Penny leads the City agency which serves the largest diplomatic corps in the world, including strategic partnerships and programming reaffirming NYC’s local leadership on global issues. Since her appointment in 2014, New York City has successfully implemented a series of initiatives and programs with the international community, which include youth empowerment and the leadership of cities and local governments on global issues like climate change and managing/rebuilding post the Covid-19 pandemic. During spring 2020, when NYC was the epicenter of the pandemic in the US, her team was responsible for working with the United Nations and foreign governments to secure necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators.

Prior to joining Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration, Penny was the Director of Girls and Women Integration at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), a non-partisan organization that convened global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to the world's most pressing problems. During her tenure, she advised multinational corporations, philanthropists, NGOs and multilateral institutions to increase investments in gender-focused development initiatives while expanding the community of CGI members who incorporated the gender lens in their work.

As the co-founder and executive director of the Just Transition Fund, Heidi is responsible for the design and the overall strategic direction of the organization. With more than 17 years of philanthropic experience on climate, coal, and energy issues, Heidi has worked with coal communities throughout the US and internationally in Australia. In her previous position as Associate Director for Special Climate Initiatives at RFF, Heidi helped develop and grow the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Before joining RFF, she was the executive director of the WestWind Foundation, a family foundation based in Virginia. She also previously served as co-chair of the board of directors of the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) and co-chair of the Climate and Energy Funders Group, a project of the Biodiversity Funders Group. Heidi holds degrees from Yale University and the University of Notre Dame.

Sunder Katwala is Director of British Future, an independent non-partisan think-tank, which works on identity and immigration, integration and opportunity. By engaging both with those who are anxious about cultural identity and economic opportunity, as well as those who already feel confident about our changing society, British Future seeks to broaden confidence in an welcoming and inclusive shared future. The National Conversation on Immigration was the biggest-ever public consultation on immigration and integration in the UK, working in partnership with the Home Affairs Select Committee. British Future has reshaped debate about public attitudes; helped economic and civic society stakeholders to engage with their target audiences more effectively, and championed practical responses to immigration, integration and identity that can strengthen the common ground. Sunder has previously been an Observer journalist and general secretary of the Fabian Society, and is a regular contributor to national media debates on identity and immigration.

Bruce Katz is the Founding Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University in Philadelphia and is the coauthor of The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism. Previously he served as inaugural Centennial Scholar at Brookings Institution and as vice president and director of Brooking’s Metropolitan Policy Program for 20 years. He is a member of the RSA City Growth Commission in the United Kingdom and a Visiting Professor in Practice at London School of Economics. Katz previously served as chief of staff to the secretary of Housing and Urban Development and staff director of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs. Katz co-led the Obama administration’s housing and urban transition team. He is coauthor of The Metropolitan Revolution, editor or coeditor of several books on urban and metropolitan issues, and a frequent media commentator.

Sir John Kay is an economist whose career has spanned the academic world, business and finance, and public affairs. He has held chairs at the London Business School, the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and is a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, where he began his academic career in 1970. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

John is a director of several public companies and a contributing editor of the Financial Times. He chaired the Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision-Making which reported to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in July 2012. He is the author of many books, including The Truth about Markets (2003), The Long and the Short of It (2009, new revised edition 2016) and Obliquity (2010). Other People’s Money was published by Profile Books and (in North America) by PublicAffairs in September 2015, was a book of the year for Bloomberg, The Economist and the Financial Times, winner of the Saltire Literary Prize for non-fiction, and was short-listed for the Orwell Prize for political writing. Radical Uncertainty, jointly written with Mervyn King, was published in March 2020. His latest book, Greed is Dead, co-authored with Paul Collier, was published in July 2020.