Sam helps HR&A tell its story — guiding our communications strategy to support intentional growth and advance our mission.

Sam brings over a decade of experience working with professional services firms to develop compelling messaging, strong visual identity, and effective marketing and communications strategies. Prior to joining HR&A, she managed Marketing and Communications Teams for architectural firms Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and WRNS Studio, stewarding the organizations through significant business transitions via strategic planning and thoughtful brand development. In these roles, as well as others with professional service firms like LaunchSquad and Forell/Elsesser Engineers, Sam helped create brand standards, refreshed websites, marketing collateral libraries, and editorial calendars to support recruitment and business development.

Sam’s professional career is bolstered by her personal art practice and volunteer work with arts organizations like the Industrial Arts Workshop in Pittsburgh and the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco. Her art practice often incorporates photography and written narrative to explore themes like empathy, identity, and our relationship with the natural world.

Sam holds a Masters in Design from the Glasgow School of Art and a Bachelors in English from UCLA.

Tara coordinates the overall operations of HR&A’s financial processes.

Prior to joining HR&A, Tara worked as Head Bookkeeper at Brocade Creations, where she managed the accounts, secured revenue, and managed the business’s cash flow, accurately verifying and processing all monetary transactions. Tara holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Saint Thomas Aquinas College.

Austin is a Senior Analyst based in HR&A’s Raleigh office, where he leads and manages analytical tasks for HR&A’s transit-oriented development, housing affordability, cultural capital, and real estate projects.

Across all of his work, Austin center’s HR&A’s mission to make cities function better for the residents that inhabit them. This includes enhancing the quality of multi-modal transportation through thoughtful development patterns, advising clients on how to better deliver and maintain affordable housing, and leveraging real estate value to celebrate and honor the history, arts, and culture of culturally significant neighborhoods throughout the country.

Since joining HR&A, he has supported numerous affordable housing transactions through our support of Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund and public sector partners, enabling the delivery of over 4,100 affordable homes and deployment of over $450 million in gap financing. He has also worked with numerous cities in developing plans to address their housing affordability needs, including Memphis, Raleigh, Holly Springs, Athens, and Greensboro.

Austin also supports cities throughout the southeast, including Atlanta, Raleigh, and Richmond, in developing plans for transformative transit-oriented development and establishing thoughtful implementation strategies to realize those plans. His work includes supporting the Greater Richmond Transit Company (GRTC) to develop and implement a plan to construct a permanent Downtown Transfer Hub that will advance transit-oriented development (TOD) in Downtown Richmond. He also worked with the Maryland Department of Transportation to craft a TOD plan for the MARC Penn Line commuter rail line that connects Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland.

Further, Austin is a leading member of HR&A’s Raleigh office, ensuring that we are supporting the communities where we have a significant physical presence. He has worked with GoTriangle to support the development of the Raleigh Union Station (RUS) Bus Facility, the City of Greensboro in developing an update to their affordable housing plan, Gateway Research Park in Greensboro to undergo a visioning exercise for their innovation campus, and the City of Raleigh Museum to craft an expansion strategy as they aim to find a permanent location for their space. He is also a former local government appointed volunteer, serving on the Durham Planning Commission for three years, including two years as Chair.

Ana provides guidance to government and community leaders on closing the digital divide and implementing an equitable broadband future.

Ana is a leader in the Broadband Equity Partnership where she supports projects working to provide effective, efficient, and equitable broadband. Before joining HR&A, she worked in the Office of Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves with the California Public Utilities Commission, analyzing broadband access and the digital divide highlighted by COVID-19. Ana began her career working with the Obama White House Office of Presidential Personnel where she led leadership and professional development programs for over 3,000 political appointees. Since then, Ana has bridged advocacy efforts with government support on local, state, and federal levels. She has supported research on various policy issues in her capacity at the Arizona State Senate, the City of Oakland, and the California State Assembly Committee on Budget.

Ana holds a Masters of Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, a Bachelor of Arts in Global Studies, and a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from Arizona State University. Ana is also a graduate from the Public Policy and International Affairs Program at Princeton University.

Ejiro leads analytical and research support for projects at the intersection of resilient infrastructure, community empowerment, and environmental restoration.

She works across various HR&A practice areas, including Inclusive Cities, Climate, and Parks & Open Space. In her recent projects, she focuses on advancing a just transition, conducting inclusive community outreach, fostering cultural equity in placemaking and policy, ensuring public safety through community investments, and supporting small businesses in emerging, green industries.

