About Me

Studying how disasters affect people and communities—and what we can do about it.

Welcome to my personal website! I am a Senior Fellow and the co-lead of the Climate and Communities program at the Urban Institute, a non-profit and non-partisan policy research organization in Washington DC. For the past 20 years I have studied the impacts of disasters on people and communities and what policymakers can do about them. My research has several areas of emphasis including the impacts of disasters on affordable housing, the role of zoning and land-use policies in hazard mitigation and climate adaptation, and the effectiveness of federal and state policies for building community resilience.

I have published broadly on disaster and climate related topics in venues like Natural Hazards, Natural Hazards Review, Housing Studies, the Journal of Urban Affairs, and Habitat International and sit on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Planning Association and the Journal of Planning Literature.

Before joining the Urban Institute in 2023, I was a tenured professor of urban planning at Texas A&M University and before that the University of Colorado Denver. I have a BA in political science from Reed College and a PhD and MRP in city and regional planning from Cornell University.

To keep up with my latest research, please subscribe to my Substack Place + Resilience. Visit Disaster Lab to see my latest disaster data sets, visualizations and dashboards.