Our teams
urbaMonde Switzerland
Léa Oswald
Administrator and Project Manager
Léa is a project manager for urbaMonde-Suisse in Geneva. She is responsible for international cooperation projects in Latin America and Asia in the field of collaborative housing, with a particular focus on the cooperative housing model.
She coordinates the CoHabitat Network, organizing international exchanges of experience and helping to develop documentation and financial tools to support collaborative housing initiatives.
She is also personally involved in cooperative housing projects in Geneva. Léa holds a Master's degree in Social Sciences and Asian Studies from the Universities of Neuchâtel and Geneva.
- Email:lea.oswald@urbamonde.org
Nina Quintas
Project Manager
Nina Quintas is a project manager at urbaMonde supporting grassroots organisations in Latin America and Asia to advance community-led housing and people-driven urban development. She brings expertise in cooperative housing, community land trusts, and community-led financial mechanisms, and manages international cooperation projects that strengthen community-led housing processes, collective land systems, and local governance.
Nina co-coordinates the CoHabitat Network, co-leads multi-country systematisation studies, and facilitates research, publications, and international learning exchanges. Her work focuses on amplifying community voices, supporting locally driven solutions, and promoting equitable, inclusive, and people-led housing practices. Nina holds a master's degree in innovation, human development and sustainability from the University of Geneva.
Nadia Gianoli
Communication Manager
Passionate about communication, human relations and sustainable development, Nadia joined urbaMonde in February 2024. With a wealth of experience in international non-governmental organizations, she brings valuable expertise to the team. Nadia is responsible for developing and implementing the communications strategy.
Régis Kacou
Junior Project Manager
Régis joined urbaMonde in December 2024 as a junior project manager. He holds a Master's degree in Territorial Development of the Souths from the University of Geneva and has strengthened his skills through several significant professional experiences, including an internship in urban planning at a commune in the canton of Vaud and an academic internship with a technical design office in the Ivory Coast. These experiences strengthened his understanding of urban planning and territorial development issues. Fascinated by the dynamics of development in West Africa, Régis is particularly interested in urban mobility, approaches centered on people's mastery of use, and innovative solutions for designing cities adapted to the challenges and transformations of the future.
Alessia Marcon
Trainee
Alessia recently joined urbaMonde as an intern after completing a master's degree in “Local and Global Development” at the University of Bologna. Passionate about participatory housing, grassroots communities and the dynamics between people and their environment, she sees this experience as a valuable opportunity to deepen her knowledge and actively contribute to the organisation's projects.
Enthusiastic about learning and taking on new challenges, Alessia hopes not only to make her contribution to the organization, but also to make rapid progress in French.
Francisco Aravena
Trainee
An architect by training, currently studying for a Master's degree in Territorial Development at the University of Geneva and an intern at the urbaMonde association, he focuses on participatory processes and the involvement of local communities in the design, implementation and management of territorial projects, with a view to promoting more equitable, sustainable and inclusive territories. He has experience in developing territorial planning tools in municipalities in the Global South, particularly in Latin America, as well as in participatory housing design processes. He uses graphic tools and geographic information systems (GIS) as aids for analysis, representation and decision-making at different territorial scales.
Committee Switzerland
Julien Woessner
President, Committee Switzerland
Julien is a member of the urbaMonde-Switzerland committee. An architect and urban planner, Julien is currently head of the Urban Planning Department for the City of Yverdon-les-Bains. He began his professional career as an architect, taught at EPFL, worked for ten years for the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation, supporting various movements involved in the right to the city and the right to housing, and worked as an urban planner for the City of Carouge. He has been a member of the Bled cooperative committee, is part of the Espace Suisse committee and participates in the Artisans de la Transition committee.
Suzanne Lerch
Volunteer project manager and committee member
Suzanne is a volunteer project manager and member of the urbaMonde-Suisse committee. She is responsible for international cooperation projects in Nicaragua.
A retired town-planning architect, Suzanne worked for many years in the town and country planning department of the Canton of Geneva, and also devoted a great deal of her time to Espace Femmes International, supporting women's movements in Nicaragua and throughout Latin America. She was also a member of the Board of the Fédération Genevoise de Coopération.
Paul Guilbaud
Committee member
As a trained architect, I have been involved in the development of cooperative housing projects for several years, both as a construction professional, project owner representative and resident. My career has allowed me to gain a concrete understanding of the human, social and environmental impact of participatory housing. Having grown up in several countries below the equator, I was confronted at an early age with situations marked by precarious housing and unequal access to decent housing. These experiences have deeply fuelled my commitment to collective, inclusive and solidarity-based forms of urban development. For me, joining UrbaMonde means actively contributing to the transformation of living environments by supporting initiatives led by residents themselves, in the conviction that access to safe, affordable and chosen housing is a fundamental condition for fairer and more sustainable cities.
urbaMonde France
Bénédicte Hinschberger
Project Manager
Bénédicte joined urbaMonde in September 2021, on her return to France after seven years in Vietnam and Morocco. Through her work on housing, the living environment and urban management, she is interested in ways of stimulating citizen participation among the most disadvantaged populations, who are sometimes overlooked by public policies.
