Scheduled Conference Speakers and Panel Moderators

Jerusalem Demsas (she/her) is a policy reporter at The Atlantic. While at Vox she has published a number of pieces on exclusionary zoning policies at the state and federal levels, a deep dive into why it costs so much to build things in America, as well as several pieces narrowing in on housing affordability concerns. She has written previously on energy and environment issues for the Center for American Progress and is a graduate of the College of William and Mary where she studied Economics and Government.

Alex Baca (she/they/anything fun) is the D.C. policy director for Greater Greater Washington, which seeks more housing and more affordable housing, frequent and reliable transportation, and the fair distribution of land uses by advocating for administrative, legal, and cultural changes in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. Previously the engagement director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth and the general manager of Cleveland, OH’s bikesharing system, Alex has written about planning, architecture, construction, and transportation for CityLab, Slate, Vox, Washington City Paper, and other publications.

Dan Reed, AICP (he/they) is a writer, urban planner, and community advocate. Dan works with communities all over the United States to make their streets safer, enjoyable, and equitable. Their writing has appeared in publications including Washingtonian Magazine, the New York Times, CityLab, Architect Magazine, and Shelterforce. A resident of Silver Spring, Dan has written neighborhood blog Just Up the Pike since 2006.

Adah Crandall (she/her) is a 16-year-old organizer with Sunrise Movement PDX and Portland Youth Climate Strike. As a leader of the Sunrise’s Youth Vs ODOT campaign, her advocacy focuses on the intersection of transportation and climate justice, pushing local and state leaders to prioritize transportation solutions that will reduce emissions and better serve young people across the region.

Ryan Packer (they/them) covers transportation in Puget Sound and broader Washington State from the perspective of public health and climate. A senior editor at the Urbanist, their work also appears in the Seattle Bike Blog and in BikePortland as the Interstate Bridge Replacement correspondent.

Alfred (they/she/he) is a Bay Area artist, architect, and politician who has worked on affordable housing, transportation infrastructure, and made many infographics, board games, and illustrations explaining local and state housing policy, and also participates in policy making with the Democratic Party and Bay Area housing organizations.

Jesse Kanson-Benanav is the Executive Director of Abundant Housing MA (AHMA) where he oversees all aspects of the organization’s mission to build a Massachusetts for Everyone. Jesse has nearly 20 years experience in the affordable housing industry where he’s worked as a community organizer, policy consultant, and as a developer of affordable homes at a number nonprofits serving Massachusetts and New England. Jesse became active in the grassroots pro-housing movement in 2012 as founder of A Better Cambridge (ABC) which he served as chair until 2019. Jesse’s work with ABC was recognized as a “Game Changer” in 2016 by the Boston Globe for its positive contributions to the local economy, and he was recognized as a “Rising Star” by Metro Housing Boston in 2019. Jesse is a graduate of Oberlin College and has a Master of City Planning Degree from MIT. He lives in Jamaica Plain, Boston, with his wife and toddler.

Nicholas (he/his) is a licensed architect and contractor with nearly 20 years’ professional experience across the United States and Europe. He holds Masters Degrees in both Architecture and Structural Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and Bachelor of Science degrees in both Architecture and Urban Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  In 2014, he founded infillPDX, a design and research collaborative focused on the development of financially, socially, and environmentally sustainable models of infill housing models to address Portland’s housing crisis. He has served on multiple design and awards juries, organized and presented at numerous symposia, and served on several graduate school admission boards. He currently teaches at the University of Oregon and lives in SE Portland with his wife and two daughters.

Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street Roots, a street newspaper sold by people experiencing homelessness and poverty. Sand worked as a poet, artist, community organizer, and university professor. A member of PEN America, she authored three books of poetry. She taught at Portland State University, Pacific University, Willamette University and St. Mary’s College of Maryland. With a focus on economic justice, Sand has widely performed poetry and exhibited artwork, including a public art commission at the City of Portland Archives and Records Center and the Despina International Artist Residency in Rio de Janeiro; and a magic show on the financial collapse at the Poetry Project in New York. In 2019 she was awarded a Spirit of Portland award by Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty; and in 2019, the regional Society of Professional Journalists small newsroom first prize for Best Column for her weekly Street Roots column.

