from December 1985 until October 1989. In NYC, she currently serves on the Board of the United Hospital Fund, is Vice Chair of the NYS Public Health and Health Planning Council (PHHPC) and Chair of its Public Health Committee. Nationally, she is on the Boards of the National Hispanic Health Foundation and the Health Effects Institute. She was elected to membership in the US National Academy of Medicine (formerly IOM) in 1992, served on its Board on Global Health, and served two four year terms as its Foreign Secretary from 2003 to 2011, She was elected to membership of the National Academy of Public Administration in 2015. She is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. Dr. Boufford attended Wellesley College for two years and received her BA (Psychology) magna cum laude from the University of Michigan, and her MD, with distinction, from the University of Michigan Medical School. She is Board Certified in pediatrics.
Prof Vernon Lee
Director, Communicable Diseases
Ministry of Health, Singapore
Vernon Lee is a public health physician and has research interests in infectious diseases epidemiology and public health preparedness. He is an adjunct associate professor at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, performing infectious diseases research to facilitate policy decision making. His early research work explored the cost-effectiveness of strategies to reduce the impact of influenza pandemics on local populations including the use of anti-viral drugs. Since then, he has performed numerous research studies on influenza including the impact of epidemics and pandemics in tropical regions, the effectiveness of epidemiological and clinical surveillance systems in detecting epidemics, and the effectiveness of various interventions in reducing the impact of disease. Apart from his research interests, Vernon has had broad experience in policy making which he uses his research to influence in a drive towards evidence-based policy. He has worked in various positions in the Singapore government, including as head of the Singapore Armed Forces Biodefense Center where he was in-charge of preparedness, surveillance, and response to biological threats. He frequently contributes to WHO expert working groups on infectious diseases epidemiology, preparedness, and research.
Dr Lee graduated from medical school at the National University of Singapore and is a Fellow of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore. He also holds a PhD from the Australian National University, and the Master in Public Health, and Master of Business Administration degrees from the Johns Hopkins University, USA
David Groisman
General Director of Strategic Management and Chief Resilience Officer, Buenos Aires
Chief Resilience Officer of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Economist, and specialist in public policies and urban resilience, and Agustin Botteron, Head of the Resilience Office of Santa Fe, Argentina, Civil Engineer (UTN-FRSF), MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering (Tufts University), with a specialty in water resources.