Moderators
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Ms Patricia Clarke Annez |
Patricia Clarke Annez, currently based in Delhi, India, is the Research Director for the “Making Cities Work for the Growth Project” and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Earlier, she was at the World Bank as the Urban Advisor, in the World Bank’s Finance Research and Policy Department, in Operations in several regions, and as chief of the Urban Division. Ms. Annez has also worked as an economic and financial advisor for ABB in Canada and for U.S. corporate clients in New York. She recently published Urbanization and Growth, co-edited with A. Michael Spence and Robert Buckley (2009: World Bank), Lessons for the Urban Century: Decentralized Infrastructure Finance in the World Bank (co-authored with Gwenaélle Huet and George E. Peterson (World Bank: 2008) and Financing Cities: Fiscal Responsibility and Urban Infrastructure in Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Poland (Sage: 2007), co- edited with George E. Peterson. Ms. Annez holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Mr Ira C. Magaziner |
Ira C. Magaziner currently serves as the Chairman of the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative. He is also on the board of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation and the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative.
Prior to his White House appointment, Mr. Magaziner earned respect as one of America's most successful corporate strategists, building two successful corporate strategy consulting firms and assisting major corporations in developing their business strategies. Prior to forming his own companies, he worked in Boston, London and Tokyo for the Boston Consulting Group.
He also served as co-chairman of the National Commission on Skills of the American Workforce with former Labor Secretaries Bill Brook and Ray Marshall, co-authoring the landmark report "America's Choice - High Skills or Low Wages." Mr. Magaziner graduated in 1960 as valedictorian from Brown University and attended Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He has received honorary doctorate degrees from Brown University, the University of Rhode Island, the University of Maryland and the New England Institute of Technology.
Mr. Magaziner has served on the boards of numerous charitable and educational organisations nationally and in his home state of Rhode Island.
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Mr Toshiyasu Noda |
Mr. Toshi Noda is the Director of UN-HABITAT's Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, where he is responsible for overseeing agency's regional activities covering broad and multifaceted aspects of human settlements, ranging from poverty alleviation, to localizing the MDGs, to post-disaster and post-conflict reconstruction.
A Japanese national, Mr. Noda obtained his Master's degree in Environmental Planning from Hokkaido University in 1979. He specializes in environmental planning and management, disaster preparedness and management, and development planning at both community and national levels. He joined the National Land Agency (currently Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism), in the Prime Minister's Office of the Government of Japan, where he supervised a number of critical national planning policies including national development plans, land use administration and establishment of national information systems on disaster prevention and management. He has held Chief and Directorship positions in the Human Settlements Coordination and Disaster Preparedness and Coordination Divisions, most recently serving as the Director for National Planning Division, National and Regional Planning Bureau, MLIT, where he was responsible for the establishment of the Integrated National Development Plan.
During his career with the Government of Japan, he was dispatched to key positions and committees in a number of international organizations including UNCHS-HABITAT (1983-1985), UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva (1989-1992), and UN-HABITAT (2002-2004). In September 2006, Mr. Noda was appointed Director of Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, UN-HABITAT.
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Mr Ong Keng Yong |
Mr Ong Keng Yong is Ambassador-At-Large in the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and Singapore's Non-Resident Ambassador to Iran. He is concurrently Director of the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He was Secretary-General of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) from January 2003 to January 2008. He started his diplomatic career in the MFA from June 1979 and was posted to the Singapore Embassies in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and the United States of America. He was Singapore's Ambassador to India and Nepal from 1996 to 1998. From September 1998 to December 2002, he was Press Secretary to the then Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr Goh Chok Tong. At the same time, Mr Ong held senior appointments in the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, and the People's Association in Singapore.
Mr Ong was educated at the Anglo-Chinese School and St Andrew's School in Singapore. He graduated from the then University of Singapore with a LLB (Hons) and the Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA) with a MA in Arab Studies. In 2008, he was Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre on Contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus in the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Mr Ong was awarded the Public Administration Medal (Silver) in 1997, the Long Service Medal in 2002 and the Meritorious Service Medal in 2008 by the Singapore Government. He also received the Medal of Friendship of the Lao People's Democratic Republic in 2007, and the Medal of Sahametrei of the Kingdom of Cambodia in 2007.