Mother of 5, terrified of public speaking, college drop-out — sound like the attributes of a successful community organizer and movement builder? Sarah Weber-Ogden (she/her) didn’t think so either, but the call to step up for her children by fighting for a more just and resilient future was too loud to ignore. So she tentatively took steps into movement spaces and found that when you join together with others, your weaknesses become strengths. Sarah has taken a hand in nurturing the climate justice movement in Portland for many years. She co-founded the Sunrise Movement PDX hub, XRPDX, and supports the work of 350PDX and others. In her day job, she works for a state representative as Policy Director focused on housing and homelessness. When Sarah is not working, you can find her with her partner and 5 young children on their knees on the forest floor examining a mushroom or jumping from stone to stone across a creek in the lush foothills of Wy’East.

Sarah Mirk (she/her) is a comics journalist, teacher, author, and somewhat obsessive zine-maker. She is the author of Guantanamo Voices (Abrams, 2020), an illustrated oral history of Guantanamo Bay, which the New York Times named one of the best graphic novels of 2020. A former reporter for Portland Mercury and online editor of national feminism and pop culture nonprofit Bitch Media, she is currently a contributing editor at The Nib and as a digital producer for the Center for Investigative Reporting. She is the author several books, including You Do You: Figuring Out Your Body, Dating, and Sexuality (Lerner, 2019) and Sex from Scratch: Making Your Own Relationship Rules (Microcosm, 2014) and her comics have been published by The Nib, The New Yorker, NPR, and The Washington Post. Sarah holds a degree in history from Grinnell College. She identifies as white, cisgender, and queer.

Jesse Piedfort (he/his) is the Director of Sierra Club’s Washington State Chapter, where he has worked since 2017 with staff and volunteer leaders to set strategic priorities, build stronger partnerships, and grow the organization’s capacity to help build a sustainable and equitable future for Washington State. Jesse first became active in Sierra Club as a volunteer working for better transit and abundant housing in Seattle, and was appointed volunteer chair of Seattle Group in 2014. Jesse is a graduate of The University of Montana and holds a Juris Doctor from Seattle University School of Law. He is an avid fly angler and e-bike commuter and lives in Seattle’s Haller Lake neighborhood with his wife and daughter.

Marc (he/his) is a leader in the design process for new communities, downtown master plans, resiliency planning, affordable housing, sustainable city planning, various architectural projects, and is director of Marc Wouters | Studios. Projects led by Mr. Wouters have received AIA, CNU, and ULI Awards. Mr. Wouters also has been featured in the New York Times, City Limits, and NBC News. Among the Studio’s projects are The South Jamaica Cloudburst Master Plan, I-278 Brooklyn Queens Expressway master plan, Hopewell Town Center Master Plan, NJ, the ULI Award-winning Columbia Heights TOD Masters Plan, San Ramon City Center Master Plan, multiple Puerto Rico Resilience Studies. His is director of the documentary “Reinventing Bilbao,” will be published in ASTI Springer’s upcoming book on Urban Revitalization, and served as a member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s National Disaster Resiliency Academy. The studio’s prior clients include City Agencies, Private Developers, Housing Authorities, and Community-Based Organizations. The firm website is www.mwouters.com

Mercedes Elizalde (she/her) is the public policy director at Central City Concern (CCC). Mercedes works to bridge the gap between direct service and public policy advocacy. As public policy director, Mercedes collaborates with government agencies and community organizations to advance policy initiatives in support of CCC’s mission. CCC serves about 13,000 people a year through 12 Federally Qualified Health Center sites, 2,200 affordable homes, makes 1,200 job placements annually and operates social services for the community justice programs in Multnomah and Clackamas counties. Mercedes is responsible for policy analysis, advocacy, public education, and coalition-building efforts to find support and solutions for CCC clients and programs. She brings a unique set of perspectives and knowledge to her work, having experience in direct service as a social worker and program coordinator, a legislative aide to an elected official and as a community activist.

Tram graduated from the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, where she was a Charles R. Krusell Fellow in Community Development at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs. Throughout her time in Minneapolis, she has worked with Hope Community, the Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers, the City of Minneapolis’ Community Planning and Economic Development, the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability, and most recently, as the Campaign Manager for the Keep St. Paul Home campaign for rent stabilization. She believes that equitable development and community benefit are made possible by strong community organizing and effective narrative framing, and wants to strengthen the ways that research can empower advocacy and organizing. Her participation in research ranges from seeking to understand the overarching financialization of our nation’s housing system to supporting the Urban Institute’s examination of the growing presence of corporate ownership in the Twin Cities.

