With extensive experience in innovation district planning, development and operations, Mason leads the firm’s growing Knowledge Economy Practice from Atlanta, GA.

Mason joins HR&A after serving as the Vice President of Operations at The University Financing Foundation (TUFF), a non-profit financing organization based in Atlanta, where he advised on a wide variety of local and international university projects managing assets in excess of $1.5 billion which include innovation districts such as Georgia Tech’s Tech Square in Midtown Atlanta and healthcare networks such as Northwell Health in Manhattan New York. Prior to TUFF, Mason was the Chief Operating Officer at the Research Triangle Park Foundation (RTP) and led the organization’s business development, marketing, real estate, and partnership efforts. Responsible for leading the convergence of higher education including three R1 universities, two community colleges, and a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), Mason championed the redevelopment of RTP as a multi-use innovation destination for the Triangle.

With an extensive international network, Mason traveled to Sweden and Saudi Arabia as an Eisenhower Fellow and studied the global evolution of innovation districts and the impacts of place-based design and public-private convergence on their success. Mason is the Past President of the Association of University Research Parks (AURP), Co-Chairman of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) University Development & Innovation Council, and member of the Atlanta ULI Center for Leadership.

Mason holds a BS in Architecture & Design and a Master’s of City & Regional Planning from Clemson University.

Jose Serrano-McClain brings expertise in urban innovation, technology policy, and community economic development.

As a leader in the HR&A’s Inclusive Cities and Urban Tech & Innovation practices, Jose works across the country with municipal governments, economic development organizations, technology companies and foundations that are seeking to play catalytic roles in regional economic transformations that are grounded in equity, sustainability, and next-generation public infrastructure. His work includes a rigorous focus on the roles that municipal governance, civic participation, and political transitions play in shaping economic transitions.

Prior to joining HR&A, he was Program Director of NYCx for the NYC Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, where he led the creation of an urban innovation R&D program that convenes community-based organizations, technology companies, academic partners, and city agencies to collaborate on design of smart infrastructure, new technologies and business models that help the city achieve its ambitious strategic goals for resilience, sustainability, and economic equity. Before joining City government, Jose worked on macroeconomic analysis and financial regulations at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Jose has also worked as a community organizer on behalf of vulnerable immigrant communities in Queens NY equitable public space and transportation policy reforms, and he co-founded a social enterprise to support the arts, creative development, and social innovation.

Jose earned his Master of Fine arts from Queens College and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

Danny integrates technology with city building and specializes in managing complex and creative urban development initiatives.

Danny bridges the gap between urbanists and technologists when it comes to infrastructure, real estate, planning, and economic development. With deep experience in both the public and private sectors, he has shaped and managed large-scale capital investment programs and district development strategies; led the development of government data products and digital tools; and designed and implemented organizational changes that foster innovation and efficiency in government.

Most recently, Danny served as Founding Director of the Capital Planning Division of the New York City Department of City Planning (NYCDCP), where he was responsible for integrating new technologies and data-driven approaches into the City’s capital planning and budget-making process across nearly two dozen agencies. In this role, he:

• Conceived and led the development of the Capital Planning Platform, a new civic technology and government efficiency initiative utilizing free and open source software. The platform includes the NYC Facilities Explorer, and its core mapping technology is increasingly being used for other applications.
• Led the integration of capital planning into neighborhood planning, ensuring that the City complements changes to zoning with investments that can catalyze and accommodate growth, as with the $250+ million East New York Community Plan. Danny also led the creation, design, and management of a $1 billion Neighborhood Development Fund to support this work.
• Jointly developed the City of New York’s $95.85 billion Ten-Year Capital Strategy, in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget.
• Supported the design and creation of NYC Planning Labs, a new division of the Department of City Planning that embraces open technology, agile development, and user-centered design to build impactful products with NYC’s urban planners.
• Served as Co-Chair of the Core Infrastructure and Services Task Force for OneNYC, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan for a strong and just city.

Prior to NYCDCP, Danny was a Principal at HR&A Advisors, where he:

• Served as Project Director of Talking Transition, an expansive civic engagement initiative sponsored by a consortium of NYC-based foundations that included a team of 250+, a custom web app to survey 70,000 New Yorkers, and events that attracted 15,000 people.
• Led development, programming, and management strategies for more than a dozen parks around the world, including New York City’s High Line and Boston’s Lawn on D Street.
• Conducted a comprehensive review of master planning efforts for the 2012 Olympic Parklands in London and economic development assets, organizations, and governance in the City of Los Angeles.
• Managed the winning development proposal for Pier 57 in Hudson River Park, and the master leasing processes for the Fulton Center and Paul Union Depot.
• Managed innovative civic hacking and economic development competitions, including NYC BigApps, Take the HELM, and Staten Island Storefronts.
• Evaluated the economic and fiscal impacts of more than $20 billion of real estate and infrastructure investment, contributing to clients’ abilities to secure new sources of public and private funding.