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Mr Joshua Cooper Ramo |
Joshua Cooper Ramo is Managing Director at Kissinger Associates, a strategic advisory firm. He is the youngest Managing Director in the history of the firm. Prior to entering the advisory business, Ramo was a journalist. He was the youngest Senior Editor and Foreign Editor in the history of TIME Magazine. Among his nearly two-dozen time cover stories were the 1997 Man of the Year profile of Andy Grove and an award-winning profile of Kofi Annan.
Ramo, a Mandarin speaker, divides his time between Beijing and New York City. The World Economic Forum has called him "one of China's leading foreign-born scholars." His papers have been widely distributed in China and abroad.
Trained as an economist, Ramo was raised in Los Ranchos, New Mexico. He has been, among other things, a Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Asia21 Leaders Program, a member of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders and Global Leaders for Tomorrow, an advisory board member of the Leaders Project and co-founder of the US-China Young Leaders Forum. He has spent two sabbaticals working at AIDS hospices in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. An avid pilot, Ramo has written a book, No Visible Horizon, about his experiences as a competitive aerobatic pilot. Ramo holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and a masters degree from New York University. His forthcoming book of geo-strategy will be published in seven languages in 2009.
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Mr Tay Kim Poh |
Tay Kim Poh has been the Chief Executive Officer of the Housing & Development Board (HDB), Singapore’s public housing authority, since June 2006. An engineer by training, Mr Tay held key appointments in his 20-year career with HDB, namely the posts of Chief Estate Administration & Property Officer, and Deputy CEO of the Estates & Corporate Groups.
From 2004 to 2006, Mr Tay was seconded to Singapore’s Ministry of National Development as its second deputy secretary overseeing the Housing and Strategic Planning Divisions.
Mr Tay was awarded a scholarship by Singapore’s civil service and graduated from the University of Singapore with first class honors in mechanical engineering. He also holds master degrees in industrial engineering and business administration.
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Dr John Keung Kam Yin |
Prior to his current appointment at BCA, Dr Keung has served as Deputy Chief Executive Officer (Building) of the Housing & Development Board (HDB) overseeing the planning and development of new towns and public housing estates, as Director of Strategic Planning in the Ministry of National Development, as Deputy Chief Planner (Planning Policies) in the Urban Redevelopment Authority and later, as its Deputy Chief Executive Officer (Development Control and Corporate Development).
Dr Keung is an Adjunct Professor, Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore (NUS). He graduated from the York University, Canada in 1978 and subsequently obtained a Master of Science (Town Planning) in 1980 and a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Wales, UK in 1991. He also completed the Advanced Management Programme (AMP) at INSEAD, France in 1997.
Dr Keung is a Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Planners (FSIP) and a Chartered Town Planner and a Corporate Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (MRTPI). He was awarded the Public Administration Medal (Silver) by the Singapore Government in 1992 for his contribution to public administration.
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Mr Barry Wain |
Barry Wain, author of the best-selling Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times, is Writer-in-Residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. A former editor of the The Asian Wall Street Journal, he has lived in Asia for 38 years, working as a reporter, columnist and news executive in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.
Barry began his journalistic career in Australia – in radio and television and on a weekly newspaper, before joining the national daily, The Australian, in 1965. As the paper’s Defence Correspondent, he covered Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War.
Relocating to Asia in 1971, Barry worked for the Far Eastern Economic Review as an Associate Editor before joining the founding staff of The Asian Wall Street Journal in 1976. He served successively as the paper’s Malaysia Correspondent (based in Kuala Lumpur), Diplomatic Correspondent (Bangkok), Managing Editor, Editor and Editor-at-Large (Hong Kong) and Southeast Asia Correspondent (Singapore).
It was while working as the Journal’s Malaysia correspondent from 1977 to 1979 that Barry first encountered Dr. Mahathir, the subject of his political biography. Since its publication in December by Palgrave Macmillan in the UK, Malaysian Maverick has been reprinted four times. It was on the (Singapore) Sunday Times’ best-seller list for 11 weeks.
Barry’s first book was The Refused, a study of the post-Vietnam War refugee exodus from Indochina, which was published in New York by Simon & Schuster in 1982. He is currently working on a book on Southeast Asia since World War II, tracking the transition of countries “from mayhem to markets”.
