Conference Speakers

Arun Jain is a US and Indian educated urban designer and urban strategist with over 37 years of US and international experience in practice and academia. His insights come from being a consultant, city executive, advisor, academic and mentor over the full range of allied urban development disciplines.

Arun was a lead expert for UN Habitat’s Urban SDG development process (Goal 11), and a 2016 policy unit expert for UN Habitat III, Quito. In 2017, he gave the UNODC (UN Office of Drugs and Crime) an urbanist’s perspective on urban safety, security, and resilience. In 2001, he helped create a national policy structure and ecology sensitive development tool for the island country of Palau. Arun was the Chief Urban Designer and Principal Planner for the City of Bellevue, Washington. Previously, he was Portland, Oregon’s first Chief Urban Designer.

Arun has been a Guest Professor at the Institute for Urban & Regional Planning (ISR), Technical University of Berlin, a strategic planning advisor to the Indian State Government of Karnataka, and on the Boards of the International Federation of Housing and Planning (IFHP) and Arus (Advanced Research in Urban Systems, based in the University of Duisberg-Essen in Germany). Arun has advised organizations like Greenpeace, Ymere (the largest social housing developer in the Netherlands), AECOM, the National Capital Parks and Planning Commission, and several planning projects in India on water and transportation, smart infrastructure, and metropolitan governance systems. Arun is currently writing a book with the working title “Reframing Cities for Resiliency: Robust Thinking for Complex and Uncertain Futures”. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners (FAICP), and a Fulbright Specialist (2023-26).

Alexis Mercedes Rinck is Councilmember-Elect for Seattle City Council, Position 8, having been elected in the November 2024 election. She will take office on November 26, 2024.

Growing up, she witnessed firsthand her own family deal with the cycles of incarceration, substance use, and homelessness, and is grateful for support in her community and access to resources that gave her a pathway to a better future. With financial aid and scholarships, Alexis was able to attend Syracuse University, where she worked in restaurants and got her start in politics fighting and successfully banning hydrofracking in New York State and improving consumer protections. She went to the UW Evans School for graduate study in public policy.

She has used her policy expertise to support human services and public health  for the 38 member cities of the Sound Cities Association, to direct emergency and severe weather response plans for people living unsheltered in cities across King County, and to lead fiscal policy analysis and budgeting for higher education currently at the University of Washington.