Meet The Team
Sheila Foster: Founder & Director
Sheila Foster founded LabGov-US and is co-author with Christian Iaione of the award-winning Co-Cities book. Foster is also a tenured professor who has taught at Rutgers University, Fordham University, and, most recently, at Georgetown University, where she was the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Urban Law and Policy with a joint appointment at the Law and Public Policy schools. Foster is currently a Professor at Columbia University, with her primary appointment in the Climate School and an affiliate appointment at the Law School. Foster is well known for her articles and books on urban policy, property and land use, state and local government, and environmental justice. Foster has worked with government agencies and public officials on a range of urban, environmental, and climate issues. You can find out more about her at sheilarfoster.com
Christian Iaione: LabGov.City Founder
Christian Iaione is the founder and co-director of LabGov.city and co-author, with Sheila Foster, of the award-winning Co-Cities book. Iaione is a Professor of Urban Law and Policy and of Law and Policy of Innovation and Sustainability at Luiss University in Rome, Italy. He is an Affiliated Fellow of the Urban Law Center at Fordham University.
Manohar "Manny" Patole: Project Manager
Manny has been an Adjunct Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering's Sustainable Urban Environments and Wagner's Urban Planning programs. Since the Fall of 2024 he has been a Professor and Faculty Mentor at NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). He holds a Master of Urban Planning degree from NYU and an LLM/ME in Water Governance and Conflict Resolution from the University of Dundee & UNESCO.
Michael Likosky : Expert Advisor
Expert Advisor: Governors Newsom, Brown, and Cuomo; US Treasury; Mayors Emanuel and Garcetti; Senators Gillibrand, Schumer, Booker, Kerry, and Nelson; and the financing arm of 40 rural CA counties. Chaired Governor Brown's Task Force to Modernize the $52bn CA Infrastructure Bank. Strategic Advisor: Goldman Sachs Merchant Bank, Lazard, D.E. Shaw, Google, Facebook, News Corp, ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN, Hecate, OHL, AECOM, CCR, and McKinsey, including billion-dollar-plus deals. Awards: Arts and Humanities Research Council (3x), Ford (4x), Rockefeller (2x), Markle (3x), Bloomberg, Chatham House, Arcus, ESRC, and Surdna. Global Expert: UN, OECD, EC, AU, Clinton Global Initiative, IDLO, and President Carter Center. Author: 5 books and contributor to Oxford Amnesty Lectures.
Clayton Gillette: Advisor
Clayton Gillette is the former Director of the Marron Institute of Urban Management, an applied research unit at New York University, and the Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law at New York University School of Law. Gillette's scholarship and teaching concentrates on local government law and commercial law. Gillette has consulted on numerous issues of municipal governance, ranging from municipal finance to telecommunications regulation
Elena De Nictolis: LabGov.City
Elena De Nictolis has served as a Research Fellow and Director of the Co-Cities research project at LabGov.city. She is also an Assistant Professor at Luiss University, Department of Law where she has taught climate justice; urban law and policy; and the governance of innovation and sustainability. She has previously been a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University and NYU's Guarini Center on Environmental, Energy, and Land Use. She holds a BA and MA in Politics, and a PhD in Political Theory, Political Science and Political History from Luiss (Rome).
Dan Wu: Advisor
Dan Wu is an advisor to LabGov-US on strategy and marketing. He holds a JD and a PhD from Harvard, where his research focused on the organizational dynamics of urban innovation. He was selected as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. You can find out more at Heyjoyful.com
Nikolas Deligiannis: Research Fellow
Deligiannis is a Research Fellow working with Dr. Sheila Foster at the Columbia Climate School while pursuing his M.A. in Climate & Society. His work includes a thesis examining the Co‑Cities framework in rural communities across the United States. He currently contributes to two initiatives: the CUREi Pilot Project and the North Tulsa Community Land & Governance Project, supporting research, community engagement, and policy innovation.