Raphael Bostic, the Judith and John Bedrosian Chair in Governance and the Public Enterprise at the University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy, directs the Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public Enterprise. From 2009 to 2012, he was the Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University and his B.A. from Harvard University.

Ingrid Gould Ellen is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Faculty Director of the NYU Furman Center. Ellen is author of Sharing America’s Neighborhoods: The Prospects for Stable Racial Integration (Harvard University Press, 2000) and has published numerous articles in academic journals related to housing, residential segregation, and urban policy.

Edward L. Golding has worked in field of mortgage finance for more than 25 years and is currently Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Housing. Most recently, he served as Senior Advisor on Housing Finance to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In this role, he helped to craft the Administration’s position on housing finance reform, including working on the Johnson-Crapo Bill.

A strong advocate of affordable housing, Golding helped develop a proposal to expand funding for the Housing Trust Fund and worked with the Department of Justice to craft consumer relief as part of mortgage settlements with the large lending institutions.

Prior to his service at HUD, Edward Golding was a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute where he played an instrumental role in launching the Housing Finance Policy Center, a leading research voice on housing finance matters. He began his career at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board during the Savings and Loan Crisis and then joined Freddie Mac, where he worked for 23 years. At Freddie Mac, Golding held a variety of senior positions from investor relations to strategy and research. Notably, he served as program executive for Freddie Mac's implementation of Making Home Affordable where he implemented program changes that led to several hundred thousand additional successful loan modifications.

Prior to working in mortgage finance, Golding taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Florida. He earned an AB in applied mathematics magna cum laude from Harvard University and a PhD in economics from Princeton University.

Kevin Kane has been with HUD in the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R)/Office of Economic Affairs (OEA) since 2002. He began his career as a field economist within the Economic and Market Analysis Division (EMAD) in the Philadelphia Regional Office. In 2005, he relocated to headquarters, and in 2006 Kevin was promoted to the position of Chief Housing Market Analyst for HUD. In that role, he has technical oversight of the EMAD field economists across the country. He develops and maintains the techniques and methodologies employed to study housing market conditions, trains the staff, and reviews work products prior to them being released for the public on PD&R’s website: www.huduser.gov. Since 2009, Kevin has delivered quarterly updates on U.S. housing market conditions as part of PD&R’s Quarterly Briefings. In addition, Kevin is also an adjunct faculty member at the Catholic University of America’s School of Business and Economics and Trinity University’s School of Business and Graduate Studies, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in economics, business, and statistics.

Katherine O’Regan serves as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In this capacity, she leads a team of experienced social scientists and researchers who help inform both the development and implementation of policy to improve life in American communities through conducting, supporting, and sharing research, surveys, demonstrations, program evaluations, and best practices. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 28, 2014.

Prior to her appointment, Dr. O’Regan was Professor of Public Policy and Planning at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where she has also held various administrative positions, including Associate Dean for Faculty from 2002-2004. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.S. from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, she served on the faculty of the Yale School of Management for ten years prior to joining the Wagner faculty in 2000. During her academic career, she taught courses in microeconomics, poverty, program evaluation, and urban economics, and has received teaching awards from Berkeley, Yale, and NYU.

Dr. O’Regan’s research broadly focuses on low income communities and affordable housing policy. She has studied how low-income neighborhoods change, what happens to residents when they do, and what stimulates economic improvement. She has also examined the impacts of crime in urban settings and how it both shapes and is shaped by residential decisions. Her recent research includes work on a variety of affordable housing topics, from the Low Income Tax Credit and its spatial implications for residents and housing markets, to whether the presence of housing voucher households contributes to neighborhood crime rates.

Among others, she has served on the board of The Reinvestment Fund, the advisory board for NYU’s McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research, and the editorial board for the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. She has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Economic Studies group at the Brookings Institution, and spent two years as an analyst at the Department of Energy’s Office of Hearing and Appeals prior to graduate school.

Erika Poethig is an Institute fellow and director of Urban Policy Initiatives at the Urban Institute. Before joining Urban in 2013, Poethig was acting assistant secretary for policy, development, and research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a leading architect of the White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities. Her prior work includes associate director for housing at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and assistant commissioner for policy, resource, and program development at the City of Chicago's Department of Housing.

Lourdes M. Castro Ramirez serves as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, leading the Office of Public & Indian Housing at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In this capacity, she manages a budget of more than $26 billion and leads a team of 1,300 professional employees nationwide, who oversee and support 4,000 public housing authorities and 566 Native American communities, to provide safe and quality affordable housing and create opportunities for resident self-sufficiency and improved quality of life for 3.2 million households.

Castro Ramirez's career in affordable housing and community development began two decades ago in Ventura, California as a community planner. In that role, she organized resident leadership and community building initiatives in several low-income, rural and urban neighborhoods. From there, Castro Ramirez joined the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) - first, as the Director for HACLA's Jobs-Plus Demonstration and later as Director of HACLA's Housing Choice Voucher program, assisting more than 50,000 low-income families.

In early 2009, Castro Ramirez was tapped to be the President and CEO for the San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA). Managing an operating budget of $186 million, with real estate assets valued at more than $500 million, Castro Ramirez successfully directed a team of 525 employees to provide housing assistance to over 65,000 children, adults and senior citizens. Under her leadership, SAHA became known for its innovations in education, workforce development, affordable housing preservation and neighborhood revitalization.

Castro Ramirez received both her MA in Urban Planning and BA in Political Science and Chicano/a Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She also completed an executive finance course at Harvard Business School.

