Home > Meet the speakers of the e-Urban Dialogues from December 4, 2020

Meet the speakers of the e-Urban Dialogues from December 4, 2020

December 2020

On December 4th 2020, the Urban Innovation Unit is organizing the e-Urban Dialogues, where we will discuss how innovation departments work and what their purpose is when they operate within or in collaboration with local governments.

We will chat with Jaclyn Youngblood, MONUM Chief of Staff, and Nigel Jacob, MONUM Co-Chair, from the City of Boston (USA), and Sylvine Bois-Choussy, Project Manager for International Cooperation at Le 27th Région, Paris. The hosts of the event will be Anamaria Vrabie, Director and Co-designer of the Urban Innovation unit, and Ovidiu Cîmpean, Co-designer of the Unit and Director of the Center for Innovation and Civic Imagination within Cluj-Napoca Municipality.

Jaclyn Youngblood is the Chief of Staff with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM) within City of Boston. She focuses primarily on civic action and collective well-being prototypes, while also supporting administrative work like MONUM's fellowships and international collaborations. She aims to bring delight and a human touch to what can sometimes be stressful interactions, such as registering a child for school in Boston. Among the projects Jaclyn coordinates are those related to food access, youth leadership, mobility justice, and environmental stewardship. Jaclyn Youngblood

Nigel Jacob is the Co-founder and Co-chair of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM) within City of Boston. Nigel’s work is about making urban life better via innovative, people-oriented applications of technology and design. Nigel Jacob

Sylvine Bois-Choussy is Project Manager for International Cooperation at La 27e Région in Paris. Since 2017, Sylvine has been piloting various projects, including Enacting the Commons, a collaborative investigation into how communities are transforming public action in Europe, La Transfo, a program to co-build public transformation labs in a dozen French communities, as well as the association’s partnership with the Bloomberg Foundation. Sylvine Bois-Choussy

Anamaria Vrabie is Co-designer and Director of the Cluj-Napoca Urban Innovation Unit, the first of its kind in Eastern Europe, tackling urban mobility, future of work and urban resilience challenges. She has co-designed and is currently co-managing the city’s Urban Innovative Actions initiative which is testing the impact of creative and cultural industries on enabling a more competitive and equitable local economy. Anamaria Vrabie

Ovidiu Cîmpean is co-designer of the Urban Innovation Division, and the Director of Local Development Unit within the Cluj-Napoca Municipality, in charge with european funding projects and the management of the Civic Imagination and Innovation Center(CIIC). He is also co-manager for the Cluj Future of Work project. Ovidiu Cîmpean

You can join the event HERE.