Working at the nexus of economics, public policy, technology, planning, and design has allowed Danny to serve as a trusted advisor to senior leaders in government, real estate, and nonprofits. As Managing Partner of HR&A’s New York Office, he is also working to grow HR&A as a place for brilliant professionals to shape the future of urban life.

Danny has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, New York University, Yale University, and numerous conferences and community events across the country. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with distinction in Architecture and Urban Studies from Yale University.

For over 25 years, Andrea has designed and implemented initiatives for non-profits, governments, and think tanks that make cities better, fairer places.

From her time as a young student member of New York City’s school board to her experiences as a queer daughter of an immigrant, Andrea deeply understands how the systems that shape policy are often disconnected from the people they are supposed to serve. Andrea’s work acknowledges that conventional approaches to economic development, public policy, public service delivery, and urban planning have created or worsened existing inequities in our society. She is a tireless defender of basic universal rights and leads initiatives with non-profits, local governments, and community organizations to confront the status quo and lead systemic change to benefit historically marginalized and disenfranchised people.

Andrea is a leader in HR&A’s Equity in Governance Practice, which has helped to shape how local government engages and serves over 11 million people — from New York City to Oakland to Allegheny County, PA to Miami-Dade, FL to Harris County, TX. With this work, Andrea designs and executes transitions for newly elected leaders to seize the transition period as an opportunity to clarify how they will translate campaign promises into action, generate policies grounded in the reality of people’s lives, express their values through their first budget, and attract talent to get things done. Andrea supports new City and County executive leaders who represent a “first” for their office, including the first woman County Executive of Allegheny County and the first Hmong American and the first formerly homeless Mayor of Oakland. Her proven ability to translate their campaign promises into tangible reforms has been enshrined in a playbook prepared for Local Progress, a movement of elected municipal officials who activate the powers of local government to advance racial equity and economic justice.

Andrea was instrumental in the formation of La Liga, an organization that equipped Puerto Rican mayors with unprecedented communication channels in the wake of Hurricane Maria. La Liga is emblematic of Andrea’s impact — it presented a first-of-its-kind, community-focused, collaborative vehicle for Puerto Rico to address fiscal, economic, rebuilding challenges and to gain deserved visibility and support from the U.S. mainland.

Andrea consistently drives deep systems change within cities to confront the dangers faced by marginalized people within our nation’s food security, criminal justice, mental health, public safety, and housing systems. She works with a broad array of stakeholders to understand the historical challenges they’ve faced and to co-design strategies for action and policy change. Her projects range from micro to macro scale — from working with a neighborhood to imagine their future to building new systems for large cities to understanding how the policies and funding regimes established by federal government have created and reinforced racial divides. This approach is exemplified through her leadership in Gainesville, Florida, where her team performed focused research to identify and address areas of the City’s Comprehensive Plan that failed to combat the increases in racial inequity. Similarly, her leadership and execution of a race equity audit for the City of Beverly, MA, which holistically evaluated policies, practices, and cultures of the city, led to a governance framework that provided a much-needed foundation for the City to build towards racial equity.

Andrea’s work consistently challenges traditional economic development approaches to place equity at the heart of progressive change. Her work with the City of Dallas — a city that prioritized communities of color for the first time ever in 2021 — led to an unanimously approved equitable Economic Development Policy and Incentive Policy. In Los Angeles County, Andrea worked to center racial equity and inclusion in the outcome of its regional plan and its internal operations. She also led work on the Gwinnett Place Mall in Georgia, which transformed a conversation around an aging mall into one of opportunity that placed equity foremost in its redevelopment planning, especially when considering anti-displacement and regional inclusion of its diverse surrounding communities.

In her justice reform work, Andrea interrogates existing criminal justice system structures and works with multi-stakeholder groups including formerly incarcerated people, activists, municipalities, and more to design strategies that promote human dignity and more equitable outcomes. In one such project, she is advising the City of Philadelphia in its efforts to reform its parole system to reduce incarcerated populations and envision supportive diversion strategies for the recently incarcerated through the formation of “community resource centers” (CRCs). With city partners, Andrea and the HR&A team conceptualized the holistic strategy for these centers including wraparound care, operations, governance, and financial sustainability.

After working with cities like Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and others on public banking initiatives, there is a growing interest in Andrea’s work around public banking. Andrea partners with leaders and policy innovators across the United States who are exploring the potential of municipal public banking to help cities take bold steps towards addressing banking inequities and associated challenges like racial wealth gaps, poverty, and disparities in local economic development. Andrea has lead studies and initiatives that help clients: understand the impact of significant policy initiatives at the state and local level, quantify the financial feasibility and economic impact of public banking institutions, and work with public, private, and community stakeholders to design and execute tailored plans that address each city’s unique needs. Notably, the State of California recently passed legislation (California Public Banking Option Act AB-1177) to explore a banking option grounded by support and analysis performed by Andrea’s team.