Jackie Kirouac-Fram has more than 15 years of experience helping nonprofits thrive through stakeholder engagement, strategic collaboration, and striving toward justice through equity and inclusion.

Since March 2019, she has served as Executive Director at the ReBuilding Center, a Portland, Oregon climate justice nonprofit that harnesses the power of reuse and repair of reclaimed building materials to reduce consumption and production of new materials and support home retention for low-income homeowners. Prior to this position, she was Vice President at FOCUS St. Louis, a nonprofit civic leadership organization, where she led efforts to increase community support and engagement around policy issues that impact the health and well-being of communities.

Jackie has a Ph.D. in American Studies from Saint Louis University, where she published at the intersection of urban policy and racial equity, specifically concerning racialized aspects of public transportation policy and funding. Her work has been published in the Journal of Urban History, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, and Radical History Review, and she is a proud recipient of an Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. She has spent her entire career in the nonprofit sector and believes in the power of communities to drive policy change toward justice.

Ted Labbe is the Executive Director of the Urban Greenspaces Institute in Portland, Oregon. He is a conservation biologist with twenty-five years professional experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors delivering conservation planning, geospatial habitat mapping and assessment, community organizing, and water conservation. Ted is also a skilled policy analyst and advocate for the thoughtful integration of urban green infrastructure into transportation, housing, and urban design. Ted has worked with Tribes, state, and local agencies, and has served on numerous other public advisory bodies. Ted is an active and founding board member with Depave. He has an M.S. in Fish and Wildlife Biology from Colorado State University and a B.A. from Bowdoin College.

Lorelei is a Partner and President of ECONorthwest, a west coast economic and policy consultancy. Lorelei’s consulting work focuses on the evaluation of the intersection of public investment, policy choices, and community development, and economic outcomes. Many recent projects have focused on the implementation of equitable housing outcomes, including the development of the State of Oregon’s first Statewide Housing Plan and affordable housing policies for many Oregon communities. She has worked in communities large and small across the American West: Missoula, Montana; Madras, Oregon; Austin, Texas; Boise, Idaho; and others. Lorelei is currently working with the State of Oregon to reform land use and housing planning systems to achieve more equitable housing production outcomes. She is a Trustee for Oregon’s Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and serves on the Board of Bravo Youth Orchestras.

Leah advises property owners and developers through in the development process. Before entering the private sector in land use consulting, Leah worked for two Austin City Council members, most recently as Policy Director for land use and transportation where she worked on parking policies including creating the street patio program, removing parking minimums from the Central Business District, and working on Austin’s first Parking Benefits District. She’s a registered lobbyist with the City of Austin who has seen government policy making from the inside. She has a proven ability to build consensus among stakeholders — city council members, county commissioners, city boards and commissions, governmental staff, environmental groups and neighborhood associations. Leah has a particular interest in placemaking, working to create inspiring public spaces with the built environment. Leah contributed a chapter to Donald Shoup’s 2018 book Parking and the City discussing the implementation of Austin’s first Parking Benefit District.

Tony Jordan (he/him) is President of the Parking Reform Network, a non-profit organization with a mission to educate the public about the impact of parking policy on climate change, housing affordability, equity, and traffic safety. His advocacy work as founder of Portlanders for Parkling Reform has helped to modernize the city’s curb management policies and repeal residential parking mandates. Tony has a BA in Politics from UC Santa Cruz and has worked as a union organizer and software developer.

Allan Lazo is the Executive Director of the Fair Housing Council of Oregon, a statewide civil rights organization promoting justice, equity, and inclusion in housing through access to education, advocacy, and enforcement. He has been a long-time community advocate for civil rights and social justice, especially in the areas of housing, homelessness, and racial equity. Allan currently serves on the City of Portland Housing Bureau’s Affordable Housing Bond Oversight Committee and served on the state of Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development Housing Rulemaking Advisory Committee. Allan’s past consulting experience includes work in organizational development, specifically related to issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, and he is a long-time resident of Portland, Oregon.

Thiess Buettner is Prof. of Economics at FAU in Nuremberg since 2010. He is chair of the Independent Advisory Board of Germany’s Stability Council and member of the Scientific Advisory Board to the Federal Ministry of Finance.

Thiess Buettner studied economics at the Universities of Goettingen and Constance and holds Ph.D. in economics from the University of Constance. In 1997 he joined the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim. In 2001 he was postdoctoral research at the University of Kentucky. In 2004, he was appointed CESifo Professor of Public Finance at LMU Munich and head of the Public Sector Department at the ifo Institute.

