Emily Rugel is an honorary adjunct lecturer at the University of Sydney, where her work explores health-promoting community design across the lifespan with the aim of developing evidence that can be embedded in sustainability plans and integrated in policies that advance equity. She received her doctorate from the University of British Columbia, where she developed a regional model of access to natural spaces and applied it to prescription and health-survey data to clarify pathways linking urban nature to social ties and mental health. In addition to a Ph.D., she holds a Master of Public Health and a B.A. in Journalism, but firmly believes in the acquisition of knowledge through chance encounters as well as scientific investigation.