Martin Beck is a Social Service Administration graduate student focused on affordable housing and community development. He is interested in slum clearance and mixed-income housing models in urban areas. Prior to attending the University of Chicago, Martin worked at HOME Line, a tenant advocacy legal service in Bloomington, Minnesota. He focused on tenant advocacy, working directly with tenants in accessing social security disability benefits, securing Section 8 housing, and holding landlords accountable for failing to adhere to their basic needs. Currently, Martin is involved in a year-long field placement as a Flexible Housing Pool Administrative Intern for the Center for Housing and Health, a subsidiary of the AIDS Foundation. Martin is also a research assistant at the University of Chicago, focusing on slum clearance and social housing policy in Mumbai, India, with colleagues from the Tata Institute of Social Science, and on urbanization and migration in China with colleagues at The University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, Peking University, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Martin still works part-time as a tenant advocate at HOME Line. He was recently published in the Leadership for Justice and Peace Journal. His chapter focused on PLACE, a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit team collaborating with cities to design and build mixed-income, transit-oriented developments that feature the arts and affordable living opportunities. In his spare time, Martin enjoys playing tennis, biking along Lake Shore Drive, and playing the cello.

Ryann Billitteri is a graduate student at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Administration. Her interest is in studying the emergency housing responses used in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic and how those responses can inform future interventions. She has an academic focus on health policy and administration, and is especially interested in the intersection of housing and health. While attending graduate school Ryann works as a program associate for All Chicago where she does administrative work for the City’s new Expedited Housing Initiative. The Expedited Housing Initiative received funding from the CARES act to house at least 1,200 people. Before working for All Chicago, Ryann worked as a housing system navigator and helped folks experiencing homelessness move into housing. She also worked in Hotel 166 which was a shielding hotel established by the city during COVID-19. In her free time Ryann enjoys powerlifting and spending quality time with her wife and dogs.

Omair Gill is a second-year Master’s of Public Policy student at the Harris School, focused on economic development, housing, and inequality. Coming from a background in economics, Omair aspires to use both quantitative and qualitative data to inform research designed to create a social impact on urban communities. During his time at Harris, Omair has worked as a policy intern for the Cook County Assessor’s Office, largely focusing on projects surrounding affordable housing, which has motivated him to conduct transformative research with the Kreisman Fellowship. Omair currently works as a Research Assistant at the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation at the Booth Business School, creating open-source datasets on the impact of COVID-19 on businesses and the Black Lives Matter Protests. He is also a Small Business Consultant at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship, working with minority-owned businesses to help them achieve their goals. Omair currently serves the Harris community as the President of the Muslim Affairs and Public Policy(MAPP) and Student Life Liaison of the Harris Student Government. He hopes to organize the first-ever conference for Muslims in Public Policy in the United States this school year. During his free time, he enjoys cooking, running, and basketball.

Mara Heneghan is a graduate student in the School of Social Service Administration studying transparent and responsive policymaking grounded in equity, accountability, and collaboration. In addition to attending SSA, Mara currently serves as Director of Policy in the Office of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle where she manages the implementation of Cook County’s strategic policy goals and initiatives. Prior to joining Cook County, Mara worked on program evaluations and technical assistance projects for local government agencies at Urban Labs. A graduate of the College, Mara serves on Women Employed Advocacy Council and tutors through Tutoring Chicago.

Lauren Kataja is a second-year MPP student focused on urban policy and how affordable housing impacts a multitude of lived experiences, from education and environment to health and safety. Having previously studied environmental sociology, Lauren has long understood that any approach to address a social issue must be multifaceted. Lauren kept this vision in mind while serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA in Baltimore, Maryland, running a campus food pantry at a local university. From speaking with food insecure students about on-campus resources for food access, she realized that food insecurity was only the tip of the iceberg of financial, academic, and personal challenges for these students. Lauren understood that a sustainable solution to college student food insecurity started way before students enrolled, and that larger institutional change in making attendance more affordable was desperately needed. During her time at Harris, Lauren has focused on using her new quantitative skills to provide tools for local community groups to advocate for the structural change their constituents need most, especially affordable housing. Outside of Harris, Lauren enjoys exploring the city’s green spaces with her new dog, attending community events to learn more about the city through activism, window shopping at vintage stores, and exploring what it means to use an anti-racist lens in policymaking through her work.