She has worked in a variety of contexts: post-conflict humanitarian action in Bosnia and Cambodia, improvement of informal settlements in Benin, urban planning in countries undergoing post-communist transition (Vietnam, Cuba, Eastern Europe), urban policy in France...
Within urbaMonde-France, she provides support for projects in West Africa, working closely with a network of partners in the field.
Catherine Lion
Administrative and financial manager
Catherine joined UrbaMonde in January 2025 after more than 25 years in the French civil service, during which time she was responsible for the administrative and financial steering and human resources management of several public establishments and local authorities. She has, for example, been director of finance for a department, director general of services for several municipalities, and secretary general of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo.
Her role is to act as a facilitator, doing her utmost to relieve project managers of the administrative aspects, enabling them to concentrate more on operational objectives.
Pierre Arnold
Volunteer
Pierre is one of the founding members of urbaMonde France. Now based in Rennes, he is in charge of collaboration with our partners in the CoHabitat network, in particular World Habitat and academic partners.
Trained as a civil engineer and urban planner, he has built up his expertise in housing policies and the social production of housing through his travels in Latin America, documented in the book Habitat en Mouvement, and his professional experience in the field of housing (IRD Mexico, UN-Habitat Mexico, City of Buenos Aires...).
Pierre is passionate about urban photography and co-directed an ethnographic documentary on housing policy in Mexico, which won awards at various festivals.
Board France
Serge Allou
Treasurer
Serge Allou joined the Board of Urbamonde France after retiring at the end of 2022. From 2017 to 2022, he was Special Advisor to the World Secretariat of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). Within the Secretariat, he was responsible for implementing UCLG's strategy on local finance. Prior to that, he worked for 6 years as a Lead Urban Specialist for Cities Alliance, where he was responsible for several country programmes and the implementation of Cities Alliance strategy in Africa.
After spending 4 years in Latin America as an urban researcher at the end of the 1980s, Serge launched and managed for 10 years the Housing Solidarity Programme, a cooperation programme between French cities and cities, professionals and NGOs in the South. Serge was Director General of GRET, a French international development NGO. He was also an associate professor at IFU, the French Institute of Urbanism, from 1997 to 2012, responsible for the “International Expertise – Cities in Development” curriculum.
Armelle Choplin
Board member
Armelle Choplin is a professor of geography and urban planning at the University of Geneva. She conducts research in West Africa on cities, particularly precarious neighbourhoods, housing access, and sustainable construction. She teaches urban and development issues. She has been a researcher at IRD and has conducted numerous expert assessments for donors, consulting firms, and NGOs. She ensures that her research is relevant to development actors. She has been collaborating with urbaMonde since 2019, particularly in Senegal on projects led by urbaSEN, and strives to bridge the gap between the voluntary sector and academia.
Olivier Luisetti
Board member
Olivier Luisetti joined the Board of urbaMonde France after retiring in mid-2022. In 1982, he worked in humanitarian logistics in Togo, Burkina Faso, and Côte d'Ivoire, and collaborated with the logistics teams of the International Red Cross, UNHCR, and Handicap International. For 17 years, he was an associate professor at Grenoble School of Management, in partnership with ESCA, the Moroccan Business School in Casablanca. At IRIMA, he worked on outsourcing innovation resources. For six years, he collaborated on establishing a Regional Chapter of the Smart Building Alliance. Olivier is a member of the Advisory Board of Habitat Participatif France, the Board of Directors of Ecohabitons, and the Fédération de l'Habitat Réversible, and spent three years touring Europe, visiting nearly 400 participatory housing projects, residents' cooperatives, and eco-communities.
Laurie Servières
Board member
Laurie Servières joined the Board of urbaMonde in 2022 after completing her PhD on the internationalisation of the issue of ‘slums’.
Specialising in Latin America, she has been involved in promoting certain projects supported by Urbamonde in this region, notably the one in Nicaragua, which was featured in an AFD Atlas dedicated to sustainable development.
Since 2022, Laurie has been working as an independent consultant on humanitarian and international cooperation projects related to urban resilience, climate change adaptation, and disaster risk management. She collaborates with various French and international organisations, including AFD, Expertise France, and UN-Habitat. She also teaches at Sciences Po and supports various research projects on affordable and resilient housing solutions.
Yaneira Wilson
Board member
Architect–urbanist and social scientist, I currently serve full-time as an Associate Professor (French MCF equivalent) at the ENSA Paris‑Val de Seine, where I teach applied Human and Social Sciences in housing and territorial studies. My research within the CRH‑LAVUE focuses on the housing–health–social justice nexus, including home-based health literacy, energy poverty, and residential stress. I contribute to EU research programs such as SAPHIR and the urban well-being observatory WHAOU using international comparative and participatory methodologies. I collaborate with institutional and community actors in France and Latin America to co-produce residents’ knowledge and support inclusive urban transformation. I am also a governance member of the Swiss cooperative habitat network linked to urbaMonde.