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Mr Alfonso Vegara |
Alfonso Vegara is President of the Fundación Metrópoli, Trustee of the Eisenhower Fellowships and Honorary Consul of Singapore in Spain. He has taught architecture and planning at the Universities of Madrid, Navarra and Pennsylvania and co-founded Taller de Ideas in 1987. He has been advisor to the Government of Singapore on the One-North Project, as well as to the Curitiba and Dublin Local governments. From 2002-2005 was President of ISOCARP, The International Society of City and Regional Planners.
Barry’s first book was The Refused, a study of the post-Vietnam War refugee exodus from Indochina, which was published in New York by Simon & Schuster in 1982. He is currently working on a book on Southeast Asia since World War II, tracking the transition of countries “from mayhem to markets”.
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Dr Remo Burkhard |
Dr. Remo Aslak Burkhard is the Managing Director of the new Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (“SEC”). This new centre will serve as an intellectual hub for research, scholarship, entrepreneurship and postgraduate/postdoctoral training and shall engage researchers with industry to facilitate technology transfer for the benefit of the public. The first research programme in this centre will be the “Future Cities Laboratory” programme. It will start operations in September 2010.
At the ETH Zurich, Remo Burkhard wrote a PhD thesis on Knowledge Visualization and new visual innovations to manage complexity. He studied architecture at ETH Zurich with a specialization in urban design. Remo Burkhard is a Sun Certified Java Programmer. In his spare time he is currently studying for the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) Program Level I.
Remo Burkhard is an internationally recognized scientist in the area of knowledge visualization and specialized in the use of visualization techniques for the reduction of complexity, the increase of efficiency by using visual management innovations and the simulation of future sustainable cities. His publications include 30+ scientific publications. He organized various international research symposia and three large scientific conferences. He is a regular speaker in companies on topics such as the use of visual thinking and visual management innovations in business.
Remo Burkhard is also working as lecturer and scientist at ETH Zurich, at the chair for Information Architecture (www.ia.arch.ethz.ch). In this position he currently develops a visual multi-touch software for risk management and strategy management. It can ideally be used on multi-touch tables, such as the ones in the ETH Value Lab (www.valuelab.ethz.ch), which is a meeting room of the future, he invented and realized with his team. The ETH Value Lab consists of large interactive multi-touch displays allowing productive stakeholder interaction, which is a key in the planning of sustainable liveable cities. A similar Value Lab Asia is planned to be realized in the Future Cities Laboratory Programme. He was co-author of the ETH Science City Project and involved in the Strategic Planning Process 2008-2011 of ETH Zurich.
Remo Burkhard is also an entrepreneur and co-founder of the Swiss based company “vasp datatecture GmbH” (www.vasp.ch). The company exists for 7 years and has 15 employees, 100 customers and worked on 400 projects. The company has specialized in complexity reduction and visualization projects for banks, governmental agencies, cities and service companies. The company assists clients in reducing complexity and visualizing information, visions, strategies, scenarios, products and services. The company has also done projects for customers based in Singapore.
Previously, he was for 3 years Project Manager at the University of St. Gallen and was consulting industries on knowledge management and interactive digital media. Before, he worked at IBM and at Credit Suisse. |
Professor Tommy Koh |
Tommy Koh is Ambassador-At-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies and the National Heritage Board. He was Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the UN in New York and Ambassador to the United States of America, Canada and Mexico. He was President of the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea and chaired the Earth Summit. He had served as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He was Singapore’s Chief Negotiator for the USA‑Singapore Free Trade Agreement. He chaired two dispute panels for the WTO. Prof Koh received the 2006 Champion of the Earth Award from the United Nations Environment Programme. He also received the inaugural “President’s Award for the Environment” from Singapore. He was conferred the Watermark Honorary Award by the Singapore Public Utilities Board in 2007.
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Ms Grace Fu |
Ms Grace Fu graduated with a Bachelor of Accountancy (Honours) in 1985 and obtained a Masters of Business Administration from the National University of Singapore in 1991. She is a Non-Practising member of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Singapore since 1992.
Ms Fu began her career with the Overseas Union Bank as an Auditor. Between 1991 and 1995, she worked in corporate planning, financial control and business development positions in several entities of the Haw Par Group.
