Michael Storper (PhD, Economic Geography, University of California, Berkeley) is an economic geographer who currently holds positions at UCLA, the London School of Economics, and formerly at Sciences Po/Paris. His fields of research are: regional economic development; urbanization; the link between innovation and geographical change; and globalization. He is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed academic articles and ten books, including the widely-cited The Rise and Decline of Urban Economies (Stanford, 2015); Keys to the City (Princeton, 2013), The Regional World: Territory, Technology and Economic Development (Guilford, 1997), Worlds of Production (Harvard, 1997). He received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Utrecht In 2008, the Sir Peter Hall Prize from the Regional Studies Association in 2012, the Founder’s Gold Medal from the Royal Geographical Society in 2016, and the Distinguished Scholarship Honors from the American Association of Geographers in 2017. He holds dual citizenship of the USA and France.

Paul Sutton is a professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Denver. His teaching and research interests are in the area of Ecological Economics, Population Geography, and Sustainability Science.

Dr. Omari H. Swinton is a professor in the Economics department at Howard University where he teaches introductory, intermediate, and urban economics. He is currently the Director of Graduate Studies and Chair. His research interests include labor economics and education. He has papers examining the teenage labor market, the benefits from attending HBCU's, and the returns to a college education. He coauthored a report for NAFEO entitled "The State of Blacks in Higher Education.” He currently is working on projects that examine the returns to effort for students, the obstacles to faculty diversity in higher education, and benefits of attending an HBCU. He is the director of the AEA Summer Training Program and Scholarship Program which has increased diversity in the field of economics by preparing talented undergraduates for doctoral programs in economics and related disciplines. He earned his B.S. from Florida A & M University in 2001, and his doctoral degree from Duke University in 2007. He resides in Upper Marlboro, MD with his wife, Phyllis, and four children, Omari Jr., Nyla, Jamir, and Nasir.

Michelle M. Thompson is an Associate Professor at the University of New Orleans in the Department of Planning & Urban Studies (UNO PLUS). Michelle teaches courses in geographic information systems, community development finance, urban public finance, housing, urban studies and land use planning. She received a Masters’ in Regional Planning'84 and Ph.D.'01 from the Cornell University Department of City and Regional Planning with a focus on community development and spatial analysis using geographic information systems (GIS). Michelle received her Bachelor of Arts in Policy Studies from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs from Syracuse University in 1982. Michelle obtained her Geographic Information Systems Professional certification (GISP) in 2015.

Michelle is also the Principal of Thompson Real Estate Consultants LLC, a real estate research and education firm. Michelle has also worked in both public and private companies related to the finance of residential and commercial real estate. Michelle has a long-term interest in working with community development organizations to provide technical support, market research and evaluation services. Currently Michelle serve as a Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth Senior Data Fellow to evaluate financial wealth of low-impact communities using anonymized and aggregated transaction data.

Dr. Christopher Tucker manages Yale House Ventures, a portfolio of social ventures and technology companies that span the worlds of energy, geospatial, sensor, cyber-security, open source, and social media technologies, across the domains of defense/intelligence, international affairs, civilian government, commercial industry, NGOs, and academe. He is also the Chairman and CEO of The MapStory Foundation and President of the foreign policy advocacy group, Friends of the Arc.

Dr. Tucker was previously Senior VP for the Americas/National Programs at ERDAS and President/CEO of IONIC, a leader in interoperable web-mapping, location based services, imagery management and distributed geoprocessing. He has served on a variety of Boards such as the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, the Open Geospatial Consortium, Open Plans, OpenGeo, the Secretary of Interior’s National Geospatial Advisory Committee, and the Defense Science Board Intelligence Task Force, the DNI’s Intelligence Community Strategic Studies Group, and serves as an Independent Advisor to the Director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). Dr. Tucker served on the National Academy of Science’s Committee on NGA’s GEOINT Research Priorities.

Dr. Tucker was Chief Strategic Officer of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital fund. He was responsible for managing the technical portfolio, issues of organizational design, and relations with the intelligence community, industry and media.

As Special Advisor to the Executive Vice Provost of Columbia University, Dr. Tucker was responsible for a range of issues having to do with strategic institutional development, R&D portfolio management, federal science and technology policy, and the organization of interdisciplinary research. At Columbia, he co-founded the Center for Science, Policy, and Outcomes and has taught courses at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. Dr. Tucker earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. at Columbia University in the City of New York.

Elizabeth (Liz) Williams, PhD is the Director of Data and Policy in the Office of Transportation Planning at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT). She is responsible for coordinating projects and data within and between MassDOT offices and partner agencies and ensuring objectives and strategies are consistent. Liz has fifteen years’ experience in the economic and social policy and research field and previously held positions with the MBTA, the UMass Donahue Institute, the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, and the American Institutes for Research. Liz is trained as an urban sociologist and has a Bachelor’s degree from Clark University, a Master’s degree from George Washington University, and a PhD from Northeastern University.

Maia Woluchem is a Tech Fellow on the Civic Engagement and Government team at the Ford Foundation, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Public Service at the Wagner School of Public Service at NYU, teaching a course on segregation. At Ford, she works across a range of civil society organizations on examining the intersection of technology and civil society. She received her MCP in Urban Planning from MIT in 2019.

Prior to her graduate work at MIT, Maia was a researcher at the Urban Institute, where she focused on how data and technology could democratize opportunity in support of social change, with a particular emphasis on ensuring community engagement and leadership with respect to how data is used, analyzed, and collected. While at Urban, Maia also helped foster the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, a network working to advance the effective and equitable use of data across government, civil society groups, and academia.

Veronica L. Womack serves as the Executive Director of the Rural Studies Institute at Georgia College and Professor of Political Science and Public Administration. She received her BA of Communications, MPA and Ph.D., in Political Science from the University of Alabama.

Her research focuses on rural communities, with a particular focus on the Southern Black Belt region of the American South. She is a noted author and researcher. Funders of her research include USDA, the Robert W. Johnson foundation, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project (SEAP). She is also the founder of the Blackfarmersnetwork.com, a website that highlights the legacy of African American farmers, in the Black Belt region of the South. She has been featured on various media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, GPB, The Nation, and Georgia Trend for her work in the region.

Joseph S. Wood is a geographer whose academic work focuses on the North American cultural landscape. He’s taught at the University of Nebraska at Omaha; George Mason University, where he chaired the Department of Geography and Earth Systems Science and served as Vice Provost for Academic Affairs; and the University of Southern Maine as Provost and Interim President. He served as Provost at the University of Baltimore from 2009 to 2016. Wood’s publications in cultural geography explore a variety of topics from the New England village as invented tradition to contemporary Vietnamese place-making in American suburbs and much more. At UB, Joe teaches about how Americans have shaped their cities, and in 2015 he developed the community forum-based Divided Baltimore course to address how the geography of Baltimore entrenches structural racism. He’s an AGS Travel Program lecturer in Cambodia and Vietnam, across Canada by train, and, most recently, by ship from Newfoundland into the Great Lakes. He holds Geography degrees in all levels of education; a BA from Middlebury College, an MA from the University of Vermont and a Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University.

Adriana A. Zuniga-Teran currently works at the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning and the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, at The University of Arizona. Adriana does research in Social and Environmental Sciences with a focus on arid lands. She works with stakeholders and community partners to answer questions related to water security, urban resilience, and environmental justice, by focusing on greenspace/green infrastructure across the urban-rural continuum.