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Cities So Equitable

Cities So Shared & Cities So Forward

Saturday, October 23, 2021

11:00 am - 2:30 pm PST

Cities So Shared

The city of the future offers sustainable spaces and modes of transportation fitting its diverse communities, including women’s unique travel needs and patterns. Join us to learn about the intersection of urban planning, mobility, climate change, and gender equality.

Leaders and experts from the technology, mobility, design, construction, and public sectors will share their insight and leading conversations and activities with the goal to innovate our future shared spaces and how we travel them.

Cities So Forward

The city of the future runs on a Caring Economy whereby women and men have equal opportunities to participate in the workforce, and livable wages are enjoyed by all. In this economy, childcare and eldercare are recognized as critical parts of the city’s infrastructure.
 
Leaders, experts, and activists from the business, public, and nonprofit sectors will join us to workshop this city and discuss best practices to enable gender-based budgeting and address the structural barriers preventing women and girls from accessing critical programs and services.

Our
Speakers

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KEYNOTE

Katherine Gifford

Senior Policy Specialist, Governance and National Planning, UN Women

Katherine Gifford is a Policy Specialist in Governance and National Planning with UN Women. She has more than 15 years of experience in international and domestic policy and programmatic work. Since 2011, Ms. Gifford has provided on-demand technical assistance on gender responsive budgeting (GRB), including for sectoral and local implementation. She has delivered regional and national capacity strengthening in Africa and Asia-Pacific and spearheaded work with UN partners on mainstreaming gender equality in national financing frameworks. She has led monitoring and evaluation, indicator development and data collection and analysis, including for sustainable development goal targets.

KEYNOTE

Nury Martinez

Los Angeles City Council President

Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez is the first Latina Council President in the City’s 170-year U.S. history. The proud daughter of working-class immigrants, Martinez is a glass-ceiling shattering leader who brings a families-first and Women’s Rights advocacy to her efforts on behalf of the families in the Sixth Council District and City of Los Angeles. Martinez created the largest renters relief program in the country, helped lead the effort to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in the City of Los Angeles, created a task force and increased efforts to help women caught in the nightmare of human trafficking, and championing Paid Parental Leave for City workers and Angelenos Citywide. Martinez’ “Green New Deal” is focused on Environmental Justice first and foremost for low-income, people-of-color communities that historically suffer from polluted air, water and land, more than other affluent communities.

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KEYNOTE

Nithya Raman

Los Angeles City Councilmember (4th District)

Nithya Raman is an urban planner, community advocate, and mother of two. This past year, Nithya served as executive director of Time’s Up Entertainment, the women’s rights movement furthering equity and safety for women in the entertainment industry. Under Nithya’s leadership, the team launched a critics database, a mentorship program for the executive and producer pipeline, Know your Rights resources related to sexual misconduct in the workplace, and created regular opportunities to strengthen community building. Nithya holds a Masters degree in urban planning from MIT and an undergraduate degree from Harvard. She lives in Silver Lake with her husband and twin preschoolers.

PANELIST

Anna Marie Cruz 

Founder of and Chief Elevate-Her Officer at Entrepinayship

Anna Marie Cruz is the founder of and Chief Elevate-Her Officer at Entrepinayship, which advances Filipina entrepreneurship as a tool for self-determination. As an immigrant from the Philippines, Cruz is passionate about the intersection of social impact and business and its application to poverty reduction. Cruz is also Western Regional Manager at the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), delivering capacity-building training to small businesses in under-resourced communities across the U.S.

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PANELIST

Madeline Brozen

Deputy Director, Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies

Madeline Brozen is the Deputy Director for the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and a transportation researcher. Her research focuses on the transportation needs for marginalized and vulnerable populations and how transportation connects people to opportunity. Focusing on collaborative research approaches, Madeline’s research tackles intersectional issues in transportation equity at the confluence of race/ethnicity, income, gender, age, and geography.

PANELIST

Estelle Reyes

Senior Vice President, Enhancing Community @ Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI)

Estelle is the Senior Vice President, Enhancing Community at Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), where she focuses on creating pathways for underrepresented groups to participate in the green economy. She collaborates with her team to recruit and support promising diverse cleantech entrepreneurs, provide workforce development training to build a diverse talent pipeline for the growing green job market, and launch cleantech pilots in disadvantaged communities.

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PANELIST

Paty Rios

Executive Director, New Cities Foundation

Paty is a global leader in promoting inclusion and wellbeing through the design of the city. She is an experienced speaker, published writer, and research specialist. She believes in the power of interdisciplinary engagement and works towards creating safe spaces where all voices can be recognized as part of the decision-making process. Paty is currently the Executive Director at NewCities Foundation. She has an interdisciplinary background in architecture, urban design, ethnography, and public policy.

VIDEO SPEAKER

Amanda Janoo

Knowledge and Policy Lead,
WEAll (Wellbeing Economy Alliance)

Amanda Janoo is the Knowledge and Policy Lead for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEALL). Amanda is an economic policy expert with over a decade of experience working with governments and international development institutions around the world. Her work aims to build just and sustainable economies through goal-oriented and participatory policy design processes.

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VIDEO SPEAKER

Jean Guo

Executive Director, Konexio

Jean Guo is the CEO and co-founder of Konexio, a social startup that promotes the socio-economic inclusion of vulnerable populations, including refugees and the young and unemployed, by offering quality training in digital skills.

HOST

Sean Hill

Actor | Poet | Host | Human

An award winning multidisciplinary artist & humanitarian with the focus of supporting universal inner & outer peace in a realistic, fun, & passionate way.  A SAG actor, spoken word artist and TED speaker, he also hosts events while giving writing workshops for colleges or high schools sharing the fun, healing and creative power of poetry. No matter the stage, he reminds us we're all vulnerably, infinitely, beautifully human.  Supporter of gender equality, human rights, animal rights, and global education, so much so, he helped build two gender equal schools in Malawi & Nepal.

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Schedule

Schedule

11:00 AM
Welcome, icebreaker, introduction
11:15 PM
Keynote speakers
12:00 PM
Q&A, break
1:00 PM
Panel discussions
2:00 PM
Panel Q&A
2:15 PM
Closing Remarks

All times are in Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8)

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