Ben Furmage

Ben is the founding CEO of Water Sensitive Cities Australia, continuing his work from his time as CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC), where he also served as the Chief Operating and Finance Officer. He leads multidisciplinary projects on water-sensitive city approaches. Before CRCWSC, Ben spent ten years on Melbourne Water’s executive team, handling water resource and sewerage system planning, regulation, customer service, public affairs, and research and development.

Lyndon DeSalvo

Lyndon works to advance NBS in cities and communities to maximize outcomes for people and nature. He leads efforts to implement and scale nature-based and green infrastructure projects that improve water quality and provide local communities with climate resilience and other co-benefits. He collaborates closely with government agencies and the water sector, including utilities, researchers, and policymakers. Lyndon is a city and environmental planner who can work at multiple scales, from watershed-wide planning to site-specific design.

Erik Spiro-Larrea

Erik is a senior project lead for TNC’s Nature for Water Facility, a specialist team that helps local programs analyze, develop, and execute NBS for water security. Erik led Nature for Water’s first project and has since directly supported 15 NBS programs worldwide with various detailed analyses. As a trained economist, he typically focuses on return on investment, economics, sustainable finance, and governance, as well as developing “program intelligence” analyses and dashboards. Before joining TNC, Erik worked at Pegasys, a management consultancy based in Cape Town.