Mark Hildebrand – 50th Reunion Essay

Mark Hildebrand

31746 Scenic Drive

Laguna Beach, California 92651

mlhildebrand@gmail.com

949-338-9517

Spouse(s): Nosipho Sithole-Hildebrand

Child(ren): Mara (1983), Chantal (1986) and Nandi (2004)

Education: Yale University, BA (1969), and Yale School of Architecture, MA (1972)

Career: Chad (1976-1979) UN project manager, built 360 primary school classrooms; Nairobi, Kenya (1979-1999) UN-Habitat, managed urban and housing projects in Africa, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean; (1994-1999) director, UN-Habitat’s substantive program; World Bank, Washington, DC (1999-2006) set up and directed the Cities Alliance; (2006-present) independent consultant.

Avocations: Family & friends, hiking, fishing, swimming in the sea & continuing urban development consulting – most recently in Vietnam and Myanmar

College: Branford

About 50 years ago, when I last saw most of you, I was beginning to study architecture while designing and building a few houses in the suburbs of New Haven. My horizons blew wide open when the parents of two Indian classmates at the School of Art and Architecture invited me to help design a building in Ahmedabad. I spent six months in India, and, while there, had a sort of career epiphany. I realized that, rather than catering for the US clients who can afford to hire an architect, if I focused on working in the developing world, I could continuously learn from the world’s cultural diversity and maybe even find synergy between my disparate studies at Yale in political science and architecture.

It’s been a wonderful journey and living in Africa for well over two decades, while working with mayors, community leaders and national political leaders from all over the world has kept my mind stretching nearly every day. In the process, I’ve learned to value diversity as a rich source of inspiration that has shaped my professional career, as well as my family and friendships.

My work has focused on improving living conditions in low-income communities while developing policies and strategies to respond to rapid urban growth. Recognizing the need to achieve broader impacts, in 1999 I helped develop and negotiate a partnership between the UN, the World Bank, all of the G-7 countries, along with the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, which led to the establishment the Cities Alliance, a global coalition of cities and their development partners committed to scaling-up successful approaches to urban poverty reduction.

In 1999, after living in Africa for 23 years, I moved to Washington, DC, to set up and manage the Cities Alliance secretariat at the World Bank. Perhaps our greatest contribution to the international development agenda came early on when we developed the “Cities Without Slums” action plan which was launched by Nelson Mandela at the inaugural meeting of the Cities Alliance in Berlin in December 1999. With the strong support of President Mandela, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and many others the action plan was subsequently endorsed by the 150 heads of state and government attending the UN Millennium Summit in NY in September 2000. This was the first international development target ever to focus on urban poverty reduction.

I met my first wife while living in Kenya and our daughters Mara and Chantal were both born and raised in Nairobi. Their mother left when they were very young, so I was a single parent for most of their childhood. After sometime I managed to remarry and now live with my wife Nosipho and our 13-year-old daughter Nandi Weziwe in Laguna Beach, California. My mother said, “Mark, I can’t believe you came home after 40 years!” When she passed away, we moved to Saigon for two years but we’re now back in Laguna—at least for the time being….