Kemal Taruc is an Indonesian urban planning academic and senior government advisor whose career spans city and regional planning, public policy, and organizational ethics. He holds a Sarjana Teknik in City and Regional Planning from the Bandung Institute of Technology, an MBA from Rutgers University, and an MSc in Risk Management from Glasgow Caledonian University, and pursued doctoral studies at the University of Bath's Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice before discontinuing them following the Asian Financial Crisis. He was a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow at Cornell University and a US-ASEAN Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Northeastern University.

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Academically, he has been a founding faculty member of Tarumanagara University's Graduate Program in Real Estate and Urban Development since 2005, and holds adjunct and research fellow positions at Universitas 17-Agustus-1945 Surabaya's Center for Climate and Urban Resilience. Earlier in his career he directed the University of Western Australia's International MBA program in Jakarta and taught organizational behavior at IPMI-Monash. He has been a visiting lecturer or panel speaker at MIT, Harvard's Kennedy School, Oxford's Environmental Change Institute, and the University of San Francisco, and has authored or co-authored more than two dozen publications and case studies on urban planning, climate resilience, housing policy, and Indonesian ecotourism, including chapters in Indonesia's National Report for Habitat III.

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On the policy side, he served as Special Advisor (Staf Khusus) to the Minister at Bappenas, Indonesia's National Development Planning Agency (2019–2024), and as Secretary to a Member of the Presidential Advisory Council (2015–2019), where he led policy research informing recommendations submitted directly to the President of Indonesia on topics including infrastructure financing and maritime economy. He served as UN-Habitat's Programme Manager for Indonesia (2011–2014), leading the partnership that secured Indonesia's hosting of major Habitat III preparatory meetings, and has held earlier advisory roles with the State Ministry of Public Housing and USAID-ICMA programs. He continues to provide pro-bono strategic advisory and institutional-strengthening support to several civil society organizations, including Kota Kita Foundation and the Baraya Education Association, and is a former President (2001–2005) of the Indonesian Association of Planners.