Dr. Marc A. Weiss has been serving since 2001 as the founding Chairman and CEO of Global Urban Development (GUD), a non-profit international policy organization and professional network of more than 1,000 leaders and experts in 66 countries. Recently he has been serving as a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously Dr. Weiss served in Porto Alegre, Brazil as an International Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, and as Coordinator of the Porto Alegre Sustainable Innovation Zone (ZISPOA). GUD is organizing Sustainable Innovation Zones in many cities and countries, including the Wheaton Sustainable Innovation Zone (WSIZ) in Maryland, funded by the US Department of Energy; the Poznan Sustainable Innovation Zone (EDIT Poznan) in Poland, funded by the European Union; and the Lund (Sweden) Green Innovation District where the EnergyNet was invented to enable exponential expansion of affordable and abundant, secure and reliable, clean energy generation, storage, and distribution for the world. Dr. Weiss served in the Clinton-Gore Administration as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, HUD Liaison to the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, and Coordinator of the Strategic Economic Development Plan for Washington, DC. At Columbia University he served both as Associate Professor and Director of the Real Estate Development Research Center, and as Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs. Dr. Weiss is the author of a widely acclaimed book on urban development and planning, The Rise of the Community Builders, and co-author of a best-selling international university textbook, Real Estate Development Principles and Process. He 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 and attended the London School of Economics.