Edna Ely-Ledesma, PhD is an assistant professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director of the Kaufman Lab for the Study and Design of Food Systems and Marketplaces. She holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Science from Texas A&M University, Master of Architecture and a Master of Urban Design from the University of Texas at Austin, and Bachelor of Environmental Design from Texas A&M University. She is a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow. In 2016, Ely-Ledesma was the Emerging Scholar of Race & Gender Fellow in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, and in 2017, she was the Carlos E. Castañeda Postdoctoral Fellow for the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. The corpus of her research, teaching, and mentoring focuses on understanding the development of the smart, green, and just 21st century city, in particular, the cultural landscapes of immigrant populations, micro-economies, and their development of a new understanding of city place. Her work seeks to bridge the gap between communities and city governments to help define the design agency of Latinos, a traditionally under-represented group.