Jayla is driven by her passion to create equitable, sustainable change within housing and community development. Her interdisciplinary analysis, technical assistance, and policy guidance helps clients across sectors advance real estate development and urban planning efforts.

Jayla is an experienced researcher and organizer who applies a people-centric, inclusive approach to analysis, community engagement, and project management. She works primarily across HR&A’s Housing Affordability, Real Estate Development Advisory, and Inclusive Cities practices, with experience conducting feasibility studies, community outreach, impact analyses, as well as developing financial models and housing plans.

Prior to joining HR&A, Jayla interned with The Bridges Collaborative, a nationwide school and neighborhood integration project at The Century Foundation. During her internship, she reported on progressive education policy and worked with various school districts and fair housing organizations. Jayla also interned with MEF Associates where she drafted a brief to support Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program administrators. Additionally, she conducted social psychology research for several years, with a focus on assessing how perceptions of racial history influence policy support. Outside of work, Jayla teaches yoga and enjoys writing poetry and baking.

Jayla has a Bachelor of Arts in Sociopolitical Psychology and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Virginia.

Maile drives collaboration and coordination across diverse stakeholder groups to ensure digital inclusion for all.

As a Director in the Broadband and Digital Equity practice, Maile applies her deep familiarity with United States broadband policy and funding programs to HR&A’s work expanding broadband access and adoption among underserved communities.

Maile comes to HR&A from the Microsoft Airband team, where she managed partnerships with Internet Service Providers, nonprofits, and other digital equity stakeholders, bringing four million unserved rural Americans under broadband coverage in less than five years. She also led development and publication of the Digital Equity Dashboard, designed to empower state agencies and digital equity leaders with data to guide decision making and investments. She has 15 years of experience in the digital inclusion space, including a background in youth digital skills, computer science education, and youth media production. She began her career as a Teach For America corps member, teaching middle school language arts in Phoenix, Arizona.

Maile holds a Bachelor of Arts in Romance Languages from Mount Holyoke College, a Master of Education from Arizona State University, and a Master of Philosophy in European Literature from the University of Cambridge, St. John’s College, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

Allie brings extensive experience in economic and workforce development, where she uses quantitative analysis to increase inclusive economic prosperity and reduce geographic disparities.

Before joining HR&A, Allie worked at CIC, a social enterprise that develops innovation campuses that provide shared wet labs, public civic spaces, industry hubs, and initiatives to help startups grow. As a member of the expansion team, she identified, evaluated, and pursued opportunities in new cities, partnering with commercial real estate developers as well as academic institutions, community organizations, and local stakeholders.

Previously, Allie worked at Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), a national nonprofit focused on expanding economic prosperity in under-resourced communities. At ICIC she worked on the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, a public private partnership that helps small businesses grow and create jobs in their communities. Allie led data analysis for the team, using quantitative analysis and mapping to increase equity within the program. She also led the launch of the program’s first ever rural site, which became a model for future site launches. Allie also worked as a researcher and community organizer for a union in Boston, where she focused on issue-based campaigns around wage theft and other economic and workforce issues.

Allie has a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA, where she focused on economic and workforce development and quantitative analysis. She received her B.A. in Geography from the University of Washington.

Miriam is interested in creating equitable, resilient communities via inclusive economic development planning.

Miriam is an Arkansas native who relocated to Atlanta in 2021. Growing up in rural Arkansas, her experience in grassroots organizing for immigrant communities around the state is where her passion for community development began. Growing up in a small one-factory town and navigating equity issues in Arkansas’s Hispanic immigrant communities pushed Miriam to explore solutions that would help communities rise above systemic disparity, which led her to economic development planning.

At HR&A, Miriam is interested in supporting our Inclusive Cities, Urban Tech and Innovation, and RealEstate Advisory practices. She welcomes the opportunity to learn how to create equitable, resilient communities for the benefit of all, while also encouraging growth and systematic change within the communities we advise.

Miriam earned her Master’s in City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech, with concentrations in Economic Development and Land Use.

Nisha joins the TXO as a Research Analyst and is passionate about developing innovative, community-based solutions to problems facing cities today.

Prior to joining HR&A, Nisha worked at the Center on Global Cities at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. At the Center, she collaborated with residents and global leaders on We Will Chicago, Chicago’s first citywide planning initiative, and conducted extensive research on municipal policy to build heat resilience. She also studied in Berlin, Germany, where she did extensive fieldwork in historical preservation and building inclusive communities.

Nisha holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and International Relations with Honors from Claremont McKenna College (CMC). At CMC, Nisha won Best Thesis in International Relations for her thesis on the intersectional impact of urban planning and migration policy on refugee integration in Beirut and Istanbul.

Stefan provides analytical support and subject matter expertise across a range of transformative urban infrastructure and real estate projects focusing on transit-oriented development and adaptive reuse.

Stefan has a demonstrated history of working between government and private sector stakeholders, drawing on a deeply cross-disciplinary background in architecture, geospatial analysis, and sustainability research. He has built a specialization in public-private partnership, helping clients to deliver implementation strategies and benefits analysis for complex transportation and urban infrastructure projects.

Based out of HR&A’s New York office, Stefan has worked across US markets and abroad and works with clients to integrate scientific research and technical analysis into strategic planning. Prior to joining HR&A, Stefan supported capital project implementation at the City of Rochester, NY.

Based in the DC office, Kwabene brings a background of social science and service to his work at the intersections of policy, place, and people.

Prior to joining HR&A, he spent a year in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a volunteer English teacher where he consulted the school administration and taught over 100 secondary school students. He has also held positions as a behavioral science research assistant and has interned at a law firm and a political nonprofit.

Kwabene graduated in 2022 with a BA in Sociology from the University of Chicago.

Joe provides research and analytical support for housing and economic development projects.

Prior to joining HR&A, Joe spent six years on the Research team at the Tennessee Housing Development Agency. There, he advised agency program divisions in policy decisions and programmatic evaluations. He also produced public-facing research reports on housing issues of broader public interest.

Joe holds a Master’s in Public Policy Analysis from the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, and received his Bachelor of Arts in Economics, with a concentration in Urban Studies, from Macalester College.

Francis is an affordable housing practitioner and urban planner. She brings national and international real estate policy, finance, and development experience centered on creating equitable cities and communities.

Francis joins HR&A’s New York office as a Senior Analyst. Prior to joining HR&A, Francis was an Associate Developer at Pennrose, one of the largest affordable housing developers in the country, where she worked as a project manager on mixed-use, mixed-income deals across New England. Francis previously worked at MassHousing, the Massachusetts’ housing finance agency, where she created new supply- and demand-side policies and programs to address housing challenges and narrow the racial homeownership gap. Francis has also worked as a consultant with The World Bank, providing research, analysis, and recommendations for new housing finance policies and programs in Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Maldives.

Her prior work includes housing collaborations with resettled war refugees in Colombia, Jordan, and Uganda, disenfranchised indigenous communities in Guyana, incarcerated men in California, and rural-to-urban immigrants in Ecuador and Myanmar.

Francis holds a Master’s in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Architecture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.