Founder & Senior Partner, SYSTEMIQ

Jeremy was a senior partner at McKinsey until April 2016, where he worked for 24 years serving some of the world’s leading companies and public institutions in the finance, consumer goods, technology, healthcare and energy sectors. In 2007, he set up McKinsey’s Sustainability & Resource Productivity Practice, supporting ambitious organizations to put in place low-carbon, resource efficient strategies. Prior to this, Jeremy worked at the World Bank from 1988-1993 as a senior economist. In 2013-2014, Jeremy was programme director of the New Climate Economy project. He sits on a number of non-profit boards, including Global Action Plan (as Chair) and the Woods Hole Research Center. He is the founder and senior partner of SYSTEMIQ – a blended advisory/investment firm whose purpose is to create good disruptions in the world’s critical economic systems.

Chairman of the Board of Directors,
Partner, Co-founder, Urban Partners

Mikkel Bülow-Lehnsby: Chairperson of the Board of Directors, supporting the Urban Partners leadership on setting the strategic direction for the company. Mikkel laid the foundation for Urban Partners when he co-founded Nordic Real Estate Partners in 2005. He also served as CEO of Nrep until 2019 and co-founded 2150. Mikkel is passionate about problem solving and a firm believer in the positive force of entrepreneurship and human ingenuity. Mikkel serves as Board Member of Green Building Council, Denmark. 

CEO, Europe, Urban Land Institute

As chief executive of ULI Europe, Lisette van Doorn is responsible for the development of the Institute’s activities across the region, including its renowned pan-European conferences and over 250 local meetings and events across 14 countries. She is responsible for working with ULI’s staff both locally and globally to deliver more high profile content and reports; coordinating Advisory Services panels and Urban Plan; and expanding the Institute’s thought leadership across Europe. Van Doorn joined ULI in January 2015 from LIRE, her own consultancy business, which advises international institutional real estate investors and fund managers on strategy, organisational optimisation and portfolio structuring. Prior to this, van Doorn was country manager for CBRE Global Investors where she managed a €1.6bn portfolio of assets in Italy and fund manager of two shopping centre funds (€ 1.3 billion) with assets in Spain, Portugal and Italy. Before joining CBRE Global Investors, van Doorn was founding chief executive for INREV, the European association for Investors in Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles for four and a half years. Van Doorn started her career at ING Investment Management, where she held account manager and assistant controller positions before being made managing director of research & strategy for ING Real Estate Investment Management Europe.

Mr. Huber serves as CEO for Hines’ European Region and is a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. He is responsible for all development activity, acquisitions and operations in the region with Hines presence in 13 countries. He joined Hines in 1996, and in his prior roles, Huber oversaw equity capital raising for Hines in Europe and Asia, served as fund manager in the European Investment Management team, and worked on development and acquisitions as development officer in Germany. Huber graduated from the European Business School in Frankfurt.

Co-Founder and Director, Diversity Talks Real Estate

Andrea Carpenter is a Director of Diversity Talks Real Estate, and a writer and communications consultant in the property industry.
As a Director of Diversity Talks Real Estate, Andrea helps raise the visibility of under-represented groups in the industry through the stage and media. This includes training and other female-led initiatives through DTRE’s Women Talk Real Estate community.
On the writing side, her book about the history of the modern European property industry, High Rise and Fall, was published by Routledge in September 2018.
Andrea began her career as a journalist at Property Week before moving on to be editor of EuroProperty for seven years. Following this she worked for various industry bodies including the Urban Land Institute, INREV in Amsterdam, and its sister organisation ANREV in Hong Kong. On returning to the UK, she worked as Head of Marketing and Communications EMEA at CBRE Investment Management (then CBRE Global Investors).

Director & Team Lead, Gehl

Morten is a dedicated team director at Gehl, leading a diverse portfolio of urban planning projects. His responsibilities encompass envisioning and strategizing, developing master plan frameworks, and overseeing urban design and landscape projects for both public and private clients. Motivated by a profound desire to cultivate sustainable cities that prioritize people and contribute to mitigating climate change, Morten consistently places the human scale at the core of his work. Morten’s impactful contributions extend beyond his professional engagements, as he actively contributes to research and teaching, further amplifying his commitment to shaping a better future for generations to come.

Partner, Head of Innovation, GXN 

Partner and Head of innovation at 3XN Architect’s independent innovation unit GXN. As part of GXN’s leadership team Kåre develops 3XN and GXN’s research activities while working to bring research insights and approaches into architectural consultancy projects. 