Andrea joined HR&A after serving as Deputy Director for the United States Program of Open Society Foundations, where she oversaw program operations and grant-making portfolios. She also served as Special Advisor to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, where she focused on reducing disparities facing young African American and Latino men and spent 10 years running the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy. She holds a Master’s Degree in History from Columbia University and the London School of Economics. She is the author of The Death of ‘Why?’: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy.

With deep experience in both private sector and government, Jon offers a balanced perspective in understanding public-private development and policy challenges.

Jon has deep experience advising public and private sector clients on the financing and implementation of complex real estate projects. With a dedicated focus on real estate policy, carbon reduction efforts, and strategic approaches to implementation, he is able to develop sound and effective strategies for deploying public-private partnerships.

In 2016, Jon returned to HR&A after serving as the Chief Operating Officer of the Trust for Governors Island, where he was responsible for capital projects, operations, and finance for a complex redevelopment project in New York Harbor.

During his initial tenure at HR&A, Jon was instrumental in creating an economic rationale for the re-use of the High Line in New York City. He led HR&A’s efforts to estimate the impact of saving the High Line as a public open space as an alternative to demolishing the historic structure. Jon also served as the project manager for HR&A’s work creating economic development strategies for downtown Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Since returning to the firm, Jon has been a leader in energy efficiency and carbon reduction policy analysis nationwide. Jon has is also a key component of the firm’s practice in developing real estate policy analysis in New York, including the future of downtowns, and real estate and housing policy analysis. Additionally, Jon has worked on strategic plans and real estate asset plans for a number of nationally-recognized cultural organizations.

Jon holds a Masters in Business Administration from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in Geography from Dartmouth College.

For over 20 years, Bob has worked with academic institutions, government and private industry to advance the missions of top research and technology campuses for greater public impact.

Bob Geolas is a nationally-recognized leader in the development of innovation districts, university campuses, and research parks. As the Partner in charge of our Raleigh office, Bob brings his vision of placemaking as a public service to HR&A, working with clients to deliver economic growth and real estate strategies that enhance assets and communities.

Prior to joining HR&A, Bob served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Research Triangle Foundation, the steward organization for the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. As President, he led the master planning effort to reshape Research Triangle Park, ensuring its place at the forefront of technology and applied science, while also serving its historic mission to support the universities and create opportunities for all North Carolinians. Previously, Bob helped to create one of the country’s most successful public-private research and development campuses as Executive Director of the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research.

Bob has received several awards for his work to further the missions of institutions, including the Vision Award from the International Association of University Research Parks, Alumni of the Year Award from North Carolina State University, College of Humanities and Social Science and the Triangle Top 20 CEO of the Year Award from the Triangle Business Journal.

Candace Damon has devoted her 30-year career to crafting sustainable urban redevelopment strategies in cities across North America.

Her specific areas of expertise include supporting master planning efforts for large-scale revitalizations, ensuring the long-term viability of urban open space, leading organizational planning for non-profits and institutions, and addressing the financial challenges of making commercial and multifamily residential buildings energy efficient. Candace also specializes in engineering successful strategies for downtown and waterfront redevelopment across the country.

Candace creates innovative development strategies for signature open spaces, and devises funding frameworks to balance operations and maintenance requirements.

She created a development strategy for Brooklyn Bridge Park; an operations and maintenance plan for Shelby Farms in Memphis, and a revenue generation strategy for a renewed waterfront in Seattle following the removal of an expressway. Most recently, Candace evaluated the economic, environmental, and social benefits created by the Dallas Park System, one of the largest park systems in the United States.

Candace engineers successful strategies for downtown and waterfront redevelopment throughout the country.

In Philadelphia, Candace provided an award-winning phasing and parcelization plan to revitalize Penn’s Landing on the Delaware River Waterfront. She developed programs to attract, capture, and grow tech companies within the Brooklyn Tech Triangle by incentivizing commercial landlords to configure appropriate leases and spaces for tech tenants. Additionally, Candace advised the repositioning of Atlanta’s Tax Allocation District Program to support the City’s broader economic development goals and stimulate job creation. Candace has also developed successful strategies for Brooklyn, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Greensboro, Charlotte, Memphis, San Diego, and Toronto.

Candace helps clients realize the competitive advantage gained by investments in energy efficiency and creates strategies to protect communities from the destructive effects of climate change.

