Event Recap
On April 11, Penn IUR hosted its 15th annual Urban Leadership Forum, “Just and Inclusive Cities,” presenting awards to Egbert Perry, Co-Founder, Chair, and CEO of Integral, and Mauricio Rodas, Mayor of Quito, Ecuador. The Urban Leadership Award recognizes exemplary thinkers who have demonstrated the vision to revitalize urban centers, respond to urban crises, and champion urban sustainability in the United States and around the globe.
The event included an introduction by Eugénie Birch, Co-Director, Penn IUR, followed by the awardees’ remarks and a moderated discussion with Susan Wachter, Co-Director, Penn IUR. The awards were presented by Amy Gutmann, President, University of Pennsylvania, and Wendell Pritchett, Provost, University of Pennsylvania.
Egbert Perry, who founded Integral in 1993 with a mission to create value in cities and build/rebuild the fabric of communities, has helped the company become a premier provider of sustainable real estate and community solutions in mature and emerging markets across the United States and internationally. With Integral in the mid-1990s, he built Centennial Place, transforming the site of the first public housing project in the U.S. into the country’s first mixed-income development. From 2001–2008, he served on the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and from 2014–2018 he served as Chairman of the Board of Fannie Mae.
Mauricio Rodas was mayor of Quito, Ecuador, from 2014 to 2019, and at the time of taking office was the youngest mayor in the city’s history. During his time in office, he oversaw the construction of Ecuador’s first subway system, initiated a plan to bring zero-emissions transit into Quito’s Old City, the world’s first UNESCO site, and incorporated more than 20 informal settlements into the official map of the city. As a board member of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, he committed Quito to the Paris Climate Accord, helped craft the Bonn-Fiji Commitment of Local and Regional Leaders at COP23, and spearheaded the efforts of the Global Covenant of Mayors to integrate local authorities into national climate investment plans. He hosted Habitat III, the United Nations Conference of Urban Sustainable Development, in Quito in 2016 and launched the Global Climate City Challenge in 2017.
