Penn IUR Announces Recipients of 15th Annual Urban Leadership Awards

The Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR) is proud to announce the recipients of its 15th annual Urban Leadership Awards, which recognize leaders who are guiding cities toward a sustainable and vibrant future. The 2019 awardees are Egbert Perry, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of the Atlanta-based company Integral, and Mauricio Rodas, Mayor of Quito, Ecuador.

The Annual Penn IUR Urban Leadership Awards recognize 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. This year’s awardees exemplify true urban visionaries and the transformative effects such leaders can have on the fabric of the cities in which they work.

Penn IUR will honor Mr. Perry and Mr. Rodas’s accomplishments on April 11th at its 15th annual Urban Leadership Forum entitled “Just & Inclusive Cities.” The event will include 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 will be presented by Amy Gutmann President, University of Pennsylvania and Wendell Pritchett, Provost, University of Pennsylvania.

All media interested in attending the award event on April 11th can contact Deborah Lang at dlang@upenn.edu or 215.880.2372.

About the 2019 Awardees

Egbert Perry is Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Integral, an Atlanta-based company founded in 1993 with a mission to create value in cities and (re)build the fabric of communities. He has helped Integral become a premier provider of sustainable real estate and community solutions in mature and emerging markets across the United States and internationally, with offices in four other cities and subsidiaries in the community development, commercial real estate, investment management, property management, and program management fields. He has been a community development, commercial real estate, and construction professional since 1979, and has developed and/or built most project types, including residential, office, retail, institutional, and mixed-use projects. From early 1980 to late 1992, he helped grow an Atlanta-based real estate and construction company into the nation’s third largest African-American owned business, with annual revenues of about $200 million. With Integral in the mid-1990s, he helped transform the site of the first public-housing project in the U.S. into the country’s first mixed-income development, which included early childhood and K-12 education facilities; health, wellness, and recreation facilities; and mixed-income rental and ownership housing. He also helped create the legal, regulatory, and financial model that made it possible to incorporate public-housing eligible units into mixed-income housing developments. 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, the nation’s largest financial institution by assets. He received a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Mauricio Rodas is the Mayor of Quito, Ecuador, an office he has held since 2014, when he became the youngest mayor in the capital city’s history. He is also currently World Co-President of the United Cities and Local Governments Organization. He serves as a member of the boards of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. He is a Young Global Leader and member of the Future Global Council of Cities and Urbanization of the World Economic Forum. He is founder of Fundación Ethos, a Latin American think tank based in Mexico that develops responsible government models and projects on social and environmental policy. He has worked as a consultant in public policy for several ministries of the Mexican government, and has participated in the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago de Chile and Mexico City. He has written for Foreign Policy, Letras Libres, PODER Magazine, and Diario Reforma, and has appeared as an analyst on CNN, Televisa, and TV Azteca. He holds a Juris Doctor from Universidad Católica de Quito and Master’s degrees in Government Administration and Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

About the Penn IUR Urban Leadership Award

Since 2005, Penn IUR has recognized innovators in urban affairs through the Urban Leadership Award. Past recipients include: Elizabeth Julian is Founder and Senior Counsel of the Dallas-based Inclusive Communities Project, Rose Molokoane, Deputy President, Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) and National Coordinator, South Africa Alliance and the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP); Victor Santiago Pineda, President, World ENABLED and Adjunct Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California-Berkeley; Michael Nutter, Former Mayor of Philadelphia; Renée Lewis Glover, Chair, Board of Directors, Habitat for Humanity International, and Former President and CEO, Atlanta Housing Authority; Martin O’Malley, Governor of Maryland, Sister Mary Scullion and Joan Dawson McConnon, co-founders of Project HOME Joan Clos, Executive Director of UN-HABITAT and former Mayor of Barcelona, Spain; Yael Lehmann, Executive Director of The Food Trust; Ridwan Kamil, Founder and Principal of Urbane Indonesia; Derek R.B. Douglas, Vice President for Civic Engagement, University of Chicago and former Special Assistant to President Barack Obama, White House Domestic Policy Council; Paul Levy, President and CEO, Philadelphia’s Center City District; Lily Yeh, Global Artist and Founder, Barefoot Artists; Raphael Bostic, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Jane Golden, Executive Director, City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program; Shirley Franklin, Mayor, City of Atlanta, GA; Parris Glendening, President, Smart Growth Leadership Institute, and former Governor, Maryland; Bruce Katz, Vice President and Founding Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, The Brookings Institution; William Hudnut III, Senior Fellow Emeritus, Urban Land Institute, and former Mayor, Indianapolis, IN; Joseph P. Riley, Jr., Mayor, City of Charleston, SC; and Donna Shalala, President, University of Miami and former Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

About Penn IUR

The Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR) is dedicated to advancing cross-disciplinary urban-focused research, instruction, and civic engagement on issues relevant to cities around the world. As the global population becomes increasingly urban, understanding cities is vital to informed decision-making and public policy at the local, national, and international levels. Penn IUR focuses on research that informs the sustainable and inclusive twenty-first-century city. By providing a forum for collaborative scholarship and instruction at Penn and beyond, Penn IUR stimulates research and engages with urban practitioners and policymakers to inform urban policy.