Brad Gentry is a lecturer at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Co-Director of the Yale/UNDP collaborative programme on Public-Private Partnerships for the Urban Environment (PPPUE). Trained as a biologist and a lawyer, his research, teaching and professional activities focus on strengthening the links between private investment and improved environmental performance. He has worked on the environmental aspects of private investments around the world and across many sectors, including water, forests, land use and energy. He is the author of many publications, including Private Capital Flows and the Environment: Lessons from Latin America (Edward Elgar, 1998). He is now coordinating a 'collaborative learning' course with universities around the world on using public-private partnerships to improve the delivery of urban environmental services.
Chris Heymans, a South African based private consultant, is a governance and institutional development specialist with a particular interest in local government, public policy management and urban development. Holding degrees in political science and economics, he previously worked for different development organisations and lectured at a number of universities. He has worked with government, private and donor organisations and NGOs inside and outside South Africa, and participated in the drafting of a number of Policy Documents, Green and White Papers produced by the post- apartheid South African Government since 1994. As Policy Manager at the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), he initiated the regular DBSA Development Report, editing the first one, titled Infrastructure: a foundation for development in 1998. He also edited the journal, Development Southern Africa between 1997 and 1999. In 1999-2000 he assisted South Africa's National Treasury in developing a regulatory framework and operational guidelines for PPPs, and was editor of the National Treasury's Intergovernmental Fiscal Review - a comprehensive overview of provincial and local government finances in South Africa - in 2000 and 2001.
Janelle Plummer is an urban activity specialist working with GHK International. The focus of her work is building local government capacity for more effective urban poverty reduction. She has worked on a range of participatory poverty assessments, and the design and implementation of poverty reduction and services projects in Asia and Africa.. Her poverty focus has led her to carry out detailed explorations into how challenging policies such as community participation and public-private partnerships can be implemented within the existing constraints of municipalities in developing countries. She is the series editor of the Municipal Capacity Building Series published by Earthscan and the author of the companion volume Municipalities and Community Participation: A Sourcebook for Capacity Building.
Richard Slater is a consultant in governance, public policy and municipal management. He has spent over 15 years with the School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham, as well as working as an independent consultant for a wide range of multilateral and bilateral donors. He also has substantial experience of working on decentralisation and poverty reduction projects in the urban sector in Asia with expertise in project design, implementation and impact assessment. He is currently involved in the design and implementation of major municipal reform projects in Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Sri Lanka where he is working closely with GHK International.
Steve Waddell is a researcher-consultant with The Collaboration Works - Organizational Futures, based in Boston (www.thecollaborationworks.com). He has a PhD (sociology) and an MBA. The focus of his work is development of networks, usually of large scale (often global), aiming for complex development outcomes by engaging diverse organisations (usually government, civil society and business). He is affiliated with Boston College, a member of the governing council of the Society for Organizational Learning (www.solonline.org), leader of the Global Public Policy Research Group (www.gppnresearch.org), and an Associate of Simon Fraser University's Centre for Innovation in Management (www.cim.sfu.ca) and SmithObrien (www.smithobrien.com). He can be reached at swaddell@prodigy.net.