Penn IUR's 21st Annual Urban Leadership Forum: Guiding Urban Futures in Uncertain Times celebrated the 2026 Nussdorf awardees.
The 2026 Lawrence C. Nussdorf Urban Leadership Prize recognizes leaders who are guiding cities around the globe toward a resilient, sustainable, and equitable future. Their accomplishments and forward thinking are paving the way for today and tomorrow’s cities.
Kate Gallego
Mayor of Phoenix, Arizona
Mayor Kate Gallego, W’12, has made Phoenix a global leader in bioscience, technology, research, advanced manufacturing, and climate resiliency. Under her leadership, Phoenix is one of the most sustainable desert cities in the United States, and she spends every day focusing on getting things done for the people of Phoenix. Under her leadership, Phoenix established the nation’s first Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, brought the largest direct foreign investment in American history—$165 billion from TSMC for advanced semiconductor manufacturing—to Phoenix, prioritized smart water use, built new critical infrastructure, and Phoenix has become a safer, more affordable, and more sustainable city.
Mayor Gallego is the second elected female Mayor in Phoenix history and one of the youngest big city Mayors in the United States. A graduate of Harvard University, she earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Josué Tanaka
Principal Finance Advisor, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group
Dr. Josué Tanaka is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the LSE Grantham Research Institute, an Honorary Senior Fellow in Climate Finance at Imperial College, and Principal Finance Advisor at C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.
Dr. Tanaka has been working on development, environmental, and urban finance for more than 40 years, starting in Brazil and then at the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). At the World Bank, he worked on the strategic planning team, served as a special assistant to the President, and developed the Environmental Program for the Mediterranean. At the EBRD, he launched the municipal and environmental infrastructure team. He is the founding leader of the EBRD climate finance initiative, leading, under his tenure between 2006 and 2020, to cumulative EBRD green finance reaching over USD 42 billion across close to 2,000 climate change mitigation and adaptation projects. In 2016, he launched EBRD’s flagship €3 billion Green Cities program, currently involving 46 cities across three continents, to which the bank recently committed another €3 billion.
Dr. Tanaka holds a PhD and MSc from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BSE from Princeton University.
2026 STUDENT AWARDEES
We also recognized three undergraduate students, Stefan Hatch, C’26, Layla Sayed, C’26, and Yeeun Yoo, C’26, with the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Student Award, for their dedication to studying critical urban issues during their time at Penn.
Please note: Claudio Orrego Larraín, Governor of Chile’s Metropolitan Region of Santiago, now has a conflict and is unable to attend the program.
Providing expert commentary on urban topics and highlighting Penn IUR's research in the context of pressing urban issues.