Castro Ramirez is married to Jorge Ramirez and together they have three children: Jorge, Nicolás, and Natalia. Jorge and Lourdes actively participate in raising awareness about childhood cancer by coordinating an annual Kick Cancer Soccer Camp in memory of their son Nicolás, who lost his battle to cancer in 2012 at the age of 11.

Lynn M. Ross, AICP serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Development in the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Appointed in May 2014, Ms. Ross now leads PD&R’s 23-member Office of Policy Development (OPD) team. OPD engages in policy development and analysis, policy-related research and data analysis, and dissemination of policy findings.

Prior to joining HUD, Ms. Ross was the Executive Director of the Terwilliger Center for Housing at the Urban Land Institute where she led research, policy and technical assistance aimed at the development of mixed-income, mixed-use communities with a full spectrum of housing affordability. Under her leadership, the center implemented an expanded mission that included establishing a new 18-member national advisory board; securing over $1M in external program support; and developing strategic partnerships across the ULI network. Ms. Ross also spearheaded a number of key research initiatives including the “America in 2013” survey examining views on housing, transportation and community as well as the Bending the Cost joint research effort with Enterprise Community Partners examining the cost drivers for affordable rental housing.

From 2007 to 2011, Ms. Ross held positions at the National Housing Conference (NHC) and the Center for Housing Policy (CHP) first as the Director of State and Local Initiatives and then as the Chief Operating Officer. Ms. Ross was responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the two interrelated organizations as well as executing the education, outreach, and technical assistance strategies directed at strengthening housing policies for states and localities. Ms. Ross directed a number of initiatives including the development and launch of CHP's Housing Research and Advisory Service; the creation of the NHC’s “Solutions” state and local housing policy learning conference; designing and implementing new internal systems to improve operational efficiency and staff capacity; and cultivating and strengthening strategic partnerships with philanthropic, non-profit and private sector groups to support the work of NHC and CHP.

Ms. Ross was previously with the research unit of the American Planning Association (APA) in Chicago, IL as the manager of the Planning Advisory Service, a program providing customized planning research to over 1,200 subscribing agencies. She was the assistant program director for the annual New Directors Institute training program; served as staff liaison for APA’s diversity initiative; and also served as the assistant editor for the inaugural edition of Planning and Urban Design Standards, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2006.

Ms. Ross holds a Masters of Regional Planning from Cornell University and a B.S. in community and regional planning from Iowa State University. She is a certified planner with the American Institute of Certified Planners and was honored with the 2009 Design Achievement Award from the Iowa State University College of Design.

Harriet Tregoning leads the Office of Community Planning and Development at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. She recently led HUD's Office of Economic Resilience, helping regions, cities, counties and towns across the country build a strong foundation for a diverse and prosperous economy based on enhancing community quality of place, economic opportunity, fiscal stability, transportation choice, and affordability.

She was previously Director of the District of Columbia Office of Planning, where she worked to make DC a walkable, bikeable, eminently livable, globally competitive and thriving city. Her priorities included re-writing the city's zoning code for the first time in 50 years, planning the revitalization of National Historic Landmark St. Elizabeth's Hospital campus as part of the consolidation of the Department of Homeland Security's Headquarters, and collaborating with her transportation colleagues to bring the nation's (then) largest bike-sharing program to DC in 2010. Prior to this she was the director of the Governors' Institute on Community Design and co-founded with former Maryland Governor Glendening. She served Governor Glendening as Secretary of Planning. Prior to her tenure in Maryland state government, Tregoning was the director of Development, Community and Environment at the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Tregoning's academic training is in engineering and public policy. She was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design for 2003-2004.

Margery Turner is senior vice president for program planning and management at the Urban Institute, where she leads efforts to frame and conduct a forward-looking agenda of policy research. A nationally recognized expert on urban policy and neighborhood issues, Turner has analyzed issues of residential location, racial and ethnic discrimination and its contribution to neighborhood segregation and inequality, and the role of housing policies in promoting residential mobility and location choice.

Gustavo Velasquez was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the United States Senate to become Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Prior to his nomination, Velasquez was Executive Director of the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC), a non-for-profit organization based in Washington, DC dedicated to serve thousands of Latinos and other immigrants and underserved populations gain the necessary skills and capital to start and maintain their own businesses. LEDC also advocates for and supports communities to secure affordable and accessible housing. Prior to his tenure at LEDC, he served for seven (7) years as Director of the District of Columbia Office of Human Rights, where he led the enforcement provisions of the DC Human Right Act, considered one of the most comprehensive non-discrimination laws in the country. He also served between 2003 and 2007 as DC's Director of the Office of Latino Affairs. During his District government career, Velasquez ensured that the very comprehensive civil rights of residents, workers and visitors to the Nation's capital were protected and upheld according to the rule of law. Before his mayoral appointments in the District of Columbia government, Velasquez was Director of Operations and Director of the Division of Families and Neighborhood Development at Congreso de Latinos Unidos, the leading social service provider to Latinos in Philadelphia. In this capacity, he managed large-scale programs in the areas of housing counseling, workforce development, and financial capability for the most vulnerable communities of Philadelphia and its surrounding area. He has served in numerous boards and advisory groups at local and national levels, with an emphasis on civil rights and educational organizations, as well as issues for the advancement of Latinos in the United States. He attended the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated with a master's degree in government administration. He lives in the District of Columbia with his wife, Emily, and his two children.