Mindy Woods is a Gulf War Navy Veteran, a single mother, and has experienced homelessness twice in the last 11 years. She serves on multiple boards and commissions within her state, as well as on the national level. Mindy is a founding member of the Resident Action Project in Washington state; a statewide, resident-led network of people who’ve experienced housing instability and homelessness who organize and use civic engagement, education and storytelling to affect policy change. She was key in helping to pass the Source of Income Discrimination Ban in Washington state. Mindy is a tireless warrior for housing and social justice issues and believes that everyone deserves a safe, stable, and healthy place to live and thrive.

Hanna Brooks Olsen is a freelance writer and political consultant. Her work, most of which has centered on poverty and homelessness, has appeared in the Nation, The Atlantic, Bust, Pacific Standard, GOOD, and OPB.

Scott Bailey has lived in Portland all his life. He has worked as an economist for over 35 years, and has been a community activist even longer. He recently completed a term on the Portland Public Schools board of directors.

Aaron is a Portland-based community organizer, political consultant, and policy wonk working at the intersections of housing, climate and transportation. He’s held leadership roles in electoral campaigns that have raised over $2 billion in funding for schools, teachers, sidewalks and parks. Aaron is a co-founder of No More Freeways, which is fighting ODOT’s proposed freeway expansions through organizing and lawsuits and shitposting, and he is also the co-founder of the soon-to-launch Oregon Transportation Futures Project. He currently serves on the board of Portland: Neighbors Welcome, is the co-mayor of YIMBYtown 2022, and lives in the St Johns neighborhood of North Portland.

Dov works at the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) on land use and housing issues. His projects include managing the land use modeling for SACOG’s long range plan, the regional housing needs allocation, and housing policy technical assistance to local governments. Before SACOG, Dov worked at the Strategy Growth Council, where he managed the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grant program, which allocates State cap and trade funding to affordable housing projects across the State.

Preston Korst is the Director of Government Relations at Habitat for Humanity Portland Region, a regionwide builder with over 250 affordable homeownership units being developed across a dozen build sites. At Habitat, he oversees an array of housing policy priorities, as well as the organization’s government grants portfolio. Preston works with elected leaders and government partners across the region to ensure that public budgets meet the growing demand for affordable housing. He is also managing the organization’s efforts on zoning reform and the implementation of recently passed state legislation, including the nationally recognized HB 2001, which made Oregon the first U.S. state to ban single-detached zoning.

New Zealand has a housing crisis. What housing there is low quality, poorly located and simply too costly to help families make the choices that would enable them to flourish. Kirdan believes urban economics can show what is getting in the way and identify the policies that can help, including relaxing land use regulation and promoting public housing stock. Much of his academic training is in macroeconomics but over the past ten years, Kirdan has worked with both central and local government to make the improvements that can unlock so much of the potential in our local communities.
Now the next generation are picking up the charge. The energy is palpable, and Kirdan writes that he’s I’m looking forward to supporting where he can. “Change is already starting to take place but too slowly. New Zealand’s institutions face poor incentives. Political leadership could help bring about system change in many ways.”

Mike McGinn, currently the Executive Director of America Walks, is a long-time climate justice advocate who has focused on transportation, housing, land use, community building and fossil fuel divestment. He has been a non-profit founder, community council president, Sierra Club volunteer leader, and Mayor of Seattle.

Steph (she/they) is strategic communications manager at Sightline Institute and an adjunct professor at Portland State University’s Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. She serves as current chair of Portland’s Planning & Sustainability Commission. She has worn through many pairs of shoes while holding a clipboard. YIMBYtown 2022 co-mayor.

Stewart is a Realtor who focuses on working with Buyers who want to build ADUs. His interest in ADUs is around urban density, environmental concerns, community building, preserving neighborhood character in Portland and passive income/ homeowner flexibility.

Leah Benson (she/her) is a storyteller and storytelling coach from Portland, OR. In her day-to-day she’s an organizational development pro and in previous lives she’s been a bike shop owner, community organizer, event manager, sexual health educator, and death doula-in-training. You can find out slightly more about her on leahkatebenson.com or hear her oversharing (ahem, storytelling) about her own life on The Moth and Mortified.