In October 1995, Ms Fu joined the PSA Corporation and took on different responsibilities in finance and marketing. She assumed the position of Financial Controller of PSA Corporation in October 1998.
In April 2003, Ms Fu was appointed the Chief Executive Officer, Singapore Terminals. Before she left the PSA Group, Ms Fu was holding the appointment of Chief Executive Officer, PSA South East Asia and Japan, where she was responsible for the business performance of PSA’s flagship terminals in Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and Japan.
Ms Fu was elected as a Member of Parliament in June 2006 for the Group Representation Constituency of Jurong. On 1 August 2006, Ms Fu was appointed Minister of State for National Development. On 1 April 2008, Ms Fu was promoted to Senior Minister of State, and was appointed in the Ministry of Education, concurrently with her appointment in the Ministry of National Development.
In addition, Ms Fu sits on the boards of the Peoples’ Association and the Chinese Development Assistance Council. Further, she is involved in or has been involved in a number of committees including the Remaking of the HDB Heartland, the Ministerial Committee on Ageing, the Town Council Management Report, the Economic Strategies Committee, the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City and the National Integration Committee.
Ms Fu is also a member of the National Productivity and Continuing Education Council, which oversees the national efforts to improve productivity. Specifically, she is involved in improving the productivity of the construction sector.
Ms Fu is married with three sons and enjoys outdoor activities like rafting, swimming and hiking.
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Ms Bebet Gozun |
Ms Elisea “Bebet” G. Gozun, is the former Secretary (Minister) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the Philippines. In 2007, she was recognized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as the Champion of the Earth for Asia and the Pacific.
An activist who is involved with many environmental NGOs, she has served as a consultant on environmental management and urban development to the World Bank, ADB, USAID, UN Habitat, UNDP and others. She now serves as Consultant for the World Bank Institute’s Carbon Finance Capacity Building for Emerging Megacities in the South, and the World Bank’s Credit Rating Project in the Philippines. She is the Project Director of the Cities Alliance-supported City Development Strategy (CDS) project in the Philippines and a consultant of the Environmental Governance component of the USAID-supported ECO-Asia project for Asia.
She also chairs the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities Partnership Council (CAI-Asia); is a Board Member of the Environment and Economics Programme for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA); and is a member of the Advisory Committee of the ADB and GTZ-assisted City Development Initiatives in Asia (CDIA).
In the Philippines, she chairs the Earth Day Network Philippines, the Earth Council Asia Pacific Philippines and the Philippine Council for Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Inc. She also serves as the Vice President of the Solid Waste Management Association of the Philippines (SWAPP) and the Partnership for Clean Air (PCA).
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Mr Paul Brown |
Mr Paul Brown is a corporate Executive Vice President, a member of the CDM Board of Directors, a member of the firm’s four-person Executive Leadership Team, and serves as the Technical Director of the Neysadurai Centre for Integrated Water Resources and Urban Planning in Singapore. Mr Brown is responsible for directing strategy, marketing, and sales management for CDM worldwide.
Mr Brown has nearly 30 years experience in project development, project finance, and the planning and management of public utilities and environmental facilities. He has also been involved in a number of water resources planning projects heavily emphasizing public stakeholder participation, process facilitation, and multi-objective decision making for clients that include the states of California and Colorado; the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD); the Santa Clara Valley Water District; the Orange County (CA) Sanitation District; and the cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle.
Mr Brown has also served as officer-in-charge of the firm’s privatization and project development group, which completed several environmental facilities privatization projects, including a privatized 18.5-mgd water filtration plant for the City of Scottsdale, Arizona; and the 120-mgd Tolt Treatment Facilities design/build/operate (DBO) project for Seattle Public Utilities, one of the largest municipal DBO projects undertaken in the United States.
A member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), Mr Brown’s educational background includes an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (1982); an MA from the University of Rochester (1973); and a BA from Tufts University (1971). He has served as a member of the Board of Advisors for the four-part PBS series Edens Lost & Found, the Steering Committee for the National Leadership Summits for a Sustainable America, and the Stockholm Industry Water Award Committee. He is co-editor (with Dr Vladimir Novotny) of the book Cities of the Future: Towards Integrated Sustainable Water and Landscape Management, published by IWA; and a contributor to Growing Greener Cities: Urban Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
