Bio:

Bridging the worlds of academia, practice, and entrepreneurship, Dr. Mariela Alfonzo is an internationally-renowned thought-leader and speaker, with 20+ years of experience on the nexus between urban design, behavior, and the quadruple-bottom line. For over two decades, her work has focused on quantifying how the micro-scale aspects of the built environment affect our behaviors, perceptions and decisions, and in turn, how these impact a broad spectrum of quality of life outcomes, across individual, community, civic, and environmental domains. Dr. Alfonzo is the Founder and CEO of State of Place, an AI-driven, urban design data and predictive analytics software that helps citymakers create more just, thriving communities more effectively, cost-efficiently, and inclusively. State of Place helps city-makers harness the power of their street-level urban design data, evidence-based recommendation engine, scenario modeling, and forecasting tools to co-create more livable, equitable, and sustainable communities that optimize social, health, environmental, and economic value, while building community trust, facilitating collaboration and co-creation, and driving the consensus needed for real change. Over the course of her two-decades-plus career, Dr. Alfonzo was named one of Urban Land Institute’s 40 under 40 best young land use professionals around the globe in 2014; is a New Cities Foundation Placemaking Fellow; is a Fulbright Scholar; and a Research Professor at NYU Tandon’s School of Engineering. She holds a Ph.D. in urban planning from UC Irvine, as well as a Masters in Urban Planning, and a BA from University of Miami in psychology and architecture.