shaping a sustainable future society

Sir David Adjaye OBE is the principal and founder of Adjaye Associates. Born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents, his broadly ranging influences, ingenious use of materials and sculptural ability have established him as an architect with an artist’s sensibility and vision.

His largest project to date, the $540 million Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened on the National Mall in Washington DC in fall of 2016 and was named Cultural Event of the Year by The New York Times.

In 2017, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people of the year by TIME magazine.

Amale Andraos is the Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Andraos is committed to design research and her writings have focused on climate change and its impact on architecture as well as on the question of representation in the age of global practice. Her recent publications include We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge (Monacelli Press, 2017), Architecture and Representation: the Arab City (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2015) co-edited with Nora Akawi, 49 Cities (Inventory Press, 2015), and Above the Pavement, the Farm! (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010) in collaboration with Dan Wood.

Andraos is co-founder of WORKac, a New York-based firm that focuses on architectural projects that reinvent the relationship between urban and natural environments. WORKac was recently named the #1 design firm in the United States by Architect Magazine and has also been recognized as the AIA New York State Firm of the Year.

WORKac has achieved international acclaim for projects such as the Miami Museum Garage in Miami’s Design District, The Edible Schoolyards at P.S. 216 in Brooklyn and P.S. 7 in Harlem, a public library for Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, the Stealth Building in New York and a new student center for the Rhode Island School of Design. Current projects include a large-scale residential development in Lebanon, the Beirut Museum of Art in Lebanon, a new public library for North Boulder Colorado and new offices for a headquarter bank in Lima, Peru.

Andraos has taught at numerous institutions including the Princeton University, Harvard University, and the American University in Beirut. She serves on the board of the Architectural League of New York, the AUB Faculty of Engineering and Architecture International Advisory Committee, and the New Museum’s New INC. Advisory Council, in New York.

Simone Barlaam (Milan, July, 12th 2000) grew up in Milan and attended the 4th year of high school in Australia where, in the meanwhile, he has also trained hard.

At the age of 17, he won his first two world swimming titles in Mexico City. In December 2017, he made his debut with the Italian national team at the IPC World Championships in Mexico City. There, he conquered two gold medals in the 50 and 100 meters freestyle, category S9, a silver medal in the 4 × 100 freestyle, mixed relay with 34 points, and a bronze medal in the 100 meters backstroke, category S9. In 2018, he participated in the NSW State Open Championships in Sydney (Australia) where he won 3 gold medals (50-100-400 style) and the World Cup in Lignano Sabbiadoro, during which he set the European record with the time of 25.17. At the World Championships in London 2019, Simone won 6 medals including 5 gold and 1 silver with 4 World Records (in the 50 freestyle S9, 100 freestyle S9, 100 backstroke S9 and in the 4x100 freestyle relay).

Palmares:
• 7 World Gold + 2 silver and 1 bronze
• 4 European gold + 1 silver
• 19 Absolute gold + 8 silver and 2 bronze
• 10 Youth gold + 2 silver

Currently, Simone has passed the selections and has enrolled at the Faculty of Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano. His dream is to create alternative prostheses and new handbikes.

Raffaella is Full Professor at Politecnico di Milano School of Management in the area of People Management & Organization. She is also part of the Core Faculty of the School of Management, is Deputy Director of the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, and sits on the Executive Board of the University’s Graduate School of Business. She is Director of the Food Sustainability Observatory of Politecnico di Milano.

Raffaella is an acclaimed expert on Operations Management and Sustainability. Her main research interests concern Manufacturing and Supply Chain Strategies, with a particular emphasis on the organizational paradigms, models and practices in developing sustainable operations.

Raffaella is the author of several books and over 40 articles published in international journals. She has been honored as Fellow of the European Operations Management Association. She has organized a number of major international conferences and workshops, and has been a member of the “Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness” network since 2010.

Raffaella holds a Master of Science and a PhD in Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering from Politecnico di Milano. 

Mariarosa Cutillo is Chief of the Strategic Partnerships Branch within the Division of Communications and Strategic Partnerships of UNFPA.

Mariarosa brings with her more than 20 years of professional experience, working for the private sector. Before joining UNFPA, she was the Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Benetton Group, as well as President and CEO of Benetton’s UNHATE Foundation. She has served as director of Valore Sociale per l’Impresa Responsabile (a multi stakeholder corporate social responsibility organization). On issues relating to corporate sustainability, she has served as a legal expert for various Institutions. She has also worked extensively for the international non-governmental organization Mani Tese.

Mariarosa was also a professor in International Law Cases in the Faculty of Law of the University of Milan-Bicocca and senior lecturer at the Catholic University of Milan, Faculties of Law and Political and Social Sciences. Mariarosa obtained a degree in Advanced International Law from the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Milan in 1995. She has post-graduate specializations in Human Rights and in business administration, with a specific focus on social and environmental sustainability.

