Stefan Al is an architect, urban designer, researcher, and educator. He has worked on some of the world's largest structures, including the 2000-feet tall Canton Tower. He served as a professor at various institutions such as Virginia Tech, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, he was invited to be a TED Resident and advisor to various city governments, including Hong Kong. In addition to his work as a designer, he has published eight books that explore the pressing design challenges in cities. They have been widely acclaimed including by the Wall Street Journal, Architectural Record, The Times and NPR.

Petr Kudryavtsev is an urbanist, sociologist, and the СEO of Citymakers. In the past years, he worked as publisher and editor-in-chief for ARX professional journal in architecture and cooperated with other specialists to have founded the Territorial Development Institute (TDI), which designed 20+ major urban construction projects for Moscow and various regions of Russian, as well as created the Friends of Zaryadye public movement and led the development of projects for major Russian resorts as part of the team at the Rusresorts Development Company. Since 2012, he has served as a partner in Citymakers Bureau, which specialises in socio-cultural programming, creation of concepts for the development of urban districts and public spaces, as well as educational projects. Kudryavtsev has authored more than a hundred papers in leading architectural publications and served as an official representative of the World Architecture Festival in Russia, and a member of the Festival's judge panel.