Karen Lee

Karen is a chartered town planner and project manager specialising in urban integration, city management strategies, and data-driven community planning. At JCDISI, she leads strategic initiatives that integrate evidence-based analysis, stakeholder engagement, and participatory co-design to create shared value and support inclusive community development. Her work centres on driving policy innovation through social innovation and translational research, translating data and community insight into strategies for planning, service transformation, and cross-sector collaboration. Her recent work includes developing intergenerational play space initiatives in partnership with the Hong Kong Housing Society, advancing approaches that support ageing in place, partnering with NGOs to redesign residential care services, and applying data and analytics to inform service re-engineering for future communities in the Northern Metropolis.

Prior to joining JCDISI, she served as Technical Manager for the Elizabeth Line project in the UK and the Walk DVRC project in Hong Kong. She is co-author of the award-winning article, Tackling Double Ageing with Double Smart, and led the Double Smart Assessment Indicators for Age-friendly Community (V1.0) initiative, which received an Honourable Mention at the Hong Kong Institute of Planners Awards 2023.

My Sustainability Goals for 2026:

My 2026 sustainability goal is to help make urban planning more socially responsive by using systems thinking and community evidence to connect people’s lived experience with better planning, service, and policy decisions.