Ethan leverages his expertise in place-based strategic planning and impact analysis to guide the implementation of transformative urban projects and initiatives.

Ethan is deeply involved in the company’s place-based work in AAPI neighborhoods. He guided the deployment of $20 million in state funding to capital projects in Manhattan’s Chinatown as part of Round 5 of New York State’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI). Following the completion of the DRI planning process, he developed a programming and operations strategy for Welcome to Chinatown’s Small Business Innovation Hub, a resource center for legacy businesses and entrepreneurs.

Beyond his work with AAPI communities, Ethan develops governance plans, feasibility assessments, and operating budgets that empower clients to deliver impactful projects and initiatives in cities.

Ethan also advises clients on how to communicate the benefits they provide to urban communities through their operations and programming. He has quantified the economic and fiscal impacts for a range of clients, including Con Edison, LinkNYC, and URBAN-X (BMW-MINI’s urban tech accelerator).

Prior to joining HR&A’s New York Office, Ethan interned at Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, where he conducted market, transit, and demographic research to inform stakeholders of current and future real estate development opportunities within the Business Improvement District. He also supported wayfinding and transportation accessibility initiatives during his internship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation.

Ethan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies and a Minor in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis. His senior honors thesis and GIS study evaluated the real estate development practices of urban universities through social, economic, racial, and spatial lenses.

Christiana advises public and private sector clients on strategies and policies to support healthy housing markets, promote fair access to housing and encourage the clean energy transition. 

Christiana brings her background in housing and real estate economics and policy to lead projects that enable both public and private sector actors to support healthy, fair and resilient housing markets nationally. 

With a belief that fair access to high-quality housing should be a local, state, and federal policy priority, Christiana supports public sector clients to understand the challenges and opportunities in their housing markets, prioritize amongst them, and test land use, funding, energy and infrastructure strategies and policies to address them. 

Christiana’s work also includes analysis and support for the broad range of private sector and non-profit actors that impact housing affordability and the clean energy transition in the residential building sector, from strategies to increase multifamily electrification uptake for utilities to policy and impact analysis for housing and real estate advocacy organizations. 

In addition to her client work, Christiana helps lead HR&A’s digital products strategy and promotes research and development of digital tools to support planning and increase public access to information about the built environment. 

Prior to joining HR&A, Christiana led housing and real estate analysis for UrbanSim. Christiana holds a Master’s in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley with a Graduate Certificate in Real Estate, and a Bachelor’s in Government and Legal Studies from Bowdoin College. 

Sulin Carling advises public and private sector clients on creating vibrant downtowns, flourishing commercial corridors, and dynamic employment hubs. She crafts economic development, real estate, and public policy strategies to foster innovation in cities.

Sulin works with clients across the country to balance private sector and community interests while advancing ambitious economic and community development initiatives. Her work includes supporting commercial corridors and small businesses in a shifting retail landscape, creating vibrant and inclusive local and regional employment hubs, planning for the future of urban industrial areas, and grounding local economic development in food systems and policy.

Sulin recently led an interdisciplinary team to create a Master Plan for Pike Place Market – the iconic public market in Seattle. The resulting Master Plan is grounded in the curation of authentic food and retail offerings that will reattract a local audience, with strategies for greater financial sustainability, increased presence of farmers, support for inclusive local entrepreneurship, and physical investments. Her other work at the intersection of food and economic development includes a study of strategies for creating affordable grocery stores in low-income and gentrifying neighborhoods on behalf of a New York City-based food advocacy not-for-profit; and a redevelopment plan for a major publicly owned produce wholesale market in a major metropolitan area.

Sulin is HR&A’s leader in industrial policy and development. On behalf of the City of New York, Sulin facilitated an Industrial Working Group – comprised of businesses, advocates, and policy experts – to redefine the sectors’ needs and opportunities.  Sulin has also crafted strategies for growing 21^st century industry for the Newmarket neighborhood in Boston and for Attleboro, MA.

Sulin helps small businesses and retail corridors adapt in the face of economic change. On behalf of Welcome to Chinatown, a not-for-profit organization focused on supporting entrepreneurs in Manhattan’s Chinatown, Sulin directed the Chinatown Impact Study, which assessed neighborhood small business’ challenges and identified interventions to support recovery. She is now working with Welcome to Chinatown design a business incubator and develop succession planning strategies. Further, Sulin is currently working with the Atlanta BeltLine Initiative on developing commercial affordability strategies to support Black and brown businesses around the transformative multi-use BeltLine trail.

Sulin helps clients plan for the changing face of downtowns. For the National Landing Business Improvement District, Sulin led creation of a Market Impact Study with strategies for accelerating growth of an innovation district in downtown Arlington, Virginia anchored by AmazonHQ2, Virginia Tech, and $4B in infrastructure investments. Sulin led development of an economic benefits case for the Fifth Avenue Association’s plan to transform Fifth Avenue into a world-class, pedestrian-focused corridor – announced by the Adams Administration in 2022 – to anchor the revitalization of Midtown Manhattan.

Sulin re-joined HR&A in 2020 after serving as Senior Economic Development Planner in the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP), where she led the North Brooklyn Industry & Innovation Plan, the most comprehensive study of an industrial area conducted by DCP in decades, and a comprehensive study of the future of retail and storefront vacancy trends.

Sulin holds a Master in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago.

Giacomo advises governments, businesses, and large institutions on harnessing technology and innovation to create thriving economies and cities.

His expertise spans ecosystem development, tech product deployment and iteration, policy and strategy advisory, impact analysis, and public-private partnerships across industries like robotics, artificial intelligence, fintech, mobility, semiconductors, and digital services. Additionally, Giacomo supports economic growth through workforce development initiatives, public bank business planning, and real estate advisory.  

