Dr. Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, has been chosen as the 2014 recipient of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development, the Institute’s highest honor. Dr. Rodin will be honored at a celebratory luncheon during ULI’s Fall Meeting in New York City.

The ULI J.C. Nichols Prize recognizes a person or a person representing an institution who has demonstrated a longtime commitment to the creation of communities that prosper by providing a high quality of life for all citizens, and which reflect the highest standards of design and development. The prize honors the legacy of Kansas City, Missouri, developer J.C. Nichols, a founding ULI member considered to be one of America’s most creative entrepreneurs in land use during the first half of the 1900s.

Dr. Rodin, a psychologist, is the 15th recipient of the prestigious honor. She is being recognized for her leadership in the revival of the neighborhood surrounding the University of Pennsylvania while serving as the university’s president, and for her current leadership of the Rockefeller Foundation’s efforts to create healthy, thriving communities worldwide.

“Through the Nichols Prize, we have sought to recognize visionaries who have made a contribution to community building—to making a positive change—over a substantial amount of time,” says 2014 prize jury chairman James D. Klingbeil, chairman and chief executive officer of Klingbeil Capital Management Ltd. in San Francisco. “Dr. Rodin is a true leader in community building, and her work epitomizes what the prize is all about.”

Dr. Rodin, whose career has spanned more than four decades, is widely recognized as a visionary and an innovator in neighborhood redevelopment and in the creation of thriving, vibrant communities. Her work at the Rockefeller Foundation is rooted in the West Philadelphia Initiatives, an extraordinary neighborhood revitalization program she led while serving as the president of the University of Pennsylvania from 1994 to 2004. Under Dr. Rodin’s leadership, Penn became more integrated into the community through a strategy designed as an interlocking series of programs to address the area’s security, education, housing, and economic development needs, with the university taking the lead role as developer and facilitator. The West Philadelphia Initiatives received a ULI Award for Excellence in 2003.

“My vision is a more resilient society, one where greater opportunity is shared by more people,” Dr. Rodin says. “Throughout my life and career, it has always mattered to me that people feel empowered to participate in decision making—in outcomes that affect their lives. My work enables that vision to be actualized.”

Dr. Rodin’s steadfast commitment to create positive change transformed Penn’s relationship with the community, and it guides her current work at the Rockefeller Foundation. Since she assumed the presidency in 2005, the amount awarded by the foundation annually has risen to approximately $200 million in grants, which have leveraged more than $1 billion during that time in additional funds from partners. Applying the same pioneering approach she used at Penn, Dr. Rodin has overseen a structural shift at the foundation that has resulted in a portfolio of interconnected initiatives. Each initiative addresses multiple focus areas, all aimed at meeting four equally important goals—revalue ecosystems, advance health, secure livelihoods, and transform cities. Specifically, the initiatives are aimed at creating new job opportunities for youth in Africa and the United States; bringing clean electrification to rural villages in India; developing the fields of impact investing and innovative finance; advancing access to universal health coverage in developing countries; and building more-resilient communities.

All of the focus areas are part of an overarching effort to reinforce the resilience of communities to environmental, economic, and social changes—enabling them to realize what the foundation refers to as the “resilience dividend.” The term, which is the title of a new book by Dr. Rodin, is one she often uses to describe the benefits of proactive investments in resilience building. “Resilience is about planning—it’s about investing in ways that are protective,” she explains.

“We are beginning to understand that there is a dividend associated with investing in resilience. It provides more economic opportunities, and better social cohesion. We believe strongly that building resilience can reduce the likelihood that every disruption becomes a disaster.”

In May 2013, the Rockefeller Foundation announced the “100 Resilient Cities Challenge,” a $100 million commitment to build resilience in cities around the world. The foundation defines resilience as “the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience.” Through the program, grants are being awarded to 100 cities to support the hiring of a chief resilience officer, as well as to assist with the creation and implementation of a resilience strategy.

In December 2013, 32 cities ranging from Byblos, Lebanon, to New Orleans were selected from the first funding round as grant recipients; an additional 33 recipients from the second round will be announced within the next few months. The two funding rounds collectively drew more than 700 applications, which Dr. Rodin proudly points to as an indicator that cities worldwide are “thinking about resilience in a very deliberative way.”

The Rockefeller Foundation is also the lead supporter of Rebuild by Design, a program created by the federal government in response to Hurricane Sandy’s 2012 devastation of communities in the Northeast region of the United States. Rebuild by Design is dedicated to creating innovative community- and policy-based solutions to protect the nation’s cities that are most vulnerable to increasingly intense weather events and future uncertainties. Initiated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Presidential Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, Rebuild by Design involves a design competition through which winning teams of researchers and designers work with local businesses, policy makers, and other stakeholders on redeveloping their communities to be environmentally and economically sound. While the program to date has focused on areas affected by Sandy, it is being expanded to communities across the United States.

Through Rodin’s leadership, the foundation is expanding its focus on resilience with a new program aimed at helping the most vulnerable areas of the world recoup more of the funds spent on disaster recovery and leverage more funds for development. Together with the United States Agency for International Development and other partners, the foundation is supporting initiatives in the Sahel and Horn regions of Africa and the region between South and Southeast Asia to enable humanitarian relief agencies to invest more in building capacity prior to emergencies.

“Resilience applies to how you organize leadership and governance, and to the kind of social fabric and social cohesion that exist, as well as physical infrastructure, land use planning, and design,” Dr. Rodin says. “Resilience is often referred to as an inborn quality, but we are learning that resilience is a learnable characteristic for people, institutions, and cities.”

In addition to James D. Klingbeil, other 2014 Nichols Prize jury members were: John Bucksbaum, founder, Bucksbaum Retail Properties, Chicago; Mark Johnson, president, Civitas, Denver; Sir Stuart Lipton, 2007 ULI J.C. Nichols laureate and founder, Lipton Rogers Developments LLP, London; and former ULI Chairman Marilyn J. Taylor, Dean of the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Some of the previous winners include philanthropist Ron Terwilliger, landscape architect Peter Walker, and New York City’s former Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden.