Reed Jordan
Reed Jordan is a 2018 Masters in City Planning candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT he focuses on affordable housing policy and finance, economic development, and the spatial elements of racial inequality. Prior to attending MIT, Reed was a Research Associate at the Urban Institute, first in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Center, and later in the Research to Action Lab. He managed the Housing Assistance Matters Initiative, a multi-year program of cross-center research and analysis on the importance of housing assistance, overseeing the budget, research products planning and development, staffing, and deliverable. He also provided technical assistance to 12 local communities implementing Promise Neighborhood initiatives and evaluated HUD's Choice Neighborhoods program in 5 cities.
Nicholas Kelly
Nicholas Kelly is a PhD student in Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. His research focuses on affordable housing and public policy, with a particular focus on segregation, fair housing, regulation, and political theory. Nicholas has worked at New York City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, as well as for Senators Charles Schumer and Elizabeth Warren. Prior to MIT, Nicholas studied at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, where he received a Master in Public Affairs. He earned his B.A. at Columbia University and hails from Brookline, MA.
Justin Steil
Justin Steil is an Assistant Professor of Law and Urban Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Broadly interested in spatial dimensions of inequality, his research examines the intersection of urban policy with property, land use, and civil rights law. Recent publications include “The Social Structure of Mortgage Discrimination,” Housing Studies (2018); “The Significance of Segregation in the 21st Century,” City & Community (2016); and “The New Immigration Contestation: Social Movements and Local Immigration Policymaking in the United States” American Journal of Sociology (2014). He is a co-editor of Searching for the Just City: Debates in Urban Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2009). Justin received a B.A. African-American Studies from Harvard University, an M.Sc. in City Design from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and a J.D. from Columbia University. He previously worked as advocacy director for a non-profit fighting predatory lending, planner for an environmental justice organization, program manager for a project bringing youth and prisoners into critical dialogues about justice, and trainer with a domestic violence crisis center instructing Ciudad Juárez police in the support of survivors of sexual assault.
Maia Woluchem
Maia Woluchem is a Masters in City Planning candidate at MIT, working on issues of housing, socioeconomic and racial equity, and the use of local data in city policymaking. Before entering her graduate program, Maia was a Research Associate at the Urban Institute, working in both the Housing Finance Policy Center and the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Center. While there, she helped develop Turning the Corner, a multi-site project aiming to measure neighborhood change in recovering housing markets, managed researchers in support of the evaluation of DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative, and authored issue briefs, online tools, and data products to examine racial equity, housing affordability, and other neighborhood-level indicators in Washington, DC.