Jenny Schuetz (she/her) is a Senior Fellow at Brookings Metro, and is an expert in urban economics and housing policy. Jenny has written numerous articles on land use regulation, housing prices, urban amenities, and neighborhood change. She is the author of Fixer Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems. Jenny teaches in Georgetown University’s master’s in urban planning program. Follow Jenny at @jenny_schuetz

Candace Avalos (she/her) is a first generation American “Blacktina”, daughter of Black Americans from the south and Guatemalan immigrants. Prior to her venture into the nonprofit world as the Executive Director of Verde, an environmental justice non-profit, she worked at Portland State University for 8 years providing civic engagement education and advising support for student leaders. She lives in NE Portland and is an active member of her community, such as a co-founder of the Black Millennial Movement, serving on the Citizen Review Committee and Charter Review Commission for the City of Portland, as well as on the boards of Portland: Neighbors Welcome and Street Roots.

Conor Dougherty (he/his) is the author of Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America and an economics reporter at The New York Times. He is based out of the Times’s San Francisco office and previously spent a decade in New York covering housing and the economy for The Wall Street Journal. He grew up in the Bay Area and lives with his wife and two kids in Oakland. Follow Conor at @ConorDougherty

A lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, Jessica (she/her) grew up in a single-parent, working-class household. Watching her mom work hard to provide for her family deeply shaped Jessica’s worldview and later motivated her advocacy for those most vulnerable in our communities.

Since then, Jessica has dedicated her career to serving the 22nd Legislative District, where she envisions an inclusive, equitable future for all who call this region home. As an organizer and coalition leader, Jessica has worked to create affordable housing, assist struggling families, and empower at-risk youth. Jessica also worked to pass a Sanctuary City Resolution in Olympia and is a passionate advocate for accessible health care.

Vivek Shandas (he/his) is a Professor of Climate Transformation and Director of the Sustaining Urban Places Research Lab (SUPR Lab) at Portland State University. Working as an interdisciplinary scholar, Professor Shandas examines the assumptions that guide decisions about the built environment and uses spatial analytical tools and policy evaluations as a means for identifying socially inequitable outcomes in the era of climate destabilization. Professor Shandas has over 100 publications, four books, and serves as a consultant and technical advisor to public, private, and non-profit organizations. His research and projects have been featured in the NYTimes, National Geographic, Scientific American, Times of India, Le Monde, Volkskrant , CNN, Cosmos, and dozens of other media outlets. During his spare time Professor Shandas serves as Chair of the City of Portland’s Urban Forestry Commission, and revels in the mountains and waters of the Pacific Northwest.

Before becoming the Director of TransitMatters, Jarred (he/his) served as a project manager for the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation where he managed a variety of complex affordable housing real estate projects and supported organizing efforts for better service on the Fairmount Line. Before that, he helped to start the “Love Your Block” mini-grant project and helped write the City of Boston’s first Volunteer Plan as a part of the Civic Engagement Office. He also has a wealth of grassroots organizing experience working on  presidential, state, and Cherokee tribal races. He joined TransitMatters as a volunteer in the summer of 2015 and served on the Board since the fall of that year. Follow Jarred at @jarjoh

Scott Bailey has lived in Portland all his life. He has worked as an economist for over 35 years, and has been a community activist even longer. He recently completed a term on the Portland Public Schools board of directors.

Brian (he/his) co-founded and leads California YIMBY, a statewide pro-housing advocacy organization. California YIMBY has led the passage of 12 bills, including bills that ended single-family home zoning in California. While unsuccessful in the Legislature, California YIMBY’s SB 50 reshaped the national media housing narrative and expanded the horizon of political possibilities.

Prior to California YIMBY, Brian co-founded the California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund (CaRLA), which sues cities that violate state housing law.

When he’s not fighting to expand housing affordability and access, Brian can be found cycling in the Bay Area’s hills.

Dr. Regan F. Patterson (she/her) is the Transportation Equity Research Fellow at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF), where she conducts intersectional transportation policy analysis and research. Prior to joining the CBCF, Dr. Patterson was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. She earned her PhD in Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation research focused on the impact of transportation policies on air quality and environmental justice. Dr. Patterson holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UCLA and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley.

Amy Stelly (she/her) is an artist, designer, planner and freeway fighter. Her scope of work includes building and open space design, historic restoration, downtown and neighborhood revitalization, environmental planning, municipal zoning, incentives, entitlements, site planning, streetscapes and gardens. She is a co-founder of the Claiborne Avenue Alliance, a coalition of residents, property owners and allied professionals dedicated to the restoration of the Claiborne Corridor in the Treme and 7th Ward neighborhoods.
Amy edits the opinions column for The Lens, a New Orleans-based nonprofit, nonpartisan public-interest newsroom. She has written about land use and zoning; the value of community engagement; and public accountability. She is a native of New Orleans, an avid swimmer and an advocate for water safety and environmental stewardship.

