Dr. Sruthi Atmakur-Javdekar is a scholar and architect, landscape architect and environmental psychologist. Sruthi is the founder and principal architect of an interdisciplinary consulting firm, ’GRIT: environmental design + research studio’ that creates environments for children, young people and adults in urban areas of the developing world. Sruthi has a PhD in Environmental Psychology from the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, and is a recipient of two university gold medals for excellence in Architectural education at undergraduate level in India and holds a masters degree in Landscape Architecture from Virginia Tech. For over a decade, Sruthi worked as a research associate and project director with the Children’s Environments Research Group (CERG), where her portfolio included development of children’s participatory assessment toolkits and management of global projects related to child friendly cities, communities and schools with UNICEF, Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF) and Plan International alongside Dr. Roger Hart and Dr. Pamela Wridt. As a child friendly cities expert, Sruthi supported World Resources Institute (WRI) to develop guidelines and toolkits for making Indian cities friendly for infants, toddlers and caregivers under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Smart Cities Mission’s Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge in partnership with BvLF. Currently, Sruthi’s work portfolio comprises of residential, commercial and institutional architectural projects, along with a range of large-scale landscape work including urban street plazas and high-rise high density housing landscape development. Drawing from her work as an expert in Child Friendly Cities, Sruthi applies an intergenerational lens to her design practice.

As a beneficiary of a happy, healthy childhood, Robyn has made her life’s work advocating the same for all children. Her career has spanned 35 years, encompassing senior leadership roles in education, local government, children’s services, and the not-for-profit sector. Her advocacy and leadership have been recognized with a number of awards, including the Australian Commonwealth Centenary medal and an AM in the Australian Honours List. Robyn is passionate about achieving reform that enhances policy and planning for Australia’s children. Robyn served on successive Ministerial Advisory Councils and played a significant role in the reform of the school age care sector in Australia between 1996 and 2018. Her advocacy work, undertaken with the National peak body, included securing the first Quality Assurance system and qualifications for the sector, followed by the development of the first Australian school age care framework "My Time, Our Place." She is currently CEO of Play Australia, the national advocacy organisation for play and since 2017, President of the International Play Association (IPA World). Robyn has represented IPA World on the UN working group for the development of the General Comment on Article 31, and the global working group for the International Day of Play campaign. Active in the media, she speaks regularly at international and national events on the importance of play as a biological imperative, critical for healthy development and essential to build social cohesion and is undertaking a Churchill Fellowship to examine Governments with recognised play initiatives, to support children’s health and wellbeing that she hopes will shape a national agenda for play in Australia.