As Head of Research & Strategic Advisory at Bouwinvest Real Estate Investors, Marleen is responsible for the strategic vision and worldwide market research. The Research & Strategic Advisory department forms the cornerstone of Bouwinvest's investment process. The department provides the independent and objective analyses that forms the basis of strategic and tactical investment decisions. The working area covers approximately € 11.3 billion in assets under management, divided over five Dutch sector funds and international investments. In her position, Marleen has a voice in the investment committee and is a member of the management team of Bouwinvest Real Estate Investors. She previously worked for Blue Sky Group for ten years, where she was responsible for international real estate investments and strategic advice to Blue Sky Group's clients. Previously she worked at FGH Bank, Philips Pensioenfonds and Syntrus Achmea Vastgoed. Marleen holds a Masters degree in Real Estate Management & Development from Eindhoven University of Technology, a postgraduate certificate Master of Science in Real Estate from the University of Amsterdam and is a registered investment analyst (RBA VU Amsterdam).

Bob van der Zande Director Residential Markets Development Corporation City of Amsterdam Amsterdam Bob van der Zande is Director Residential Markets for the City of Amsterdam since 2009. He is responsible for several residential programmes in the city, such as the midsegment rental housing, the self-built housing programme and Student and Youth housing. He works for the city administration as well as strategic advisor for the Metropolitan Region organisation, which includes 16 smaller cities in the surroundings. He was founder of the Development Corporation in 2003 and served as COO until 2009. His commitment with ULI started when he was co-founder of the Urban Investment Network, a European ULI network that tries to improve the cooperation between private investors and city administrations. Co-founders were Barcelona, Istanbul, Edinburgh and Torino from the public side and Allianz, ING, ECE and Corio from the private side. He organised a Summit for the Urban Investment Network in Amsterdam in November 2011, in the midst of a huge real estate crisis. He is a member of the Watertorenberaad, a national council for innovative spatial development and since 2013 member of the board of ULI The Netherlands. Last year he was invited to give his advise and lectures for ULI Ireland, ULI Belgium and ULI Germany. He is visiting lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. He is also responsible for the real estate marketing strategy for Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and the Hague (the big four in the Netherlands) at the largest European real estate fair, the Expo Real in Munich. He started the Amsterdam Investors Office Residential a year ago, to improve the market in the region for residential development. The Office receives all kinds of investors big and small, institutional and private to guide them to the locations that match with their investment strategy. It recently created an agenda for a selection of 15 development sites to be put on the market in 2014. He started his work in urban (re)development in the 80’s when parts of Amsterdam where occupied by squatters. People were moving out of the city, suburbanisation was the main strategy. In the west part he worked on urban renewal, together with the 6 Housing Associations (they still posess 50% of all dwellings in Amsterdam which means some 200.000) and inhabitants that lived in poor circumstances. Later on he attributed to the Waterfront Development in the Eastern Docks, the development of the mixed-use area Zuidas and a new strategy for cooperative development on the Zeeburgereiland, a 14 ha area near the City center. He graduated as urban designer at the Delft University of Technology in 1978. (March 2014)

Pieter Klomp is deputy director of the department of Urban Planning and Sustainability of the city of Amsterdam. He is leading the program "Koers 2025", which aims to accommodate the strong growth of Amsterdam, aiming towards strengthening a human scale metropolis. As supervisor at the Northern IJbanks he has been actively involved in the current transformation of the Amsterdam waterfront. Pieter is trained as a landscape architect at Wageningen University, and holds an MBA degree from TiasNimbas/Bradford University.

Mr Stahli (45) has more than 20 years of experience in the capital and investment market in the property sector. He has held various positions at (international) financial institutions, most recently at merchant bank Kempen & Co, where he served as Managing Director Securities - European Real Estate from 2013. Mr Stahli’s previous positions included Head of European Property Securities Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London. With this background, Mr Stahli combines in-depth knowledge of all relevant facets concerning international (listed) property with an extensive network in the capital market.

Kristian Riis, founding partner of Volcano INC, working as a specialist within Creative Placemaking and Creative Industries. Currently Riis is focused on the Danish development projects; The Tunnel Factory and Nordhuset in Copenhagen and he and his team are creating communities in the South Harbour area in Aarhus. He is also the founder and CEO of NordicLA - a Nordic Culture Embassy located in Los Angeles, US. Parallel to his career as an investor and entrepreneur Riis is the guitarist in the Danish multi award-winning rock band, Nephew. He is also a music producer and mentor for young musicians and start up people. He is also part of the ULI Executive Board in Denmark. 

