Toilets and Cities: From NYC to Phnom Penh
Spend your World Toilet Day listening to professionals in the sanitation space talk about urban toilets from both a domestic and international lens. You will have the opportunity to sit down with sanitation experts and discuss their work and outlook on urban sanitation - from access and human rights to urban planning and finance. Speakers will come from city government, international NGOs, academia, and multilateral agencies.
Similar to speed dating, you will have the opportunity to change tables every 10-15 minutes, allowing you to speak personally to multiple panelists and gain a deeper understanding of the global sanitation challenges in urban settings.
Speakers:
Virak Chan, MBA, MDM, MIWM Virak is currently a Water and Sanitation Specialist for the World Bank Group’s Water Global Practice based in Cambodia. More than 12 years of experiences working in the field of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene and WRM, he has led rural and urban WASH projects in Cambodia and neighboring countries; recently he co-leads Water Resources Management Project. He has spent many years in water sector and applied his knowledge and skills in many cross-sectoral aspects such as urban development, agriculture, and environment. His main expertise is capacity building, social enterprise development, social research, governance and project management. With his commitment to creating next generation water leaders, he founded a Non- Profit Organization known as Center for Sustainable Water in Cambodia. Virak graduated in Master of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) at University of Queensland in Australia and another two master’s degrees in Business Administration and Development Management.
John Gershman, PhD, John Gershman is a Clinical Professor of Public Service and the Director of International Capstone Programs at Wagner. He is also a co-founding member of the New York Southeast Asia Network. Previously he was the Director of the Global Affairs Program at the International Relations Center and the Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus, a progressive think tank on U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. He has worked at a series of nonprofit think tanks since the early 1990s, including the Institute for Food and Development Policy and Partners in Health. His research, writing, and advocacy work has focused on issues of food security, U.S. foreign policy in East and Southeast Asia, the politics of international financial institutions and multilateralism, the political economy of natural resource management in Ghana and the Philippines, the politics of sanitation, and rights-based approaches to development.
Jessie Kaliski, MBA/MPA: Jessie is in her second year of a three year dual degree program with NYU Stern School of Business and Wagner School of Public Service. She wrote her undergrad thesis on sanitation, spent two years in Cape Town working for a startup in the water sector, and now is hoping to do international development consultancy post graduation.
Elena Marmo, MSc serves as the Community Engagement Officer at WaterAid, an international development organization working to engineer sustainable solutions to the water and sanitation crisis around the world. With clean water, reliable toilets, and hygiene programming in over 20 countries, WaterAid employs low-cost and sustainable technologies alongside capacity building and community-driven programming. Working in building and engaging a network of grassroots supporters for WaterAid’s work, Elena mobilizes an array of supporters to raise awareness and funds to end the global water crisis. Elena holds an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and a BA in Political Science and Peace & Justice Studies from Pace University.
Christopher McGahey, PhD, MSc, Dr. Christopher McGahey’s work has ranged from leading a sanitation program in a refugee setting to designing and managing USAID’s largest water supply, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) project in Afghanistan to leading efforts to capture experiences and best practices from national programs for communication across the global WASH sector. He has contributed to program design, implementation, and evaluation in both the non- and for-profit sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean working with community leaders, governmental decision makers, multi-lateral businesses and organizations, and senior executives. His current work is designing a nutrition-sensitive WASH program in Timor-Leste, developing a business model for municipal fecal sludge management in Nepal, and supporting sanitation improvements in Malawi as part of rural health care center service delivery. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering, a master’s degree in environmental engineering, and a doctorate in engineering from the Johns Hopkins University and began his career as a WASH sector Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya.
Manohar "Manny" Patole, LLM/ME, MUP, Manny Patole is an independent consultant specializing in data for development, environmental governance, local government innovation, and water policy analysis. He was State of New York Excelsior Fellow 2016-2018 with New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation focused on data and policy analysis. His work has received awards at various international conferences on his research on water governance, localization and data disaggregation and latest publication in Economies illustrates a methodology for leveraging data disaggregation in localizing the Sustainable Development Goals to improve development project success rates.In addition to being a NYU Wagner Master of Urban Planning graduate, he graduated as part of the inaugural class of the joint venture between UNESCO's Institute for Water Education and University of Dundee's Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy with a LLm/ME specializing in Water Governance and Conflict Resolution.
Shawn Shafner, Shawn Shafner is an artist, educator and activist. Creator of The People's Own Organic Power Project (www.thePOOPproject.org), an arts / education organization with a mission to promote critical conversations about sustainable sanitation for the individual person, global community, and the planet we all share. Major POOP works include An Inconvenient Poop (Time Out New York Critic’s Pick, 2015 NY International Fringe Festival Award for Overall Excellence in Solo Performance), feature documentary Flush, family musical Innie / Outie, and monthly episodes of SHHH: The Poopcast (aka Shit and Shame with Shawn). Shawn has been awarded some fancy opportunities for his work, including a 2018 National Fellowship through the Environmental Leadership Program, a 2017 Global Social Impact House fellowship through UPenn's Center for Social Impact Strategy, and membership in the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation's ROI Community since 2015. The POOP Project is currently traveling the USA with a new show, inviting audiences to Assume the Throne.
Kimberly Worsham, MPA, MIWM Kimberly is a WASH expert and Founder of FLUSH LLC, a start-up working towards building knowledge and understanding around sanitation and hygiene through public dialogue while supporting sanitation efforts through consulting services. She is also currently the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at Safe Water Network, where she analyses and uses diagnostics to manage and improve program performance in Ghana and India. She has worked seven years in WASH in consulting roles for multilateral agencies and nonprofits in the US and other countries like Australia, Cambodia, India, working on strategic initiatives, analytics, and capacity building programs. Outside of the WASH sector, Kimberly has led performance management in city government programs, marketing analytics in the healthcare industry, and taught math and testing at institutes in Rwanda. She received her MPA and B.Sc in international business at NYU, and a Masters in Integrated Water Management from the University of Queensland, Australia as an International Water Centre Scholar.