Esme D. Miller (she/her) is Assistant Director of Research & Assessment and the Graduate School of Education & Counseling, Lewis & Clark College, and a doctoral candidate in history at Rutgers University. She has been involved in housing advocacy in NYC and Portland since the early 2000’s. She lives in NE Portland and takes life one day at a time, bouyed by deep gratitude for the queer, mixed, and blended family of her later life, utterly unimaginable in her youth.

Jamey Duhamel (she/her) currently works as a Special Projects Coordinator with the Portland Bureau of Transportation. She specializes in equity-focused tenant policies and anti-displacement strategies and was brought into the bureau to help develop their approach to mitigating displacement risks after spending four years as the Policy Director for former Commissioner Eudaly. During her time in City Hall, Jamey led the development and council passage of several new innovative policies intended to serve low-income and BIPOC Portlanders including Mandatory  Assistance, Fair Access in Renting, and the Rose Lane Project.

Paul (he/his) is the Founding Principal of Ethos Development, a human-centered development company based in Portland Oregon; prioritizing accessible pricing and resident experience throughout its 1,000-unit pipeline. With experience that spans construction, finance, and civil service, Paul’s perspective on the real estate industry and housing market is broad-based. Serving on the real estate advisory boards of Proud Ground, a Portland Community Land Trust, and Central City Concern, an integrated housing and healthcare services platform addressing those affected with houselessness and addiction. While not contemplating housing, Paul likes to spend time outdoors with his wife Lisa, young son Drea, and two dogs Luna and Boom. 

Janne Flisrand (she/her) has a special passion for the city of Minneapolis and how the way we build cities shapes people’s lives and daily choices. She became a pro-homes advocate in 1997 when kids at the after-school program she ran shared their stories of home and being pushed out. She is one of several Neighbors for More Neighbors co-founders, the group that led the grassroots support of Minneapolis nationally-acclaimed comprehensive plan. Her professional and consulting work focuses on expanding access to homes, reducing energy cost burdens, and expanding transportation choices. On one project, she led a statewide affordable housing initiative that changed policy to ensure all subsidized homes meet healthy, green standards. She also owner-occupies a fourplex, co-founded Our Streets Minneapolis, and recently completed four years on the streets.mn board.

After moving to Portland in 1994 as a construction supervisor with Habitat for Humanity, Eli (he/his) managed the development of over 250 units of affordable housing. He served on the board of Portland’s community land trust for its first 5 years and worked with residents of Dignity Village, a self-built homeless camp, during their first two years. In 2006, Eli launched Orange Splot LLC to pioneer new models of affordable and community-oriented housing. Completed projects have been featured in the NYT and Sunset Magazine. The Cully Grove, received a 2016 AIA Housing Award. He’s led tiny house bike tours, advocated for accessory dwelling units, co-founded the www.accessorydwellings.org website, co-founded an advocacy organization (Portland for Everyone) to support diverse, abundant and affordable housing, and is past chair of Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission (where he still serves). He continues to launch new communities and hopes they go well enough to fund his policy habit.

Ryan Hashagen (he/his) is a key organizer with Better Block PDX on projects like Better Naito, Better 3rd Ave, and the PSU Project Pathway. A Professional Tricyclist, he has founded and run several tricycle based businesses in Canada & the U.S, including Icicle Tricycles, which builds commercial tricycles for customers all over the globe. Hashagen won the Cargo Messenger World Championship in 2003 & 2004 in Seattle & Edmonton. When not building tricycles or playing in the streets, Hashagen has been trying to paddle all the reasonable rivers of the NW and can be often found roller skating!

Annie Fryman is the Director of Cities at Abodu, a Bay Area based company that builds affordable and high-quality accessory dwelling units in California and Washington. She manages Abodu’s long-term permitting initiatives, advises the executive team on public policy, provides expert technical assistance to local and state agencies on successful state law implementation, and directs Abodu’s response to complex building permit issues.