Maarten Hajer is professor Urban Futures at the Faculty of Geo Sciences of Utrecht University and director of the UU Urban Futures Studio. Hajer was educated in Political Science and in Urban and Regional Planning (Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) and holds a D.Phil. in Politics from the University of Oxford. During the 1990s he worked with Ulrich Beck at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat in Munich and as senior researcher at the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), The Hague. He was appointed to the Chair of Public Policy at the UvA in 1998. The Dutch Cabinet appointed him as Director-General of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL – Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving, the government think tank to the Dutch Cabinet and Parliament on issues of land use, environment and nature conservation) in 2008. During his term in government he was elected Dutch ‘Government Manager of the Year’ in 2014. His fixed seven years term as DG PBL ended in 2015 upon which he changed to Utrecht University and he started the Urban Futures Studio. In his new capacity he was Chief Curator of the 2016 International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) and was curator of ‘Places of Hope’, an exhibition and manifestation on the future of the Netherlands, which was part of the programme of Leeuwarden/Fryslan Cultural Capital of Europe 2018. Hajer is a member of the UN’s International Resource Panel (IRP, hosted by UNEP since 2011) for which he led the working group on food systems and co-leads the working group on Cities, together with Mark Swilling (Stellenbosch). Hajer holds an Extra Ordinary Professorship at the Institute for Complex Systems in Transition at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and an honorary professorship at Kopenhagen University. At the UU he is the scientific director of one of four university-wide strategic themes, ‘Pathways to Sustainability’. He is the author of over many articles and books, including the acclaimed The Politics of Environmental Discourse (Oxford UP, 1995), as well as Deliberative Policy Analysis (Cambridge UP, 2003, eds. with Hendrik Wagenaar), Authoritative Governance (Oxford UP, 2009) and Smart about Cities – Visualizing the Challenge of 21st Century Urbanism (NAi/010, 2014). His new, co-authored book Neighbourhoods for the Future – A Plea for a Social and Ecological Urbanism has recently been published.

Marion Waller is advisor to Jean-Louis Missika, deputy mayor of Paris, in charge of urban planning, innovation and attractiveness issues. Following a double training in environmental philosophy and urban planning at Sciences Po and the École Normale Supérieure, she is also an acclaimed author and has published a book titled ‘Artefacts naturels (L'éclat, 2016).

Tom’s passion is to help students and professionals become effective city makers. To do this, he provides them with knowledge and tools for integrated collaboration (public-private-civic) in urban development research and practice. His goal is to co-create sustainable, area-based solutions to collective urban problems. At TU Delft, he is both Associate Professor and Director of the Area Development Knowledge Foundation (SKG). This is a public-private network of professional organisations focused on urban (re)development projects. His y research aims to provide insight into the governance issues in this field, and to co-develop sustainable solutions with and for Dutch practice.

Sherry Dobbin is Chair of the Urban Art Forum UK for the Urban Land Institute-UK and Partner at Futurecity UK, a global placemaking and public art commissioning agency based in London where she consults for developers, cities, business improvement districts to establish permanent and programmatic cultural sustainability for place identity. She has worked across all artforms for thirty-five years, led cultural organisations, and curated for public realm in four continents. She served as Director of Times Square Arts and Creative Director for Times Square Alliance from 2012-2016 and founded Midnight Moment, which is the world’s largest and longest running digital art exhibition, shown on the electronic billboards every night since 2012. She has print-published contributions for ULI-UK’s Including Culture in Development; Placemaking Handbook, Routledge Press; Improving Places; Greater London Authority; Selected 9 , LOOP Festival of Moving Image 2004 in Barcelona; Teatp No. 26, Moscow; The New Spacer, State Theatre of Moscow; Theatre journal for Yale University Press; What Urban Media Art Can Do, Public Art Lab, Berlin; and The Watermill Center, Daco Press. She a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; and sits on Board of Directors for organisations ranging from focus on architecture; cultural and gender diversity; moving image in public space, and performing arts in public and digital platforms.