Kansas City Eviction Project is a collaborative effort involving researchers, community organizers, neighborhood leaders, lawyers, and policymakers. We aim to advance a housing justice agenda in Kansas City and to build sustainable political power with people affected by housing injustice.
TARA RAGHUVEER
Tara Raghuveer is the director of KC Tenants. She is also the director of the campaign for a national Homes Guarantee, based at People’s Action, a national network of grassroots organizations committed to economic and racial justice. KC Tenants, founded in February 2019, has built a base of 250+ tenants who have held landlords accountable, made housing a central issue in municipal politics, and written and passed a municipal Tenants Bill of Rights. For seven years, Tara has spearheaded eviction research in Kansas City through the Kansas City Eviction Project, a collaborative of data scientists, community leaders, academics, and lawyers. Tara cut her teeth organizing in the immigrant rights movement. Tara’s research on eviction and poverty in Kansas City is cited in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted. She is an Australian-born, Indian-American immigrant who came to the US with her family in 1995 and grew up in Kansas City.
Diane Charity
Ms. Charity is a 30+ year Community Activist / Organizer in Kansas City, MO. She is the Board Secretary with KC Tenants. Her career background includes Neighborhood Mobilizer Supervisor, Team Leader for KCMO’s City Planning’s Neighborhood Strategic Planning Initiative (FOCUS), Mental Health First Aid instructor; Life Skills, Effective Parenting, Child Abuse Protection workshop facilitator, school advisor and community liaison. Diane’s passion is to build stronger relationships where civic participation drives community equity. She serves as Board Chair for Kansas City Public Television’s Community Advisory Board, founding and current member of Crossroads Charter Schools, past and current President of several (Urban Core) Neighborhood Associations.
GINA CHIALA
Gina Chiala is the Executive Director and Staff Attorney for the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom. Gina has years of experience with both social justice campaigns and public interest litigation. Since co-founding the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom, Gina has conducted numerous legal rights workshops for nonprofit organizations that work with underpaid workers, she helped establish a tenant's rights clinic at the Jackson County courthouse, and she is partnering with lawyers in the community to hold businesses accountable for gross workplace and consumer abuse.
JED DOUGHERTY
Jed Dougherty is a lead data scientist at Dataiku. He has a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. He is skilled in R, SQL, Python, ETL, and machine learning. He is experienced with spark, hive, and the Hadoop ecosystem.
JOHN EZEKOWITZ
John Ezekowitz is a Vice President at Bain Capital Credit where he has worked since 2013. Prior to Bain, John spent three years working as a basketball analytics consultant for the Phoenix Suns and has had his analytics work published in Sports Illustrated, the Wall St. Journal and Grantland. John received an A.B. magna cum laude in economics from Harvard College.
SHANNON JAAX
Shannon Jaax currently serves as the Director of Planning & Real Estate Services for Kansas City Public Schools, where she oversees the district’s planning efforts and manages the Repurposing Initiative, a nationally-recognized community-driven effort to repurpose 30 closed school sites. Shannon’s career has focused on community and economic development in the public, private and non-profit sectors. She served as a planner for the city of Kansas City, MO, and managed neighborhood revitalization programs at Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative (LANI). Shannon also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Slovakia where she developed a micro-lending program for rural women. Jaax currently serves as the Past President for the Missouri Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA), Co-Chair of the APA Public Schools Interest Group, and on the Advisory Boards for the University of Missouri at Kansas City, School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Design, and the Kansas City Design Center. Shannon received a Master of Planning degree from the University of Southern California and a BSBA in International Business and Finance from American University, Washington DC.
DINA NEWMAN
Dina Newman is the Director of the UMKC Center for Neighborhoods in the Department of Architecture, Urban Planning + Design (AUPD). Before her role at the Center, Dina was the Health Initiatives Manager and Advocate for Change at the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council, a not-for-profit neighborhood improvement organization located in the Ivanhoe Neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri. In partnership with several local and national organizations, Dina’s role included developing and implementing advocacy strategies that promoted and increased health, wealth and social equity in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.
BRENT SCHONDELMEYER
Brent works at the Local Investment Commission in Kansas City. LINC is an organization which serves low-income communities in the Kansas City area primarily by considering schools as the centers of neighborhoods and communities. He has an extensive background in journalism including stints at The Associated Press, The Kansas City Star, The Kansas City Business Journal and The Budapest Business Journal. Brent is a graduate of Grinnell College and the London School of Economics. He is deeply involved in community issues including energy, libraries, and local and regional history.
CAROLYN STEIN
Carolyn Stein is a PhD candidate at MIT studying economics. She graduated from Harvard in 2013 with a BA in applied math and economics, and spent two years working in finance before starting her PhD. Her research interests lie at the intersection of labor and behavioral economics, with a particular focus and inequality and discrimination.
SAM ZIMMERMAN
Sam is a software developer and data scientist and is the CTO and co-founder of the travel start-up Freebird. At Freebird Sam leads the data science team developing the technology and predictive analytics that power Freebird. Previously, Sam worked as a quantitative risk analyst in the currency markets, as a team lead automating a large-scale data classification problem for an energy intelligence company, and on a grant in decision theory through MIT’s artificial intelligence group. Sam is a graduate of Duke University. In his free time Sam walk dogs, works in with grey parrots studying animal cognition, and teaches Sunday school.
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