Prior to joining Abodu in February 2021, Annie led housing, land use, and transportation policy for California Senator Scott Wiener, one of the most prolific, creative, and successful legislators on housing affordability in the United States. Among other landmark housing and transportation policies, Annie was the singular policy staffer designing, writing, and negotiating Senate Bills 35 and 828, and continues to advise public, non-profit, and private sector partners on their use and implementation. Within three years of adoption, these unprecedented laws directly enabled tens of thousands of new housing units to start construction in California (SB 35), and forced bustling coastal metros and exclusionary suburbs to rezone for >500,000 more homes at all income levels during the next decade (SB 828).

Ezra Hammer runs land acquisition for Taylor Morrison, the nation’s sixth largest home builder.   In that role, he works with property owners, local jurisdictions, and community members to build holistic, integrated communities.  Taylor Morrison specializes in building communities with a wide variety of new housing including single family homes, townhomes, duplexes, and triplexes.  The company was the first large builder to integrate middle housing into new and existing communities and did so prior to local implementation of HB2001.  They are currently building middle housing in Tigard and Unincorporated Washington County.  Prior to working with Taylor Morrison, Ezra was the Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs for the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland where he led efforts to advance housing affordability and increased housing at the regional and local level.

Martha brings people together to develop and implement strategies for sustainable and equitable mobility. At her consultancy Further Strategies, she’s worked on parking reform, congestion pricing, greenhouse gas budgets, zero emission freight and increasing funding for advocacy efforts. Previously, she helped cities build protected bike lanes with the Green Lane Project. She ran the campaign in Congress that created the national Safe Routes to School program and was deemed the “godmother of Complete Streets” for helping launch that movement. Other jobs include running the City of Boulder’s transportation planning, programs and policy shop and leading advocacy group Bicycle Colorado. She serves on the advisory committee for the Vision Zero Network and the board of Better Boulder.

Mitra Jalali is a former classroom teacher, immigration and public safety policy aide to then-Congressman Keith Ellison, labor/community organizer, and now City Councilwoman serving the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota. She ran for office in 2018 on a platform of tenant protections, attainable and affordable housing, sustainability and streets for people, safety beyond policing and community wealth-building through economic development. She is the proud daughter of immigrants from Tehran, Iran and Seoul, South Korea and was born and raised in Minnesota. She became Saint Paul’s then-only renter voice on the current Council, then-youngest elected, current only publicly LGBTQ elected and first Asian-American woman elected to the council in city history. She loves her two cats, transit, Marvel comics, painting, and dim sum.

Allyson Woodard works as a creative organizer for the Sunrise Movement, where her mission is to grow a grassroots army of Green New Deal propagandists prepared to craft, produce, and publish their own stories—and those of their communities—on their own terms. She believes that the best media-makers are organizers themselves, and that they should be equipped with the tools needed to build cultural power for their campaigns by fighting strategic narrative battles head-on. She trains most often on narrative, video making, photography, and action art, and she often photographs, makes videos, and creates art for the climate justice movement.

Having been a community organizer in the Pacific Northwest for seven years, Anna Kemper’s (she/her) passions and experience overlap in the arena of climate justice and housing advocacy. By day, she works as the Communications Manager for HereTogether, the 150-member coalition of businesses, nonprofits and community leaders backing the Metro Supportive Housing Services measure. She also sits on the board of Oregon Walks and is the Vice-Chair of the Portland: Neighbors Welcome board. Her previous experience includes organizing with Sunrise PDX, the youth climate justice movement, working on local political campaigns and advocating for justice-focused housing policy.

John Bauters is the Mayor of Emeryville, California. He serves as the Chair of the Alameda County Transportation Commission and Vice Chair of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, where he is an outspoken voice on sustainable land use policy focused on dense urban design that incorporates active transportation and environmental policy in creating people-oriented cities. John is a former legal aid tenant attorney and the former Policy Director at Housing California, where he worked as statewide legislative advocate on the issues of homelessness and affordable housing. He is a animal lover, bicyclist and all-around outdoors enthusiast, and can often be spotted walking his dog on the San Francisco Bay Trail or Emeryville Greenway.

Alex Zielinski is the News Editor for the Portland Mercury, where she’s covered housing, homelessness, policing, and local politics for four years. Prior to Portland, Alex reported on similar topics in San Antonio, TX and Washington, DC.