Some highlights of his innovation work include securing a $63 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant to position Southwestern Pennsylvania as a global leader in robotics and autonomy; leading user testing and iteration for a financial technology app that improved gig workers’ access to unemployment benefits; developing data-sharing strategies for mobility companies, enabling collaboration among public, private, and nonprofit partners; and preparing innovation strategies and impact analyses for startup accelerators like URBAN-X in New York City and institutions like Cornell Tech and Carnegie Mellon University. 

Giacomo’s economic development and real estate portfolio includes managing a leading research university’s successful due diligence, negotiations, and long-term lease for a block-size campus in Manhattan; crafting business, financial, and governance models for public banking initiatives like California’s proposed CalAccount and San Francisco’s municipal bank, which aim to increase financial inclusion and capital access for affordable housing, small businesses, and climate infrastructure; and advising the New York Blood Center, Centre Pompidou Jersey City Museum, and New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island state governments on a variety of real estate development, workforce, and digital equity projects. 

Before joining HR&A, Giacomo spearheaded technology strategies at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Technology Services and Security, helping to scale the Digital Service team, launch the new state website, Mass.gov, and reimagine the Commonwealth’s delivery of unemployment and workforce services. Giacomo also previously served as an Urban Fellow in the New York City government.  

Giacomo has a Bachelor of Arts in Government from Harvard University and a dual Master of Public Administration and Public Policy from the London School of Economics (U.K.) and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (Singapore). His work has been published in TechCrunch, Gizmodo, NextCity, Foreign Policy, and in academic journals.  

Amelia builds frameworks and strategies to improve government systems and combat disenfranchisement.

Primarily through HR&A’s Digital Opportunity practice, Amelia’s work has focused on advising government partners to improve public access to and use of technology, via improvements in civic tech, expansion of broadband infrastructure and developing digital equity policy. Prior to joining HR&A, Amelia managed editorial and podcasting content for Archinect, an online architecture and urbanism publication,  and reported as a freelancer for Bloomberg’s CityLab, Curbed.com, Places Journal, and Hyperallergic, covering topics from street vending policy to art in transit stations.

Her graduate school work focused on the intersection of scientific and urban planning methodologies, including presenting at the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture conference (2018) and thesis research on public health and neighborhood planning, conducted in partnership with an epidemiological study on brain health at Massachusetts General Hospital (2019). She has also supported research on municipal managed retreat policy while an associate at the Consensus Building Institute, a non-profit dispute resolution and mediation firm.

Amelia has a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric with Honors from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Masters of City Planning from MIT.

Jenna serves as a real estate and economic advisor to municipalities, institutions, and developers, applying her expertise across multiple types of urban development, including housing, transit-oriented projects, and institutional initiatives.

With a deep understanding of real estate finance, urban planning, economic development, and land value capture, she helps clients navigate complex development challenges.Her strong quantitative background supports the delivery of real estate projects through market analyses, financial modeling, funding and financing plans, public-private partnerships, and economic and fiscal impact studies. Across Southern California and the nation, she assists municipalities with policy decisions related to real estate and housing, advises public and institutional clients on large mixed-use developments, and works with transit agencies to craft policies that promote equitable community outcomes.

Prior to joining HR&A, Jenna worked for a consortium of USC’s Spatial Sciences Institute, Studio One Eleven, and Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative to identify and analyze potential sites in LA County for affordable housing and open space joint development for the Los Angeles Regional Open Space and Housing Collaborative. She defined criteria for site identification, assembled and created relevant datasets to analyze a variety of relevant factors, and published customizable web applications to share findings. She has also worked for Retail Design Collaborative/Studio One Eleven and for the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

Jenna received a Bachelor of Science in GeoDesign with a minor in Real Estate Finance from the University of Southern California.

Ashley draws on her multidisciplinary and international background to provide research and analytical work across a wide variety of urban projects at HR&A.

Prior to joining HR&A, Ashley developed growth strategies at a food-tech startup in New York City. She was previously an intern at Jones Lang LaSalle Investment Management in Hong Kong and a summer fellow at The Municipal Art Society of New York, where she conducted a wayfinding study on South Street Seaport.

Ashley graduated from Brown University with a bachelor’s degree in urban studies. Her senior honors thesis explored the intersection of preservation, development and resiliency at South Street Seaport. During her time at Brown, Ashley also traveled to São Paulo, Brazil, Cape Town, South Africa, and Ahmedabad, India with the International Honors Program studying the socio-economic landscapes of the built environment.

Michelle plays a key role in optimizing operations and ensuring seamless support for HR&A’s leadership and initiatives.

Michelle Castaneda provides direct support to HR&A Partners, Andrea and Judy. She handles heavy calendar management, oversees travel bookings, and creates itineraries for trips. Michelle coordinates with external stakeholders, tracks budgets, and manages onboarding new hire training scheduling and ad-hoc requests for the Inclusive Cities Practice and Studio 1. Additionally, she has supported major projects with the LA County and All-In-Allegheny, and actively contributes to the Equity Learners Lab core team. Michelle also leads training initiatives to enhance the efficiency and confidence of the administrative team, ensuring that partners receive the best possible support.

Claire provides research and analytical support for open space and real estate development projects.

Prior to joining HR&A, Claire worked for the Massachusetts Port Authority as part of the Real Estate Strategy and Policy Division, where she contributed to the creation of long-term strategies for the agency’s citywide properties and helped grow its public realm initiative. Previously, she worked for social impact real estate development firm Bastogne Development Partners and for the Center City District in Philadelphia.

Claire holds a Masters in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College.