To meet urban sustainability goals we must change the way science intersects with society. The nexus of ecology with urban design, landscape architecture, and city planning are critical intersections where facilitating knowledge-to-action can promote resiliency. However, limited ecological awareness and large data gaps challenge effective ecological planning efforts. Since 2014, the Earth Stewardship Initiative (ESI) demonstration project has been working with ecologists, graduate students, urban planners and designers, and city professionals to develop relevant ecological projects for ESA host cities. Utilizing these transdisciplinary collaborations, the ESI project integrates ecological research into city design and management to analyze environmental and social sustainability issues and present cities with solutions in white papers. Ecology Fellows participating in ESI are exposed to the limitations in city planning and design and data needs. The projects are also contextualized within a broader set of issues including the logistical challenges of planning, the socioeconomic challenges and equity gaps in cities. Graduate student Fellows have been key contributors to the demonstration projects, spending months working with city officials, practitioners, and advisors on planning projects using sustainable design strategies and novel research methods, including designed experiments and other adaptive management tools. ESI has collaborated with ESA and other organizations to create demonstration projects in Louisville (2019), Portland (2017), Baltimore (2015), and Sacramento (2014). This oral session brings together past ESI Fellows and ecologists to share a myriad of ways in which they have built on their exposure to data gaps and limitations in ecological knowledge, through their own academic and professional practice. Speakers will explore both the educational and long-term professional implications of the program and how the exposure to cities informs urban ecology. The presentations will also provide an overview of the experiences and findings from the ESI demonstration projects through critical analysis of the transdisciplinary interactions, project significance, as well as the effects of project development on urban sustainability and assumptions made where data was not available. As the role of ecological research in shaping sustainable cities is an increasing focus of urban ecology, speakers will also address the role of the ESI project in educating future ecologists to be a collaborative power in addressing the ecological understanding and data needs of cities and communities.