Professor Dhar has been involved in pioneering work in understanding the different factors that influence how consumers think and decide. He has also served as a consultant to dozens of Fortune 100 companies in a wide variety of industries, including CPG, health care, high tech, financial services and luxury goods on developing best practices for generating and using customer insights.

The American Marketing Association recently ranked Professor Dhar as the second most productive scholar publishing in premier marketing journals from 2009 through 2016. His research and teaching has been honored with various awards including the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the Society for Consumer Psychology, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Management, and the Yale School of Management Alumni Association Teaching Award. His work has been frequently mentioned in Business Week, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, USA Today, and other popular media.

Rula Jebreal is a Visiting Professor at The University of Miami, where she teaches Communications and Political Science. Jebreal serves on the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council, a body recently relaunched by French President Emmanuel Macron

Jebreal is an award-winning journalist, author and foreign policy expert who has received accolades for her groundbreaking work in Italy, the United States and across the Middle East. 

In May 2017, Jebreal was enlisted to introduce former President Barak Obama at his first European public appearance since leaving office, at which he gave the keynote speech on food security and climate change, at the Global Innovation Summit.

Jebreal is an on-air foreign policy expert, and she appears frequently on CNN, MSNBC Bloomberg, HBO and NBC; she has written many op-eds for The New York Times and The Washington post, NewsWeek magazine andTIME magazine.

Jebreal served as a Visiting Professor at the American University of Rome (AUR). While at AUR, Jebreal was instrumental in the creation of a scholarship program for Syrian Refugees which currently provides tuition funding to six Syrian students at AUR. 

Recently, Jebreal was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Humanities from The American University Of Rome.Jebreal serves on the Advisory Board of The U.S./Middle East Project by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Kent Larson directs the City Science (formerly Changing Places) group at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on developing urban interventions that enable more entrepreneurial, livable, high-performance districts in cities. To that end, his projects include advanced simulation and augmented reality for urban design, transformable micro-housing for millennials, mobility-on-demand systems that create alternatives to private automobiles, and Urban Living Lab deployments in Hamburg, Andorra, Taipei, and Boston. Larson and researchers from his group received the “10-Year Impact Award” from UbiComp 2014. This is a “test of time” award for work that, with the benefit of hindsight, has had the greatest impact over the previous decade. Larson practiced architecture for 15 years in New York City, with design work published in Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Global Architecture, The New York Times, A+U, and Architectural Digest. The New York Times Review of Books selected his book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks (2000) as one of that year’s ten best books in architectur

Gianni Riotta has been Executive Vice President of the Italy-US Council since January 2018.

Riotta teaches as Pirelli visiting Professor at the Department of Italian and French Studies of Princeton University. He is the Director of the Data Lab at LUISS University and co-director of the Master in Open Government of the LUISS School of Government, dealing in particular with Digital humanities, politics, and cyberwarfare and computer security.

Columnist for La Stampa, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic and host of Rai Storia “Gianni Riotta Incontra”, he was editor of Tg1 Rai and Il Sole 24 Ore, Assistant editor of La Stampa and Il Corriere della Sera and formerly columnist and correspondent from New York for Il Corriere della Sera and L’Espresso.

In 2015, he founded the startup “Catchy” operating with Big Data, policy, culture and society and recently awarded a grant from Google’s Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund to study the phenomenon of false news and two Seal of Excellence of the European Union.

In December 2017, he was nominated as one of the 39 members of the High Level Group of the European Commission against fake news, topic that he also deals with at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Riotta is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the editorial staff of Foreign Policy, and works with the BBC World Service.

Professor Dhar has been involved in pioneering work in understanding the different factors that influence how consumers think and decide. He has also served as a consultant to dozens of Fortune 100 companies in a wide variety of industries, including CPG, health care, high tech, financial services and luxury goods on developing best practices for generating and using customer insights.

The American Marketing Association recently ranked Professor Dhar as the second most productive scholar publishing in premier marketing journals from 2009 through 2016. His research and teaching has been honored with various awards including the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the Society for Consumer Psychology, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Management, and the Yale School of Management Alumni Association Teaching Award. His work has been frequently mentioned in Business Week, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, USA Today, and other popular media.

Jennie partners with marketing faculty fellows at the Center to bring theory into practice via a portfolio of marketing and insights projects with leading corporations.  Her work has included projects in a wide variety of industries, including CPG, tech, snacks & beverages, healthcare and financial services.  

Jennie is interested in the role of emotions in marketing and how the traditional ways that companies communicate to consumers can be re-invented to reflect how consumers actually make decisions. Prior to her role at Yale, Jennie worked in luxury beauty at The Estée Lauder Companies, where she was responsible for driving sales and market share growth of the Clinique brand in North America, leading account strategy for the brand across numerous retailers including Nordstrom, Saks 5th Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Ulta and Sephora.