Raed Mansour

Raed joined MPC in February 2025 as a Senior Fellow for the Greening America’s Cities initiative. Previously he was the founder of the Chicago Department of Public Health’s Office of Innovation and past Director of Environmental Innovation, pioneering innovative approaches to public health, combining urban science, informatics, and community collaborations to create lasting impact. As a strategic advisor to executive leadership for over 11 years, he played a role in shaping environmental public health and implementing innovative programs through a whole-of-government approach, co-leading and coordinating city-wide projects, while fostering strong community-centered partnerships that included Our Roots Chicago tree planting equity initiative, CoolChi extreme heat mitigation, and the Community Air Monitoring Network to detect neighborhood-level air pollution.

Raed was also detailed as the Public Health Technology Group Supervisor for the Health and Medical Branch of the Operations Section during the City of Chicago’s COVID-19 sustained response, responsible for scaling and coordinating the development of several new tech stack applications for symptom surveillance, contact tracing, and case and vaccine management.

He received his B.S. in Neurobiology and Animal Physiology from Purdue University, M.S. in Health Communication from Boston University where he also taught for five years, and a Certificate in Predictive Analytics from DePaul University. He is a member of the American Public Health Association, Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honor Society,  Alliance for Community Trees, and a member of the Openlands Board of Directors since 2021.

Raed grew up in Hegewisch on the southeast side of Chicago and now lives in Albany Park. He is a trained TreeKeeper, birder, and volunteers his time as a Natural Areas Community Steward at River Park.