Trainers and Presenters
Bios for presenters and trainers will are placed on this page as they become available.
Trainers
Community Land Trusts
May Louie has been working at Dudley Square Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) as the Rebuilding Communities Initiative (RCI) Project Director since 1994. RCI, an Annie E. Casey Foundation-funded project, is one of the nation’s innovative comprehensive community-building initiatives. It approaches place-based change in an integrated, synergistic way, encouraging broad and new strategies for community revitalization. For a number of years, she chaired the Boston Rainbow Coalition, which built neighborhood and constituency councils throughout the city. Before coming to DSNI, she worked for the National Rainbow Coalition as its Chief of Staff.
John Emmeus Davis is a partner in Burlington Associates in Community Development LLC, a national consulting cooperative specializing in policies and programs promoting permanently affordable housing. Davis previously served as Housing Director for Burlington, Vermont. He has taught housing policy and neighborhood planning at New Hampshire College, the University of Vermont, and MIT. His publications include The Community Land Trust Handbook (1984), Contested Ground: Collective Action and the Urban Neighborhood (1991), The Affordable City: Toward a Third Sector Housing Policy (1994), Permanently Affordable Homeownership: Does the Community Land Trust Deliver on Its Promises? (2003), and a recently completed study for the National Housing Institute, entitled Shared Equity Homeownership: The Changing Landscape of Resale-Restricted, Owner-Occupied Housing.
Inclusionary Zoning
Nico Calavita is professor in the Graduate Program in City Planning at San Diego State University. Prof. Calavita’s research interests include affordable housing and community development, the politics of growth and comparative planning. His most recent publications on housing issues are a chapter on “Job-Housing Linkage Fees in California” to be included in the forthcoming Solano Press's California Affordable Housing Handbook and "Regulatory Responses to the Housing Crisis: Inclusionary Housing and Job-Housing Linkage Fees" in Practicing Planner; on smart growth and equity, “The Challenges of Smart Growth: The San Diego Case,” a chapter in Revitalizing the City, Fritz Wagner et.al. editors. He frequently publishes commentaries in the San-Diego Union-Tribune and Los Angeles Times on community development and housing. He was Chair of the City of San Diego Housing Trust Fund Board of Trustees, co-founder of the San Diego Affordable Housing Coalition, and board member of the City Heights Community Development Corporation.
Alan Mallach is research director of the National Housing Institute in Montclair, New Jersey, whose most recent book, Bringing Buildings Back: Turning Abandoned Properties into Community Assets, was published earlier this year. He has been a consultant, advocate and public official, and has taught at Rutgers University and elsewhere. From 1990 through 1999 he was Director of the Department of Housing & Development for the City of Trenton, New Jersey’s state capital. He is a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners, and is also the author of Inclusionary Housing Programs: Policies and Practices and other works on planning, housing and Italian opera. He holds a B.A. degree from Yale University.
Dennis Keating is Chair and Associate Dean of the Department of Urban Studies at the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. He received his B.A. from Loyola College (Baltimore), his MCP and Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley and J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His teaching and research interests include housing, neighborhood development, urban policy and land use law. In his latest publication, a co-authored chapter appears in "A Right to Housing" (Temple University Press, 2006).
Community Benefits Agreements
Brad Lander directs the Pratt Center for Community Development, which works for a more just, equitable, and sustainable city for all New Yorkers by empowering communities to plan and realize their futures. During Brad's tenure, the Pratt Center has helped to shape a new inclusionary zoning policy to create affordable housing in NYC, to protect the tenure of public housing residents in Staten Island, and to create a new dialogue and strategies for how growth can be made to work for New York's low and moderate income communities. Brad also teaches affordable housing, real estate development, and community planning at Pratt.
Before coming to Pratt in 2003, Brad served for a decade as executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, a community-based organization in Brooklyn that develops and manages affordable housing; creates economic opportunities through workforce development, job creation, and adult education; and organizes tenants and workers to fight for a better community. Brad's work at Fifth Avenue Committee was recognized with awards from the Ford Foundation, Fannie Mae Foundation, and New York Magazine. He holds a masters in City and Regional Planning from Pratt, a masters in Social Anthropology from the University College London, and a bachelor of arts from the University of Chicago. Brad lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Meg Barnette, and their children, Marek and Rosa.
Laura Wolf-Powers is the Chairperson of Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, overseeing masters degree programs in city and regional planning, environmental planning and historic preservation. Her research and publications focus on urban labor markets, job-centered economic development, and the politics of urban redevelopment. She works actively with the Pratt Center for Community Development, the New York City Employment and Training Coalition, and other organizations on economic development and land use policy initiatives. She holds a PhD in urban planning and policy from Rutgers University.
Robin Kniech is an attorney and serves as the Program Director for the Front Range Economic Strategy Center in Denver, Colorado. She coordinates FRESC’s Campaign for Responsible Development (CRD), and works to implement agreements and policies for equity and sustainability in subsidized developments. Her expertise includes maximizing affordable housing and good jobs at publicly supported redevelopments, local hiring, workforce development in the construction industry, and public policy.