Professor James Kwame Mensah is an Associate Professor of Public Administration and Sustainable Development in the Department of Public Administration at the University of Ghana Business School. Professor Mensah is also a fellow at the Penn Institute of Urban Research (Penn IUR), University of Pennsylvania. He also served as the Resilience Advisor on the 100RC project in Accra, where he led the team in developing the Accra Resilience Strategy. One of the initiatives in the Strategy – engaging informal waste collectors in the waste management chain, won the C40 Cities Bloomberg Philanthropies Award in 2019. He holds a PhD in Development Administration and an MPhil in Public Administration. Professor Mensah’s research focuses on Local Economic Development, Urban Policy & Resilience, Informal Economy, Informal Settlements, Circular Economy, Climate Change and Public Sector Management. His research publications have appeared in top-tier journals including Energy Research & Social Science; Cities; Resources Policy; Urban Research & Practice; International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development; Urban Forum; International Review of Administrative Sciences; International Journal of Public Administration; Local Economy; and Development Southern Africa. He served as adhoc reviewer for several international journals. Professor Mensah has won several research grants, including grants from AXA Research Fund, International Growth Centre, European Union, among others. Professor Mensah has been involved in the development of government policies in Ghana and consulted for several organisations including Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO), United Cities and Local Government Africa (UCLGA), Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF), 100 Resilient Cities (100RC), C40 cities, Dalberg Global Development Advisors, Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Committee on Decentralisation (IMCC). Professor Mensah is a graduate of the National Institute for Development Administration, Bangkok, and the University of Ghana.