Current Project Team

Lesli Hoey

Lesli is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan. Her research examines the advocacy and implementation strategies used by social movements, civil society networks and government-based champions to build equitable, sustainable, and health-promoting food systems in the United States and low- and middle-income countries. Her current projects focus on food policy advocacy in Michigan, mechanisms for achieving sustainable diets in diverse settings, and efforts to (equitably) shift to healthy food environments in Bolivia. She holds a doctorate and a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University and a bachelor’s in Psychology from Earlham College.

Andrew Rumbach

Andy is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University and a faculty fellow at the Hazards Reduction and Recovery Center. His research examines the relationships between urbanization and environmental risk, with an emphasis on household and community risk to natural hazards and climate-induced extreme weather events. His research is based primarily in India and the United States and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Natural Hazards Center, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. Rumbach holds a doctorate and a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University and a bachelor’s in Political Science from Reed College.

Taru

Taru is a Ph.D. candidate pursuing Urban and Regional Planning and African studies at the University of Michigan. She has also completed Masters in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. She is currently looking at capillary power and governmentality, plural property regimes, and institutional hybridity that define the planning processes in the post-colonial cities in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Most of her work focuses on rethinking planning practices in post-colonial settings to create inclusive and just cities.

Mrithula Shantha Thirumalai Anandanpillai

Mrithula graduated from the University of Michigan with a Master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning and a certificate in Real Estate Development in May 2020. Her concentrations and research were in the fields of international planning, affordable housing, and rural development. She earned her undergraduate degree in Architectural Engineering from India and worked for four years in established architecture practices. She is a strong advocate of equitable cities built on the foundation of social justice and aims to find localized solutions to global planning issues.

Keerthana Vidyasagar

Keerthana is an urban planner and an architect from Bangalore, India. She received her Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Michigan in 2020 with a specialization in international planning and spatial analytics. She has conducted research on equitable global development, climate resilience, and community development. She hopes to advance her involvement in action research and explore decolonized methods of planning in practice.

Morgan Fett

Morgan is a Ph.D. student in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on planning and policy that centers around equity. She is interested in examining alternative frameworks and metrics for policy and development initiatives that emphasize holistic well-being over more growth-based, neoliberal evaluation measures such as GDP. Morgan has a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in the social sciences from the University of Chicago, where she studied sociology and social movements. Morgan has also worked in community and international development in Mexico, Honduras, and Detroit, Michigan.

Past Project Team

Joshua Shake

Joshua graduated in 2016 from the University of Michigan Ph.D. program in Urban and Regional Planning. His research explored the dynamics of public-private partnerships and democratic governance institutions in urban redevelopment in São Paulo. He has also worked on bike sharing programs and metropolitan regional governance in Brazil. Prior to his Ph.D. program, Joshua worked for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and Community Redevelopment Agency. He has also worked with the city and state of Rio de Janeiro and assisted with the São Paulo City Housing Plan.

Wajiha Ibrahim

Wajiha graduated from the University of Michigan’s Master of Urban Planning Program in the spring of 2016, where she carried out a thesis on participatory planning in informal settlements of Casablanca and Marrakech, Morocco. Wajiha is also an international travel and portrait photographer, using photography as a form of social exploration. Earning a B.S.E in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, Wajiha worked with Partners Healthcare near Boston, MA before pursuing graduate work.

Lacy Sigmon

Lacey graduated from the University of Michigan’s Master of Urban Planning Program in the spring of 2015 where she concentrated in Community Development and Housing Policy. She received her undergraduate degree at the New College of Florida where she studied Chinese Language and Culture and International Studies. She is currently a Policy Analyst at the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery in New York State.

Lorin Crandall

Lorin earned a Master of Urban and Regional Planning in 2018 from the University of Colorado Denver, where he studied Regional Sustainability and Economic Development. His career prior to graduate school included landscape architecture, environmental policy advocacy and watershed planning. Lorin is from St. Louis, Missouri.