Promoting the Sustainable Development Goals in North American Cities

David B. Abraham, PhD is a scholar of Environmental Planning and Policy, specializing in Sustainability Planning and Performance Measurement. His research interests focus on developing sustainability strategies for the enhancement of living places. His research and professional experience includes: Food insecurity planning; Health and well-being impacts from the built environment; Urban forestry sustainability strategies; Resiliency and revitalization community planning; and Community performance metrics. His work has been featured at workshops, keynote agendas and conference proceedings throughout the US and internationally in Ireland, Barbados, Brazil, Canada and Portugal. Dr. Abraham is a Research Scientist and Lecturer with the Houston Sustainability Indicators project at Rice University.

Seema D. Iyer, PhD oversees the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance at the Jacob France Institute (BNIA-JFI) at the University of Baltimore, which has been dedicated to providing reliable, community-based indicators for Baltimore's neighborhoods since 2000. BNIA-JFI is the local partner of the Urban Institute's National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, a network of cities that provide longitudinal data on demographics, housing, crime, education and sustainability. Under her leadership, BNIA-JFI has received several awards for its role in increasing accessibility to indicators for organizations such as the Community Indicators Consortium (2016), Harvard Ash Center (2017) and the Association of Public Data Users (2018). Since 2015, she has been involved in the City of Baltimore's localization of the SDGs and has advised cities around the world on how they can work with indicator programs to help monitor progress. She is also director of the UB's undergraduate program in Real Estate and Economic Development. She holds a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from the University of Michigan.