About the panelists

Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, LFAPA, Hon AIA, is a social psychiatrist and professor of urban policy and health at The New School. Since 1986, she has conducted research on AIDS and other epidemics of poor communities, with a special interest in the relationship between the collapse of communities and decline in health. From her research, she has published numerous articles, book chapters, and monographs. She has also written: The House of Joshua: Meditations on Family and Place, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It, and Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities. A third edition of Homeboy Came to Orange: A Story of People’s Power, which she helped her father, Ernest Thompson, write, was released in May 2018 by New Village Press. She is co-author, with Hannah L. F. Cooper, of From Enforcers to Guardians: A public health primer on ending police violence, issued by Johns Hopkins University Press in January 2020. Her latest book, Main Street: How a City’s Heart Connects Us All, was released in September 2020 by New Village Press.

Elizabeth Hamby is an artist who serves as the Director of Take Care New York (TCNY) at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Take Care New York is the City’s Health Equity Roadmap. Elizabeth leads storytelling campaigns, develops multi-sector collaborations, and designs policy to eliminate health inequities and advance social justice. Her art practice includes projects across media that make complex issues legible and help people work together. She has led a waterfront planning studio out of a neighborhood laundromat, formed a bike collective to address transportation issues in the Bronx, and worked with youth in public housing to develop haikus about littering. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, among other venues. She holds degrees from Eugene Lang College and Parsons School of Design.

Miguel Angel Vazquez, AICP is one of the first planners hired by a public health department in the nation. His role at the Riverside University Health System-Public Health is to strengthen the integration of planning and health through collaboration with non-traditional partners. He is a member of the California Planning Roundtable and co-leads the California’s Planners4Health Initiative.  Over the past 18 years, he has provided professional planning and community development services to the private, public, and military sectors. He received a bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies and Planning from California State University, Northridge and is a fellow of the California Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health.  In 2014, he was named finalist for the Loeb Fellowship at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.   The American Planning Association has recognized his leadership and projects with numerous awards and recognitions including the APA President’s Award in 2018 and the APA California’s 2020 Distinguished Contribution Award.

Mallory Rukhsana Nezam is an civic artist and consultant who believes that we have the tools to make places more just and joyful. She runs the creative consulting practice Justice + Joy, serves on the Steering Committee for the Planning for Health Equity, Advocacy & Leadership (PHEAL) initiative and is a 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellow. She holds a Master of Design from Harvard University.