Joel Myers is an IT engineer, entrepreneur and leading international technologist, specialising in the creation and development of innovation technology solutions in Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Smart Cities, working internationally with state and local governments (Italy, UK, USA and Mexico), universities (including Harvard, UCLA, University of Virginia, Polytecnico di Milano, Universidad de Guadalajara) and industry (including a partnership with Google Inc., Mountainview, CA). His company, HoozAround Corp. (USA) owns and manages a digital platform called IoP (the “Internet of People”) that provides socio-economic recovery for cities, through a micro-currency called HooziesTM. It has been successfully piloted by the Mexican State Government of Jalisco to the 8.2 million people living and working there and its 1000s of small businesses to support the local economy during and post-COVID-19 and restimulate growth. The next municipality to launch the IoP platform is New York City in 2021. One of the end-products of the IoP platform is unique “real-time” urban intelligence that flows in from cities, on the population’s demographics, ongoing business transactions, mobility, health and social community interactions, based on the use of the micro-currency, HooziesTM and AI/ML. Real-time reporting and analytics then offers city leaders and stakeholders an in-depth understanding of the complex and intricate behaviours that makes a city function. Municipalities may closely monitor the effects of their operations and policies, and predict issues in order to avoid them. As Chair of IEEE IoT Initiative for Smart Cities, Joel Myers has been focusing his working group on the redefinition of the digital transformation of urban environments from a truly “People-Centric” focal point. Exploring the goals of the smart city industry movement juxtaposed with the need for humanity to remain connected as physical people. This “People-Centric” approach is leading to a far greater multi-disciplinary approach to collaboration between the technology industry of IEEE IoT and its communication with smart city leaders and stakeholders from: urban planning; infrastructure and engineering; finance and economics; community engagement; cultural heritage and tourism; sociology; law and governance; and so on. This new approach was reflected in the past 2 years of smart city sessions, speakers and panellists at the IEEE World Forum on IoT. Through his leadership of the IEEE IoT Global Cities Alliance (GCA), IEEE has developed a close “ongoing” collaboration and networking, between the Tech Industry and Smart Cities, on a worldwide and regional scale, in order to work together in understanding urban needs and priorities, and sharing and developing projects, results, best practices, and standards to support interoperability. One of the GCA’s core initiatives is the Observatory of Urban Intelligence. A cloud-platform of observable urban data, gathered through crowd-sourcing IEEE’s global network of universities and student branches, building unique models and correlations in understanding cities and the effectiveness of smart city solutions. This project is being developed jointly with the ITU-T under the United Nations’ “United 4 Sustainable Cities” initiative, and the United Cities & Local Governments organization. The second core initiative of the IEEE IoT GCA is promoting existing best practices and standards globally to city leaders, and developing new standards based on priority issues communicated by participating cities themselves. This initiative is run under the IEEE SA Industry Connection programme “Smart Cities Standards and Best Practices”, where IEEE and other standards organisations, like ITU-T, and smart cities work on a common agenda. The work carried out by Joel Myers has been published in international newspapers and journals such as the BBC, New York Times, Hong Times, the Hindu Times, Wired, and Forbes Magazine.