About ME
Who am I? Academically, I am an interdisciplinary social scientist by training. I hold a master’s degree in city planning from MIT, with a focus on housing, community and economic development. I also hold a Ph.D. in political economy from MIT.
Personally, in terms of my background: my early life was spent on the road traveling the Eastern US and Southern Ontario (Canada) with my parents’ itinerant religious ministry, with a home base in New York State.
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa and with general and departmental honors as a scholarship and Pell Grant student at the Johns Hopkins University, with a bachelor’s degree in both Economics and in Sociology, as well as a certificate in Comparative and International Development, I won a U.C. Regents fellowship to begin a Ph.D. in Sociology at U.C. Berkeley, which I ultimately did not complete. This “failure” taught me to adopt a growth (rather than a fixed) mindset, something which often comes up in my teaching and research.
After dropping out of Berkeley, I moved to New York, NY, where I worked for 15 years in the global urban development industry as a researcher, analyst, and strategist across five continents, before returning to the academy to earn two graduate degrees at MIT, thereafter joining the University of Toronto faculty for five years, before moving home to New York.
Long active in civic life, I have been a non-profit board member, and worked with governments and social/community organizations in a wide variety of advisory and consulting capacities. I have also been a member-owner and active governance participant in a variety of community and socially owned businesses.
When not working, you might find me roasting my own coffee in Queens in the self-managed housing cooperative where I live. I am also a former competitor, judge, and official in the sport of figure skating, in which I was a Double Gold Medalist (USFS Senior Free Skate/MIF).
(photo credit: D. Yaskil)