After convening the leaders of New York’s commercial real estate industry to discuss multiple stakeholder’s sustainability priorities, Candace developed standard green lease language designed to reward investments in energy efficiency, which is now used in all commercial office lease negotiations for space occupied by the City of New York. She has also designed programs and policy for the New York State Research and Development Authority, and directed the multi-disciplinary effort to develop the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Energy Efficiency Lease Guidance for commercial owners and tenants. Candace guided the development of New Orleans’ citywide resilience strategy, which leverages investments in resilient infrastructure to foster economic development and improve social equity.

Candace advises a variety of non-profit organizations on partnership opportunities, sustainable business planning, and real estate strategies to advance organizational mission and vision.

Candace prepared a real estate strategy for the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 600,000 square feet expansion of rehearsal, performance, gallery, and exhibition space.  She also planned for the revitalization of Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis on behalf of the Minnesota Orchestral Association. Ten years ago, Candace united six independent Brooklyn organizations – the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn Public Library, Prospect Park Alliance and Prospect Park Zoo – to create a new community partnership, the Heart of Brooklyn, for the purpose of collaborating on initiatives, and sharing resources. Candace designed its governance structure, framed its goals, and recommended an implementation strategy that drew immediate foundation interest and financial support. Since its formation, Heart of Brooklyn has undertaken a dynamic set of projects that have increased the vitality of Brooklyn’s central public institutions, strengthened local businesses and attracted new entrepreneurs.

Candace is a member of the Board of the City Parks Alliance and the Urban Green Council, a founding partner of G. Works. She is also a member of the New York City YMCA Real Estate Advisory Committee, and a member of the Advisory Board and President Emeritus of the Atlantic Avenue Local Development Corporation.  She received the Women of Influence Award from the Real Estate Forum in 2008. Prior to joining HR&A in 1988, Candace worked as a Real Estate Associate at Webster & Sheffield, a Research Associate at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and as an analyst at the New York City Office of Management and Budget. Candace holds a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Phillip Kash is a nationally recognized practitioner and thought leader on housing affordability, and resilience and recovery.

A leading expert on urban policy, Phillip works across the country to address two of the most pressing challenges facing cities today: housing affordability and resilience and recovery. He works with local governments, community advocates and private stakeholders to develop strategic frameworks to establish priorities and approaches; designs programs and policies to achieve public policy goals; and advises on the implementation of projects.

As a leader of HR&A’s affordable housing practice, Phillip focuses on improving housing affordability in American cities through comprehensive strategies that integrate land use policy, public funding, and tenants’ rights. He has worked with dozens of local governments in the past four years to develop and implement affordable housing plans. This includes the development of comprehensive affordable housing plans to guide local governments as they grapple with the growing challenge of affordability. Recently he has worked with Detroit, MI on a Multifamily Housing Strategy, with El Paso, TX on a Regional Housing Plan and with Wake County, NC on an Affordable Housing Plan that dedicates $75M in local funding to affordable housing over the next five years.

As part of his work, Phillip also advises on the development of specific affordable housing programs and policies. This includes an inclusionary zoning policy and short-term rental affordability policy in New Orleans, LA, as well as the design of single-family rehabilitation, multifamily gap financing and emergency rental assistance programs for the Housing Opportunity Fund on behalf of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. He lead the development of a housing affordability calculator that evaluates the impact of local policies on housing affordability and production for Seattle, Portland, and Charlotte. He advised on Norfolk, VA’s successful Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant application to redevelop Saint Paul’s Area and undertake a People First strategy that focused on the needs of public housing residents.

Phillip’s work on resilience and recovery began in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and has continued in other cities across the country. He advised the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority on the development of disaster recovery programs that successfully revitalized neighborhoods and commercial corridors throughout the city. Phillip joined HR&A in 2015 to help lead the delivery of technical assistance to states and local governments throughout the country as part of the National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC). From 2015-2016, he led a multidisciplinary team of engineers, climate scientists, and landscape architects to develop Climate Ready Boston, a comprehensive climate adaptation plan for the city and its regional systems that won the Gold National Planning Achievement Award from APA. He advised on financing, development, and governance strategies for the Ohio Creek Watershed Transformation project in Norfolk, VA, and the Gentilly Resilience District in New Orleans, and the Ilse de Jean Resettlement Project effort in Southern Louisiana. Following Hurricane Michael, he lead the development of an Economic Recovery Plan for Panama City, FL that lead to reinvestment in the city’s urban core, historic neighborhoods and commercial corridors.

Prior to joining HR&A, Phillip worked at Enterprise Community Partners where he advised on affordable housing, nonprofit business planning, neighborhood revitalization and resilient recovery programs. As a Director, he provided technical assistance to local governments and nonprofits nationwide; designed and implemented programs; and advised on affordable housing development projects. Several of his technical assistance engagements were part of HUD’s One Community Planning and Development program and the National Resource Network.

Phillip volunteers with All Souls Housing Corporation to support and preserve the affordability of Columbia Heights Village, a 400-unit development in the heart of DC. He holds a Master’s in City and Regional Planning and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.