Kol Peterson is an ADU expert based in Portland, Oregon, who has helped catalyze the exponential growth of ADUs in Portland over the last decade through ADU advocacy, education, consulting, policy work, and entrepreneurship through his company, Accessory Dwelling Strategies LLC. He is the author of Backdoor Revolution-The Definitive Guide to ADU Development. He is the owner of Caravan- The Tiny House Hotel, the first tiny house hotel in the world, and organizer of Portland’s popular ADU Tour. He consults with homeowners about ADUs on their property, and teaches ADU classes for homeowners and for real estate agents in Oregon, Washington, and California. He also co-runs ADU Academy and the ADU Specialist designation for professionals with Earth Advantage. He edits and manages AccessoryDwellings.org and BuildinganADU.com.

Yonah Freemark is senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Dr. Freemark is the research director of the Land Use Lab at Urban. His research focuses on the intersection of land use, affordable housing, transportation, and governance.

Dr. Jiro Yoshida is King Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Business at the Pennsylvania State University and Guest Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo. Jiro is also a Research Associate at Columbia Business School, Board Director of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, Board Director of Asian Real Estate Society, Academic Fellow of the Homer Hoyt Institute, and Senior Fellow of the Ministry of Finance of Japan. Jiro studies real estate finance, macroeconomics, and asset pricing and publishes in top journals such as Journal of Finance and Review of Economics and Statistics. His studies were also mentioned by the major media, such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Freakonomics Radio, and the Nikkei. Jiro holds a B.Engi. from the University of Tokyo, an MS from MIT, and an MS and PhD from University of California, Berkeley.

Shelby King (she/her) is the investigative reporter for Shelterforce Magazine, the only independent, non-academic, nonprofit publication covering community development, affordable housing, and neighborhood stabilization. Previously a reporter in Portland for The Mercury and the Daily Journal of Commerce, Shelby has written exclusively about housing and development issues since 2013. Before that, she covered cops and public safety in Bend and Klamath Falls. Shelby moved to Colorado in 2016 and lives in the Fort Collins area.

Jamal Raad is a co-founder and executive director for Evergreen Action. He has dedicated his life to fighting for progressive change, on the inside on Capitol Hill, and on political campaigns across the country. He most recently ran communications for the presidential campaign for Washington state Governor Jay Inslee, a grassroots movement to put climate change at the top of the national agenda. An alum of Willamette University, Jamal loves drinking coffee, being on Twitter too much and cooking, especially Lebanese food

Robin is Asia Editor for the Financial Times, responsible for its editorial output from Australia to Afghanistan. Previously a correspondent in London, Tokyo and Washington DC, he is also an economics columnist for the paper, with a particular interest in issues relating to land and housing.

Roque is Manager of Real Estate Acquisitions for Legacy Group Capital, an infill housing developer and lending company based in Bellevue, WA. Prior to that, during a 20-year career with the City of Seattle, he worked for the Department of Construction and Inspections as an Urban Planner and for the Office of Economic Development as a Business Advocate.

Roque is currently a member of the Seattle Planning Commission and serves as Chair for the MBAKS Seattle Builders’ Council. Roque is passionate about racial equity, sound policy and decision-making, and improving our already-enviable local and regional economies.

He lives in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge Neighborhood in a personal project that includes a single family residence, an attached accessory dwelling unit, and a detached accessory dwelling unit. Roque is an avid backpacker and traveler, and he makes his own hot sauce.

Aaron Eckhouse is the Regional Policy Manager for California YIMBY, supporting state, regional, and local policy efforts to address California’s housing crisis. This is his second YIMBYtown, after Oakland in 2017. A few months after Oakland YIMBYtown he began his career as a professional YIMBY, and has worked as an organizer & policy advocate for California YIMBY since 2018. In that capacity, Aaron has worked extensively on the Regional Housing Needs Allocation & Housing Element processes. He lives in Oakland with his bike & skillets.

Meg Fencil (she/her) joined Sustain Charlotte in 2014 and serves as the Director of Engagement & Impact. Meg educates, engages, and unites the community through partnerships and programs to increase equitable transportation choices and promote smart growth in the Charlotte area. Prior to her current role, Meg earned a Ph.D. in Marine Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin, designed and implemented field research projects in Croatia and Japan, and taught project-based mathematics and science to elementary and high school students. She enjoys uniting her lifelong passion for science with the multidisciplinary work of advancing sustainability to support a healthy environment and better quality of life for all.

Cassie Graves is the Housing Program Coordinator for the City of Portland’s Inclusionary Housing Program and Development Incentive Programs. She started with the City of Portland to help develop the administrative side of the newly adopted Inclusionary Housing Program in February 2017. Previously she worked at Home Forward with the Project Based Voucher program and as a Loss Mitigation Counselor for the Homeowner’s Hope Hotline.