Samantha Anderson is a graduate student with a focus on urban policy and ethical redevelopment in historically marginalized neighborhoods facing disinvestment. Originally from Mississippi, Samantha’s interest in the intersection of place, social infrastructure, and quality of life has been shaped by her observations of how community outcomes often vary disproportionately based on identity factors, particularly race and socioeconomic status.

Samantha earned her bachelor degree from Northwestern University, where she studied social policy, statistics, and Black studies. She was an impact measurement assistant at the YWCA Evanston/North Shore, evaluating programmatic impact and racial equity within community organizations, and interned at Vocal Justice, conducting data analysis to enhance its social justice education program.

While at UChicago, Samantha has interned at the Cook County State Attorney’s Office through Urban Labs’ Urban Policy and Research Program, supporting data integration and analyzing criminal case data to support equitable policies. She also served as program director for the Urban Development Ambassadors Program, a summer initiative teaching community development practices to South Side youth. Currently, she is a graduate intern at the Chicago Department of Transportation, contributing to the advancement of transportation policy and mobility equity citywide, and a grants assistant at The Refugee Center in Champaign, IL, supporting the funding of essential services to local immigrant communities.

As a Kreisman Fellow, she looks forward to learning with her cohort and exploring how equitable and care-centered housing practices can improve access to life-sustaining resources in communities that need them the most. In the future, she hopes to renovate vacant and abandoned properties to create affordable housing and community centers in high-poverty areas.

After completing his first year of medical school, Isaiah interned at MATTER, a healthcare startup incubator, where he gained hands-on experience with digital health and life science innovation alongside various companies and VC firms. This experience was crucial in shaping his path to becoming a Healthcare Initiative Fellow at the Booth School of Business. At Booth, Isaiah aims to deepen his knowledge of strategy and finance to effectively leverage public and private sector resources in addressing the root causes of health disparities. Drawing from his research experience and clinical work on the South Side of Chicago, he is particularly interested in affordable housing and urban economic development.

Beyond academics, Isaiah dedicates his time to teaching emergency preparedness and CPR to South Side Chicago residents. He’s also deeply involved as a mentor and director in various pipeline programs, guiding underrepresented students with aspirations in medicine. When not immersed in his studies or community work, Isaiah unwinds by hanging out with friends and exploring his interests in live music, film, fashion, and dance. He’s also a proud plant dad and loves scouring thrift and vintage stores across the Chicago area.

Jeremy Endicott is a full-time MBA student from Lindon, Utah. He received a B.S. in Finance from Brigham Young University and began his career in real estate private equity. Today Jeremy is focused on developing affordable and attainable missing-middle housing in Chicago and the United States.

To date, Jeremy’s career has been centered on acquiring and developing multifamily and missing-middle housing. At Greystar, Jeremy focused on acquiring workforce housing in the San Francisco Bay area. Assets included conventional and mixed-income properties. Jeremy was responsible for the underwriting and financial modeling of new investments as well as the financial analysis aspects of asset management of the existing portfolio.

At PEG Companies, Jeremy served as a senior investment associate focused on the underwriting of new development projects. At first, most projects included luxury multifamily buildings in downtown Salt Lake City and Arizona. However, over the past three years Jeremy helped the company launch a new strategy focused on build-for-rent housing in the Mountain West states. The team targeted high-growth communities that would provide housing for workforce families in an area of the country where the cost of housing had increased substantially.

Jeremy spent this past summer interning with Goldman Sachs in the Real Estate External Investing Group. He is excited to be returning full-time with Goldman in New York City after graduation.

Luyao Guo is a Master of Public Policy candidate at the Harris School of PublicPolicy, focusing on housing policy and data-driven solutions to urban challenges. She has a strong commitment to addressing housing issues, evidenced by her experience in Cook County Government, where she analyzed labor wage data and contributed to policy transparency efforts. With a background in both public and private sectors, Luyao brings interdisciplinary insights from her work in finance, data analysis, and policy consulting. In addition to her academic focus on econometrics and program evaluation, she has a passion for applying quantitative analysis to real-world housing challenges. Luyao is excited to collaborate with fellow Kreisman Fellows and local housing organizations to explore innovative, data-informed approaches to housing policy and advocacy.

Hugo He is a graduate student at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, focusing on the intersection of data, climate change, social justice, and urban design. He serves as Co-Publisher of the University of Chicago Public Policy Podcast (UC3P) and is an Executive Board member of South Side Civic. Before his graduate studies, Hugo earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, where he contributed to a housing cooperative by analyzing its diversity initiatives. His diverse experiences in climate change, housing, and social justice have shaped his passion for addressing and connecting these critical issues. In his free time, he enjoys climbing, hiking, watching films, and volunteering.​

Keenan Leary hails from Seattle, WA, and has spent eight out the last ten years in Los Angeles, CA. He received his MSW from UCLA with a concentration in Social and Economic Justice. His social welfare research interests are shaped by experience with basic income pilot programs and working in small city local government coordinating homeless services and housing capacity. Outside of school, Keenan loves all forms of outdoor recreation, with a past career in the bike industry which took him strange places like Justin Bieber’s garage tuning up the Bieber ebike fleet. He is excited to begin his doctoral studies in Hyde Park with his partner and 6-year old shepherd-pit mix.

