Mrs Skinner has served as Acting CAO since April 27, 2020, after joining the Town of Collingwood in August of 2019 as the Executive Director of Customer and Corporate Service. Skinner is an experienced leader and was the Chief Administrative Officer at Grey Sauble Conservation Authority for three years before joining the Town. She has brought valuable skills and experience to Collingwood, including her past leadership of: 

• Service delivery transformations as the Director of Compliance Modernization at the Ministry of the Environment, 
• About $300M of Maintenance Contracting for all of Ontario highways, and 
• Better decision-making across five ministries, including the Ministry of Education, by integrating and developing insights from large amounts of government data.

Mrs Skinner’s direction has strengthened our community and even through COVID has modelled leading-edge public service transparency, inclusiveness, and accountability including: 

• An update of the Community-based Strategic Plan 2020-2023 in June 2020 
• A community input and council decision to move forward with proposals for the waterfront Grain Terminals 
• Hosting the United Nations Habitat in Towns Collingwood World Summit 
• Strengthening the Town’s customer service 
• Implementing an Information Technology steering committee, and 
• Proposing actions to address Council’s climate change emergency declaration and reduce of the Town's carbon footprint. 

Mrs Skinner is a Professional Engineer with a Master's Degree in Civil Engineering and is recognized internationally as a collaborative leader, speaker, and writer, with a demonstrated commitment to proactive communication. 

Ian McShane is an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University's Centre for Urban Research. His research is in the areas of urban policy, local governance and local community infrastructure, cultural policy and cultural heritage institutions, and education policy and practice.

Leith Deacon is an Associate Professor in Rural Planning and Development in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development. He is a full member of the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) and a Registered Professional Planner (RPP). Leith’s research examines concepts around sustainability, governance, and resiliency. Leith employs a planning lens to frame all his research and asks what can planners do and what can municipal planning departments do to increase the resiliency and/or sustainability of communities? Most recently, Leith has been leading a large research project that has collected data on the experiences of residents from small and rural communities related to COVID-19. Results from this project focus on mental health, gender, economic development, and response, highlighting the variation that exists within communities and the need to ensure that response plans are reflective of the realities and needs of each community.

Hoswell Ng’ang’a Kinuthia is the Manager, Thika Municipality, County Government of Kiambu. He is a Management and Administration expert, currently pursuing a Master’s of Science in Management of Organizational Development at United States International University (USIU). With a Bachelor of Business Information Technology from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. Hoswell has vast knowledge and experience in Project Management, Budgeting, Grant Writing, Community based planning, Policy analysis Urban Development, Financial monitoring, and forecasting among others. Under his leadership as the manager of Thika Municipality, he is implementing transformative infrastructural development projects worth $ 10M, including tarmacking of Ngoliba township roads and installation of lights, recarpeting of Thika town roads and rehabilitating lights and constructing a 4.5Km Secondary sewer distribution system at Muigai Inn and Daima Estate Juja.

I'm a Senior Advisor at United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). I currently coordinate UN-Habitat's Subprogramme on Shared Prosperity of Cities and Regions and previously headed its Regional Office for Arab States. I'm passionate about the possibility of cities to improve the quality of life of their residents and drive the achievement of SDGs. My experience, mainly in the Global South and crisis affected countries ranges from working directly with communities in slums to advising ministers on key areas of urban policy. I have an MSc in Development Planning from Development Planning Unit (University College London).

Robert P. Ndugwa is currently the Officer in charge of the Global Urban Observatory Unit in the Research and Capacity Development Branch at the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) in Nairobi, Kenya. He is primarily responsible for the UN-Habitat’s global urban monitoring and reporting on SDGs and also doubles as the chief statistician for UN-Habitat. Prior to joining UN-Habitat, Robert worked with UNICEF as head of Research, Evaluation and Statistics in Kenya Country Office; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine-UK; University of Heidelberg-Germany; African Population and Health Research Center, Kenya, and Makerere University Kampala.

Robert holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. His research interests include: slum estimations; city prosperity measurements ; urbanization and health systems dynamics; urban inequalities and marginalization; urban spatial analysis and mapping; mobile technologies for data collection in urban and remote areas; urban demographic surveillance systems; urbanization and adolescents transitions. He has contributed to several book chapters and peer-review articles in Journals such as: Journal of Urban Health; Lancet , International Journal of Epidemiology; Journal of Child Health; Malaria Journal; Studies in Family Planning; Bulletin of World Health Organization , etc.

Dr. Poornima Dore, is an Economist and senior TATA leader with deep experience in digital transformation, corporate and development finance. Her strengths lie in designing innovative financial structures, overseeing large projects and driving meaningful partnerships across companies, government, civil society and academia. Dr. Dore currently heads Data Driven Governance at the Tata Trusts, India's oldest and largest private philanthropy, which holds 66.66% stake in Tata Sons Ltd. She has worked across the organization, and in her current role, holds pan India charge of leveraging the power of data and digital tools for enhanced SDG outcomes - across all focus districts and cities in India. She enjoys research on drivers of local economic growth and is well published in her field. She teaches at some of India's prestigious management and technical institutes. She is a member of the Government of India’s Working Group on Data Smart Cities – set up by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. She has been recognized as one of the top 100 Analytics Leaders in South Asia in 2019.