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 supports projects with research and geospatial analysis for projects in public transportation and sustainability.

A research analyst with the New York City office, Stefan enjoys incorporating information across silos to improve urban sustainability and equity outcomes. His experience ranges from storm surge mapping to municipal project management and community engagement

Prior to joining HR&A, Stefan acted as an assistant project manager at the City of Rochester Department of Environmental Services, working to improve active transportation accessibility and public space activation along the Genesee riverfront. Working with Full Circle Collaborative, his honors thesis explored small business models for implementing the circular economy and employing refugees in Athens, Greece. He has also been a freelance and fellowship researcher at Penn State University, working on lakeside flooding visualizations and urban heat island modelling.

Stefan received a Bachelor’s in Architecture with Honors from Brown University, where he also specialized in environmental science and urban studies.

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.

Amruta combines her experience in climate adaptation strategies, community organizing, cultural inclusivity, and land use policy to strengthen equity in planning.

Before HR&A, Amruta worked at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), where she focused on projects ranging from analyzing the coastal adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities to assisting multiple North Texas cities in developing urban design guidelines for missing-middle housing. Throughout her doctoral studies and before, Amruta has actively engaged with regional and local nonprofits and community-based organizations on community engagement projects, youth education on socio-ecological sustainability, and developed community stewardship frameworks for long-term, meaningful engagement of residents. She is also an adjunct faculty at UTA, teaching undergraduate and graduate students to conduct sustainability assessments of proposed projects to alleviate environmental and climate injustices. The course exposes students to multi-scale case studies on water resiliency, transportation, housing, environmental education, equitable food access, and others.

Amruta received her Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Public Policy from the University of Texas at Arlington in May 2023, where she has won federal grants and regional awards for technical reports and high school student training projects. She holds a Bachelor’s from Mumbai University and a Master’s in Architecture from Penn State.