Taking the approach that multidisciplinary research is key to solving the most pressing challenges that the built environment faces today, GXN seeks to innovate architecture to create buildings that better align the needs of people and planet. Kåre’s work bridges strategic consultancy and research with a specific focus on decarbonisation, circular economy, technology, and human well-being.  

Kåre holds a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford where he researched the impact of digital technologies on human cognition and creativity. 

MD Catella European Residential

Xavier graduated from Sciences-Po Paris, holds a post-graduate Master of the College of Europe in Bruges (with Honours) and the Cambridge IPF Diploma. Further trainings at Fannie Mae, Stanford Business School and the Ayn Rand Institute.  

Xavier was the first to introduce a pan-European residential investment fund in 2007. The portfolio grew to approximately 8 bn EUR in AuM with assets in 9 countries and 9 sub-sectors. He also set up a Residential Alliance to manage the portfolio across the continent, innovate and improve quality standards. Xavier started analysing housing and capital market fundamentals whilst working for World Bank/IMF/EU structural adjustment programmes to liberalise socialist housing markets in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Russia, after the fall of the Berlin wall. From 1996 to May 2005, Xavier worked in parallel as a public speaker for the European Commission in Brussels on EU integration for target priority groups (politicians, journalists, CEO’s). Xavier was a tutor and module leader at Cambridge University (2007-2016) as well as a Governor of the Cambridge International Land Institute where he founded the SOLUM foundation which convened annually the world’s 12 most powerful real estate CEO’s to discuss matters of globalization in the real estate industry, until its implosion during the GFC. He chaired the first INREV EU Public Affairs committee and the first ULI European Residential committee and is a Global ULI Trustee. 

CEO, IPUT

Niall Gaffney is IPUT’s Chief Executive, a position he has held since 2007. Niall was appointed to the IPUT Board of Directors in January 2021. Under his leadership the company has been transformed from a wholly Irish owned property fund, to become an internationally recognised real estate brand which now has a substantial global institutional shareholder base. 

Over more than a decade, he has been instrumental in raising over €1.2 billion of equity from global real estate investors and built IPUT to become the largest owner of offices and logistics assets in Dublin. IPUT has delivered industry leading returns during his tenure as CEO. Niall has also spearheaded IPUT’s sustainability programme and commitment to redeveloping its portfolio which, in turn, supports long term secure returns for shareholders. 

Origination International Investors, Berlin Hyp

Ariana is part of the origination team for international investors at the German covered bonds mortgage bank: Berlin Hyp. Here, she is in charge of financing cross-border institutional transactions in all active markets and across all strategic asset-classes of the bank. Ariana had the chance to live, work and/or study in all the active lending markets of the bank and speaks four of the five languages fluently – a match made in heaven among employer and employee.

At ULI, Ariana is a member of the ULI Europe YL Executive Committee and YL Co-Chair for the capital of Germany, Berlin.

Privately, Ariana spends her time designing wardrobe, playing tennis or a recently discovered passion: rolling on a racing bike.

Global Design Director, Landscape and Urbanism
Partner, Professor (Adj.), Head of Sustainability Research, DGNB International Consultant, Architect MAA

Signe Kongebro is Global Design Director, Urbanism at Henning Larsen. In 2007, Signe founded Henning Larsen’s sustainability department, and to this day, she is one of the driving forces behind the studio’s focus on sustainable construction in the industry. With her extensive knowledge, Signe is pioneering new ways to reduce carbon on an urban scale.

Signe leads the design of a wide range of ambitious Henning Larsen projects. These include Fælledby, an all-timber neighborhood in Copenhagen designed to reduce the carbon impact of the development and increase biodiversity in a balance of city and nature; the Downsview Framework Plan set to be the largest transformational urban development project in Toronto, Canada; and Volvo Campus Lundby, an existing industrial campus reconfigured into a vibrant public hub for 16,000+ staff, researchers, and students in Gothenburg, Sweden.

One of Signe’s more recent projects, Urban Decarb, a tool that integrates siloed carbon knowledge of urban components in the early design stages of urban development, ensuring that all stakeholders from property owners and municipalities to designers, engineers, and even community members are making informed decisions about the environmental impact of a project.

At the forefront of efforts to link innovation and new knowledge to inform our design decisions, Signe is a frequent speaker and contributor to the global discourse on cities and decarbonization. In addition to holding positions on several boards and advisory boards.

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