Please join us for an interactive dialogue exploring the local politics of public health and wellbeing.
Featured Speaker:
Hon. Alyia Gaskins, mayor-elect and member of the city council, The City of Alexandria, Virginia.
Moderator:
Whitney Austin Gray, Ph.D., program faculty, Georgetown Urban & Regional Planning Program; Executive Director, Research & Innovation, Well Building Institute
About Alyia Gaskins
Hon. Alyia Gaskins is mayor-elect of the City of Alexandria and was elected to City Council in 2021. She is dedicated to building a healthier, more prosperous Alexandria for all.
A public health strategist and city planner, Alyia has worked on hunger policy at D.C. Hunger Solutions and health issues at the National League of Cities, as well as managing an affordable housing investment program at the Center for Community Investment. Currently, she is a Senior Program Officer at the Melville Charitable Trust, a national philanthropic organization devoted to ending homelessness, where she leads efforts to advance housing justice through better land use policies. Her consulting business, CitiesRX, focuses on building physical, social, and economic health through community partnerships.
Alyia has long been committed to using her personal experience and extensive professional expertise to advance policies and systems that make communities work for everyone. Prior to her election to City Council, she served on the Virginia Fair Housing Board, the Alexandria Transportation Commission, the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce Government Relations Committee, the Hunger Free Alexandria Steering Committee, Agenda Alexandria, Women of Color in Community Development Board of Directors, and the Good Shepherd Housing Leadership Council. She also volunteers with her church, Shiloh Baptist Church.
She attended Vanderbilt University, where she majored in medicine, health, and society, and later went to the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned a master’s degree in public health. She completed her master’s in urban planning at Georgetown University and has earned a Professional Certificate in Municipal Finance from the University of Chicago.
About Whitney Gray
Whitney Gray serves on the faculty of the Urban & Regional Planning program and is adjunct assistant professor at the Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies. She serves as the executive director of research and innovation at Delos.
Gray has spent her career focused on the intersection of global public health, wellness, and the built environment. At Delos, she is responsible for the oversight of health research and the development of innovative planning and design strategies that seek to improve human health and wellness through environmental and building design. Her work is directly related to the administration and development of the WELL certification system. Prior to joining Delos, Gray served as the health research and innovation director for Cannon Design, a global healthcare planning and design firm, where she oversaw the company’s research, prototyping, and innovation platforms. While at Cannon Design, she delivered transformative projects to public and private clients and worked to develop new ideas that increased the impact of health research and innovation on the design industry.
Gray’s work exploring the nexus of health, wellness and the built environment has been widely published. A dynamic public speaker, she is frequently an invited presenter at national and international conferences—often speaking on topics related to health-centered urban planning and the design of healthcare environments. Gray co-founded the NIH Health in Buildings Roundtable, and supports health and design research through the American Institute of Architects, the Urban Land Institute, and the Environmental Design Research Association. She is the first public health professional to become certified LEED AP.
She holds a Doctorate of Public Health, as well as a B.A. in Public Health Studies from the Johns Hopkins University.
