Ali Estefam is an award-winning urban planner and community consultant. She uses planning tools for public participation, to leverage power imbalances, and to advocate for social justice. Ali conducts and strategizes community engagement for large-scale urban, resiliency, housing, and transportation projects in New York City at Melissa Johnson Associates, where she serves as vice president of planning and design and is an adjunct professor at the City College of New York, and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia. Ali has been recognized as one of the talents of social development by the Lemann Foundation and is the head of the New York Chapter of the Center for Conscious Design, a think tank that advocates for a people-centered approach to design and urban planning.