Elizabeth Lehman is a dual public policy and business administration graduate student focused on public-private partnerships promoting economic development of the underserved in the City of Chicago. Her interest in the area was spurred by her career with the CFPB addressing the fall out of the housing crisis. Liz continued to work in financial empowerment of the underserved in her time at a small personal lender in Colombia lending to clients with no or thin credit history. Since coming to the University of Chicago she has focused her work on issues of economic development in this city particularly through housing mechanisms. She joined and eventually became the Director of Operations for Harris’s Urban Policy Students Association where she helped to host a number of events on housing and redevelopment in the City. She has also interned with the University of Chicago Urban Lab’s Policy Labs studying homelessness and evictions in the City of Chicago. Outside of work she enjoys spending time with her fiancé, Mike, and their two dogs, Simone and Winnie. In her spare time she volunteers with Chicago Books to Women in Prison where she fulfills book requests from incarcerated women.

Akerah Mackey is a second-year MPP student focused on environmental justice, housing accessibility, and equitable transportation. Before starting at the University of Chicago, Akerah worked in both local government and campaign research. She has also worked for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, furthering equity and inclusion policies within community development. She is currently the Program Site Coordinator for Tutor Chicago; through this non-profit, she helps economically disadvantaged children in Chicago gain access to tutoring and educational resources. Additionally, Akerah is a Graduate Research Assistant at New America, one of the countries leading think tanks, and the Director of Equity and Inclusion for the Chicago Policy Review. After a successful career working on equity and inclusion in both the private and public sectors, she is now transitioning her career into housing development and sustainability with a specific focus on equitable recovery.

Shannon Morrissey is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, with research interests in urban sociology, inequality, and critical race theory. Her work is primarily concerned with race, real estate, and the role of organizations in defining and representing communities through cultural projects like historic preservation, revitalization, and place-making. Her research draws on ethnographic and archival data to understand how various artists and arts organizations navigate their role in neighborhood gentrification. Prior to her doctoral studies, Shannon worked as a trainer and consultant at a national nonprofit based in Atlanta, GA. She has assisted with a variety of research and evaluation reports for nonprofit organizations including the Legal Aid Justice Center of Virginia, the Mississippi Museum of Art, and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance Initiative. She holds a MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a BA in Sociology from Whitman College, with minors in Gender Studies and Race & Ethnic Studies.

Ilana Ventura is a graduate student in Sociology at the University of Chicago interested in immigrant and second-generation labor market attainment, transnational family relationships, and remittances behavior. Ilana is also a Research Methodologist at NORC at the University of Chicago, where she is an expert in bilingual surveys, Hispanic-focused research, and surveys with hard-to-reach respondents. Ilana holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from Amherst College, and has received training in immigration methods and formal demography at the University of California Berkeley. She has presented work at Population Association of America (PAA), the American Sociological Association (ASA), the International Conference on Survey Methods in Multinational, Multiregional and Multicultural Contexts (3MC), American Association of Public Opinion Researchers (AAPOR), Midwest Association of Public Opinion Researchers (MAPOR) and the Women in Statistics and Data Science Conference.

Ryan Webb is a computational analysis and public policy graduate student focused on applying quantitative solutions to public problems; he is particularly interested in consumer finance and its effects on the family. Before coming to the University of Chicago, Ryan built financial modeling products that are used by local governments and school districts to create their strategic plans. As a graduate student, Ryan built a program to connect tax-delinquent homeowners with their nearest tax advocacy office and used HMDA data to predict bias in mortgage lending. Ryan spent his summer internship at the energy storage science division (ACCESS) at Argonne where, among other things, he researched residential microgrids to protect neighborhoods from outages and reduce their utility costs. In his free time, Ryan enjoys keeping up with the Phillies and hiking when they inevitably miss the postseason.