Dialogue: Heat in the City

Thomson Reuters Foundation

Laurie Goering has for a decade run climate change news coverage for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the Reuters news agency. Her team’s award-winning stories focus on the human impacts of climate change, told from the frontlines in some of the world’s most climate vulnerable – and innovative – countries. She has a particular interest in reporting on heat risks.

Previously she was a Chicago Tribune newspaper correspondent based in New Delhi, Johannesburg, Havana, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and London. She has written on climate change issues for nearly two decades, from dozens of countries.

Link REIT

Calvin Lee Kwan is a passionate believer in using creativity and innovation to advance corporate sustainability in today’s world of high urban density and smart city living. With a D.Env from UCLA and a MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, he possesses a strong foundation in understanding the integrated nature of society, the environment and the challenges of operating a business within their context. He has worked for Link REIT since 2012, in the capacity of General Manager, Corporate Development and Strategy. He is a committee member of United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative’s Investment Committee, co-chair and Asia Pacific representative of the Property Working Group and is a member of the Benchmark Committee of the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark.

New York Institute of Technology / RAVEN Architecture & Urban Design, LLC.

Jeffrey Raven, FAIA, LEED BD+C
Assoc. Professor & Director, Graduate Program in Urban + Regional Design at New York Institute of Technology and Principal of RAVEN Architecture + Urban Design LLC. Co-Chair American Institute of Architects Planning & Urban Design Committee
Specialist in sustainable and resilient urban design whose research is applied in professional practice and disseminated throughout the profession, government and allied disciplines to urban design projects and knowledge transfer.
Publications include Urban Planning & Urban Design – Climate Change and Cities (Cambridge University Press 2018); From Climate Science to Practice, Urban Design & Climate Change, (Urban Design Journal-London 2019), Climate Resilient Urban Design, Resilient Cities (Springer 2011); Shaping Resilient Cities in China, India and the United States (P. Lang 2014), Covid19-Climate Connections for Le Monde (2020) and Cool District Hot City La Revue Urbanisme (2020). Funded research: National Science Foundation EU-USA Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative-Belmont and City-As-Lab RCN.

NYC Mayor's Office of Resiliency

Kizzy Charles-Guzman is a Deputy Director at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Resiliency, leading efforts to strengthen neighborhoods, community organizations, and social infrastructure so that they are ready to withstand and emerge stronger from the impacts of climate change. Kizzy engages in citywide sustainability and resiliency planning efforts to ensure that social, public health and environmental justice priorities are integrated into adaptation plans and environmental policies. She led the development of Cool Neighborhoods NYC, the City’s first comprehensive strategy to address the impacts of rising temperatures and heat waves. She received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 2 Environmental Quality Award and a national Champion of Change Award from the U.S. White House in recognition of her work to protect and enhance environmental quality and public health in New York, and has twice been named “Top 40 under 40 in NY Politics” by City and State New York. She is a graduate of Carleton College and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

C40 Cool Cities Network

Regina Vetter serves as the Network Manager of the Cool Cities Network at C40. In this position, she is responsible for supporting cities globally to manage the urban heat island effect and to implement greening and cooling solutions. Regina also provides technical guidance on climate adaptation aspects of cities’ Climate Action Plans, and facilitates the integration of urban adaptation and mitigation climate solutions