Caring Manhood in Cities & Regions

Oyunga Pala is a writer, curator, and coach who looks at the world through an anthropological lens to better understand the stories we tell ourselves. For over twenty years, he has been one of Kenya’s most distinct voices, moving from the sharp satire of national columns to profound investigations into masculinity, culture, and grief.

Today, as an author and certified coach, Oyunga works at the intersection of the personal and the systemic. He helps individuals and collectives navigate “grief alchemy” by transforming sorrow into strength and finding the universal in the everyday. His debut memoir Strength and Sorrow: Reflections on the Ones We Lost (2025) is an unflinching interrogation of the 21st-century African interior, where the personal memoir of a veteran journalist intersects with the collective mourning of a nation.

Anthea Spinks is the Director of Community Development with extensive experience leading place‑based, people‑centred initiatives. Her career spans local government and international aid and development, where she worked on programs focused on equity, capacity‑building, and humanitarian disasters and community resilience across diverse contexts. Anthea is known for her collaborative leadership style and strong partnership approach. She brings a global perspective to local challenges, translating complex community needs into practical outcomes. Anthea is deeply committed to strengthening social connection and long‑term community wellbeing.

Vicki Shabo is a gender equity expert, policy strategist, and coalition builder, who has helped to win paid leave, equal pay, and pregnancy fairness policies affecting tens of millions of people across the United States. Shabo also founded and directs Re-Scripting Gender, Work, Family, and Care, which focuses on helping to shape and celebrate authentic, engaging, relatable storytelling in television and film. Previously, Shabo led workplace and work-family initiatives at the National Partnership for Women & Families, practiced law, and was a public opinion researcher. She began her career in electoral politics and on Capitol Hill.

Shabo is a trusted resource for policymakers, advocates, researchers, journalists, business leaders, and entertainment industry stakeholders. She has testified numerous times in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures. Her op-eds have appeared in publications ranging from the Boston Globe to The Hollywood Reporter, and her insights and analysis have appeared on television and radio and in major news outlets. Shabo is a graduate of Pomona College (B.A.), the University of Michigan (M.A., political science), the University of North Carolina (J.D.). She lives in Washington, D.C. but enjoys spending ample time in her native city, Los Angeles.

Dr. Lee Gettler is the John A. O’Brien College Professor of Anthropology at Notre Dame, where he is the Department Chairperson and the director of the Hormones, Health, and Human Behavior Laboratory. He is a leading expert on the ‘biology of fatherhood’ and what it means for how we think about men’s roles in families and men’s health.

His research explores how men’s bodies respond to the transition to fatherhood through shifts in hormones like testosterone and oxytocin. He focuses on how these biological changes help men get ready to take on roles in their families as committed caregivers and supportive partners. He draws on this work to help frame new questions about the roles of human fathers in the evolutionary past. His ground-breaking research in this area has been published in The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science and featured on the front page of the New York Times. In 2025, he was named an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). With many fantastic collaborators around the world, he studies questions about the role of fathers in families, parents’ health, and child well-being across a range of global settings, including the Philippines, Congo-Brazzaville, and the U.S.

He is the father to two amazing children, who keep him very busy with their passions for basketball, soccer, running, and music.

Nancy Pierorazio serves as a Senior Policy Officer Diversity and Equality at the City of Melbourne, where she has worked since 2002. She leads policy and project delivery to advance diversity, gender equality and inclusion, including implementation of the Inclusive Melbourne Action Plan and Gender Impact Assessments under the Gender Equality Act 2020. Nancy holds qualifications in psychology, social research and criminology, and brings extensive government experience, combining expertise in Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), gender-based violence and gender equality to develop gender and safety audit tools.

Lib was appointed as Director of the first Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) in England and Wales in 2019, established by the Mayor of London to lead a public health approach to tackling violence. Under Lib’s leadership, prevention and early intervention is now embedded in London’s approach to tackling violence affecting young people. Figures show that when the VRU was set up, the number of homicides of young people was three times higher than today; and hospital admissions for knife injuries has halved over the same seven-year period. The strength of the VRU is strong partnership with the voluntary sector, NHS, London’s 32 councils, education system and police, alongside investment in more than half a million interventions for children and young people. Lib has championed the participation of young people and youth workers; developed the first London Inclusion Charter as a city-wide campaign around educational transformation; and co-created the award-winning community, neighbourhood programme, MyEnds.

Increasingly online harm has become a key feature of young people’s lives. The VRU is delivering targeted online and healthy relationship training, investing in mentors and young fathers, and publishing groundbreaking research on the relationship between online and offline violence to determine future opportunities to intervene. Lib is well established in local government. Prior to the VRU, she was Lambeth’s elected leader for seven years, and the first female leader for 20 years. She was vice-chair of London Councils and the Local Government Association. Lib is also a trustee of the Institute for Public Policy & Research, a leading UK thinktank.

Holly Milburn-Smith (she/her) is Co-Executive Director of the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE), where she leads a global network of municipal governments advancing gender-equitable urban policy. She works closely with city leaders across six continents to strengthen local approaches to caregiving infrastructure, gender-based violence prevention, and the use of gender data in policymaking. Holly joined CHANGE in 2021 from the Mayor’s Office of International Affairs in the City of Los Angeles and brings over a decade of experience in international collaboration and community development, with a focus on turning research and partnerships into implementable local policy. Her prior work spans gender equity, inclusive education, workforce development, and initiatives serving justice-impacted communities. Holly is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar and an Aspen Institute Rising Leader in Foreign Policy (2022). She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons, where she is regularly reminded that care is, indeed, infrastructure.

Darby Saxbe, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and tenured professor of psychology at the University of Southern California.

She has published over eighty scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and secured major research grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. She earned awards from the American Psychological Association and the Society for Research in Child Development and was a Fulbright fellow. Dr. Saxbe received her PhD in clinical psychology from UCLA and her BA in English and psychology from Yale University.

Her research focuses on the transition to parenthood, particularly the neural and hormonal underpinnings of fatherhood. She integrates neuroscience and psychology to explore how close connections shape health and wellbeing.

When she is not doing research, she plays guitar in an all-mom indie rock band and writes the Substack newsletter, Natal Gazing.

Julia serves as a Policy Officer in Metropolis, specialising in local care policies, mainstreaming gender equality, and local feminist agendas in large cities and metropolitan areas. Her role involves leading international city-to-city policy exchanges, developing knowledge and toolkits and supporting the International Fund for Metropolises: Local Care Systems.

Hailing from South Africa, she has a background working with local government, international cooperation and grassroots organisations in Cape Town, Barcelona, and internationally. She previously held positions with United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), and the City of Cape Town. She has a Joint Masters degree in Urban Studies from the Universities of Brussels and Vienna and a Bachelors (Hons) in Social Anthropology from the University of Cape Town.