Sara Bronin is a Mexican-American architect, attorney, and policymaker specializing in property, land use, historic preservation, and climate change. She is a professor of planning and law at Cornell University, and she was recently nominated by President Biden to Chair the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, pending Senate confirmation. She founded and directs the National Zoning Atlas, has served as an advisor to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Sustainable Development Code, served on the board of Latinos in Heritage Conservation, and founded Desegregate Connecticut. She was educated at Yale Law School (Truman Scholar), Oxford (Rhodes Scholar), and the University of Texas. She is the author of the forthcoming book, “Key to the City.”
Jean Pierre Brutus is a senior counsel in the Economic Justice Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. Prior to joining the Institute, Brutus worked at Bronx Legal Services, where he represented indigent Bronx tenants facing eviction in various courts and administrative proceedings. Brutus is a 2007 graduate of Georgetown University, graduating with a major in Sociology and a minor in African American Studies. As a graduate of the JD/PhD program at Northwestern University, Brutus is a graduate of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and he earned his PhD in African American Studies from The Graduate School at Northwestern University. As a law student, he served as a senior articles editor for the Journal of Law and Social Policy. As a PhD student, he also served as an assistant editor of the Journal of Africana Religions. Brutus wrote a dissertation that examined the origins of Black politics outside of the traditional public sphere to conceptualize the counterpublic of Black politics as bifurcated into a civil and uncivil Black politics.
Peter Kasabach haedshotPeter Kasabach is the Executive Director of New Jersey Future, a nonprofit statewide policy and practice organization that advocates for strong, healthy, and resilient communities for everyone. Prior to joining New Jersey Future, Peter served as the Chief of Policy for the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, and prior to that led all planning and real estate programs at the Trenton-based community development organization, Isles. Kasabach has been active in many community revitalization efforts on topics including the visual arts, historic preservation, housing, economic development, climate change, public education, and green building. He is an advocate for walkable, urban living and lives and works in Trenton, New Jersey. Kasabach is a licensed New Jersey Professional Planner, and holds a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Moderator: Matt Mleczko is a doctoral candidate in Population Studies and Social Policy and a Prize Fellow in the Social Sciences at Princeton University. He primarily studies housing inequality and housing policy, with a particular interest in policies that promote affordable housing and integrated, cohesive communities. His dissertation explores the evolution of residential integration in the 21st century and its connection to zoning and land use policy. Mleczko is also a graduate student researcher with the Eviction Lab and a member of the Princeton Affordable Housing Board.
This event was recorded on December 10, 2022.