Care about important challenges like poverty, affordable housing and neighbourhood inequality? Here’s our latest roundup of two people we think you should be following on social to stay up-to-date on the issues that matter to you:

Mary Rowe @rowemw: She’s known as a city-builder extraordinaire with decades of experience strengthening cities on both sides of the border. We met up with Mary last summer during a trip to the Big Apple to look at solutions to affordable housing.  She’s currently based in New York, where after six years leading the community resilience efforts of MAS, she accepted an international fellowship with Project for Public Spaces.  This past July, this urbanist was also named Evergreen’s first-ever Senior Fellow with a broad mission of “advancing action to transition cities to a sustainable future.” In her new role, she’ll lead the development of a national strategy to help strengthen civic assets including parks, libraries and community centres. We share Mary’s passion for building strong, sustainable communities and we wish her the best of luck in her new role!

David Phipps @mobilemobilizer: He’s been named the “most influential knowledge broker in Canada.” And he has a passion for turning research into impact by working with community organizations (including United Way) to help harness the power of information to do good. As Director, Research Services & Knowledge Exchange at York University, David leads the school’s award-winning Knowledge Mobilization Unit, that provides services to researchers, community organizations and government agencies who want to maximize the economic, social and environmental impacts of university research. One example? We partnered with David’s team and Dr. Stephen Gaetz of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness to look at innovative solutions to youth homelessness in York Region.