Samuel Mann is a joint MPP/MBA student at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and Booth School of Business, pursuing concentrations in data analytics and strategic management. Samuel calls Salt Lake City, Utah, home but has lived across the country from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine. After graduating with his bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah, where Samuel studied religion and psychology, he joined City Year AmeriCorps and taught in 5th-grade classrooms in South Boston. Samuel’s passion for housing stems, in part, from witnessing the negative impacts of insecure housing on his students’ academic experiences. Since beginning his graduate studies, Samuel has interned with two Chicago-based organizations. In 2023, Samuel interned with the Government Finance Officers Association, working on numerous projects, including Putting Assets to Work (PAW). PAW is an initiative designed to help local governments create and capitalize “urban wealth funds,” a financial tool that some cities are utilizing to build affordable housing. In 2024, Samuel interned with the Community Investment Corporation (CIC), working closely with the Preservation Compact and Troubled Buildings Initiative to preserve Chicago’s existing affordable rental housing stock. After completing graduate school, Samuel plans to pursue a career in public-sector affordable housing development. Outside of the classroom and office, Samuel is an avid podcast listener, NCAA football game watcher, and Lake Michigan swimmer. He has recently taken up baking and always enjoys road-tripping with his wife and dog.

Genevieve is a second year MBA student at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Over the summer she interned with Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, a community developer in Pullman. In this role she supported the organization’s neighborhood revitalization efforts through a variety of commercial, industrial, and residential real estate projects. At Booth, Genevieve is a member of the Real Estate Group and co-chair of two recreational student groups, the Adam Smith Society and Catholics at Booth. She is a recipient of the NAIOP Chicago Future Leaders Scholarship. Prior to beginning her graduate studies Genevieve worked at Bearing Tree, a Chicago-based company that provides professional services to economic policy-focused nonprofits. She also spent 6 years in Washington, DC as a fundraiser for National Taxpayers Union, a research and advocacy organization. These roles afforded her the opportunity to engage with the regulatory and fiscal aspects of housing at the national and state levels. She graduated from Thomas Aquinas College in California with a degree in the liberal arts. She currently lives in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood.

Ryan McCray is from San Antonio, Texas and received his Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He relocated to Chicago in 2022 after realizing his passion for the lifestyle allowed by dense, abundant housing and quality public transportation. Since relocating, he has been appointed to the Chicago Transit Authority’s Citizens Advisory Board and the Erie Neighborhood House Associate Board. In his free time he organizes for safe streets, transit-oriented development, and pro-growth environmentalism, mainly through his positions on Sierra Club Chicago’s Executive Committee and the City Council Action Team. He thinks Chicago is the best city in the country and one day, as a Kreisman Fellow with a Masters in Public Policy, he hopes to help Chicago grow even better.

Ella Montgomery is a second year MPP student at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Her current research focuses on housing, banking history, and financial inclusion. Previous to her graduate studies, Ella earned a BA in Economics and worked as an economic analyst in the US Copyright Office. As a Chicago native, Ella has developed a strong interest in understanding the underlying drivers of inequality and neighborhood development. When she is not reading academic journals, Ella favors science fiction, and when not reading she enjoys riding her bike along the lakefront trail.

Henry Nieberg is currently an Underwriter for the Illinois Housing Development Authority, where he evaluates, structures, and negotiates affordable housing financing proposals. Henry has a deep appreciation for the complexities of the built environment. Henry majored in Geography and Religious Studies in college, and spends his free time giving tours around Chicago.

Angela Orokoh is a second-year PhD student at the Crown School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. Currently, Angela is interested in the interconnectedness of housing markets and labor markets. Her current research examines the relationship between labor market restructuring and housing instability. Specifically, Angela uses quantitative analysis to explore whether precarious employment is linked to greater housing challenges for working people. Drawing on national data, she investigates how shifts in employment structure and workplace arrangements  may be associated with various forms of housing instability, including unaffordability, frequent moves, doubling up, eviction, and homelessness. More broadly, Angela is interested in investigating the economic, spatial, and cultural influences of dual housing markets and urban inequality.

Angela has worked with a wide range of government, education, and community-based housing stakeholders. As a field placement with the Crown School, she interned with the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights, where she developed policy briefs on housing discrimination and fair housing practices. She also provided frontline services as a social work intern with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless Law Project. Angela has conducted research and analysis as an intern for the Policy and Research team at the Chicago Department of Housing. In addition, she has partnered with the Chicago Department of Housing to produce research briefs on state and municipal based housing strategies for addressing the racial wealth gap. 

Before beginning her PhD, Angela earned a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Chicago, a Master’s in African American Studies from Georgia State University, and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Kanika Rustogi is currently pursuing her MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business; She is a recipient of the prestigious Ramakrishnan Family Scholarship, and an active member of the Management Consulting Group, South Asian Business Group, Women in Business Group, and OUTreach.

Her professional experience entails a Summer Consultant role at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), an Investment Consultant role at Invest India, India’s Investment Promotion Agency, and a Junior Specialist for Social Impact role at BCG. She holds a Bachelor of Management Studies with a specialization in Finance from the University of Delhi’s Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies.

Hannah (Hyu Ri) Yoon is a graduate student of the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences, with a concentration specifically in (medical) sociology. Her study focuses on finding effective/affordable methods to reduce health disparities – such as improving basic standards of living through housing and bringing changes to (health) policies. She hopes to use sociology as a foundation to understand the complex interdisciplinary housing systems that combine law, healthcare, and daily lives of socioeconomically disadvantaged minorities. She received a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Sociology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Before her graduate studies, she spent her time exploring both fields of natural and social sciences to gain insight into medicine and the healthcare system. In her free time, she loves to take care of plants and explore new restaurants to find good food. She adores cats, and she is in strong denial that she might be allergic to them.