Prior to HR&A, she supported projects that focused on identifying populations that are the most susceptible to climate change and proposed solutions that uplift the needs and agencies of these groups. Previously, as a Research Assistant at Penn’s Institute of Urban Research, she proposed a green port system for the Galapagos Islands. She received a Master of City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science in Earth Sciences from the same university.

Laura specializes in real estate advisory, housing affordability, and economic development, supporting financial analysis and strategic advisory for public, private, and institutional clients.

Prior to her role at HR&A, Laura worked as an Analyst for Shorewood Real Estate Group on projects in the New York Metropolitan area. She researched market data for and underwrote potential acquisitions, and provided analytical support during property due diligence and predevelopment.

Prior to her work in Real Estate Development, Laura was a Staff Engineer at Langan Engineering, where she performed due diligence for site civil work and supported permitting efforts for projects in New York City. Laura coordinated with team members to solve issues in the field and inspected contractor site work during construction.

Laura holds a Master of Science in Urban Planning and a Master of Science in Real Estate Development from Columbia University, and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.

Preston Rhea brings fifteen years of experience in telecommunications and public interest advocacy to HR&A. 

Preston’s work builds infrastructure with public purpose at the intersection of community-based governance and market realities. He advises public sector clients including states, cities, counties, and other authorities to build infrastructure that realizes access and adoption goals, reduces barriers to deployment of last-mile networks, supports next-generation smart cities applications, and unlocks opportunities for interconnection with public assets. 

Preston helped the California Department of Technology’s Middle-Mile Broadband Initiative Team (MMBI) to build its capacity to plan and deliver the statewide middle-mile broadband network—the single largest public broadband investment in the country. He has continued to support MMBI through establishing relationships with potential customers and local government stakeholders who will make use of the network once operations begin. 

Other notable projects include developing an assets and infrastructure strategy to activate and sustain the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting’s conduit and dark fiber network; working with the County of Los Angeles Internal Services Department to build a community broadband program that is making major interventions for broadband competition and affordability in the country’s largest County; and building a regional coalition of more than two dozen San Francisco Bay Area government agencies, community anchor institutions, and nonprofits to unite the region’s digital equity ecosystems. Preston has served as a subject matter expert on numerous other projects at HR&A including program designs for broadband in affordable housing, engagements with utilities for broadband deployments in the State of New York, and coordinating workforce and economic development stakeholder convenings for the State of Texas’ Digital Opportunity Plan. 

Prior to joining HR&A, Preston spent six years at Monkeybrains, an Internet Service Provider based in San Francisco. As Director of Engineering, Policy Program, Preston coordinated partnerships with governments to build public fiber to affordable housing, broke barriers to affordable internet in large apartment buildings, and advanced gigabit network penetration in underserved areas. Preston developed the public policy program while managing the technician team at Monkeybrains. 

Prior to joining Monkeybrains in 2015, Preston worked at Code for America, developing civic engagement practices with city governments and networks of civic technologists, developed and implemented a field curriculum for community wireless network deployment at New America’s Open Technology Institute in Washington, DC, and worked at a content delivery network startup in Beijing, China. 

Preston holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

Nick works with cities, developers, and institutions to create value for their communities through innovative development.

As a director based in the New York office, Nick has conducted real estate financial analysis to support transformative real estate development, advised negotiations on behalf of public and private clients, and project-managed multidisciplinary teams for large-scale projects.

Previously, Nick was at Harrison Street Real Estate Capital, supporting capital raising and portfolio management efforts. Nick earned his MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business with specializations in Real Estate and Finance and received his BBA in Finance from Texas Christian University’s Neeley School of Business.

Harman combines his passion for data analytics with sustainable infrastructure practices, economic viability, and building stakeholder capacity.

Harman’s work often focuses on translating complex datasets into visual stories and accessible tools that help empower communities to understand the challenges they’re facing and create solutions for a brighter future. Based in the firm’s New York office, Harman has supported clients with feasibility studies on infrastructure investments, identifying economic impacts from proposed infrastructure projects, performing geo-spatial analysis using GIS, conducting market demand for real estate by varied land use types, preparing implementation strategies, developing workforce plans, interviewing stakeholders, and recognizing socioeconomic-related challenges.

Some of his notable projects include Metro Resilient Infrastructure Financing in South Africa, NYC EV Infrastructure Assessment For-Hired-Vehicles, and NYC Tech Ecosystem 2022 Update.