Dr. Marc A. Weiss is Chairman and CEO of Global Urban Development (GUD), an international policy organization and professional network of more than 600 leaders and experts in 60 countries. For UN-Habitat, he is a Lead Partner of the World Urban Campaign, a Steering Committee member of the Best Practices and Local Leadership Program, and an Advisory Committee member of the Cities and Climate Change Initiative.

Dr. Weiss has been a senior adviser on Metropolitan Economic Strategy, Sustainable Innovation, and Inclusive Prosperity for cities, regions, and states/provinces in the US and throughout the world, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, India, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, UK, and the Virgin Islands. Recently he completed a World Bank-funded “Leapfrog Economic Strategy” for Brazil’s State of Rio Grande do Sul to become the most sustainable and innovative place in Latin America by 2030.  Currently he is organizing a Sustainable Innovation Zone in the City of Porto Alegre as the first implementation of the Rio Grande do Sul economic strategy.

He previously served as: Public Policy Scholar and Editor of Global Outlook at the Woodrow Wilson International Center; Coordinator of the 1998 Strategic Economic Development Plan for Washington DC and Chairman of the NoMa Metro Station Corporation; Special Assistant to the Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and HUD Liaison to the President’s Council on Sustainable Development in the Clinton Administration; Senior Adviser on Housing and Urban Policy for the 1992 Clinton Presidential Campaign; Associate Professor and Director of the Real Estate Development Research Center, Acting Director of the PhD Program in Urban Planning, and Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; and Deputy Director of the California Commission on Industrial Innovation.

He is the author or co-author of many books, articles, and reports, including a widely acclaimed book on urban development and metropolitan planning, The Rise of the Community Builders, and a best-selling international textbook, Real Estate Development Principles and Process, published by the Urban Land Institute.

Dr. Weiss earned an MCP and PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California-Berkeley, and a BA with Honors in Political Science from Stanford University, plus he attended the London School of Economics.