Knowledge of Public Administration

Public administration is the science and the art of managing governmental and non-profit agencies to further the public good. Through my career and education I have gained the critical thinking, strategies and skills needed to effectively and efficiently lead organizations. I recently facilitated my Board of Directors through a three-year strategic planning process, reflecting a culmination of my public administration knowledge: it includes a timeline, a competitive analysis, goals, action items, maps, graphs, charts, and a budget.

I have also deepened my knowledge of my specialty: sustainable urban development. I took one semester at the University of Amsterdam’s Urban Studies program, where I gained a comparative Dutch perspective on transportation and housing policy. A city the size of San Francisco, Amsterdam boasts 35% of trips made by bicycle and 80% of the housing stock owned by non-profits. A century-old commitment to permanently affordable housing coupled with a world-class health care system, Amsterdam has only 312 homeless people (compared with San Francisco’s approximately 10,000 homeless). Returning inspired by this modest country’s achievements, I devoted a semester to a San Francisco affordable housing bond campaign and completed a paper on lessons learned from this effort: The Struggle to Pass Prop A.

As my housing policy knowledge has evolved, I authored two policy papers published in the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) journal, on Specific Area Plans and Housing Over Retail.

While Executive Director of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, I recognized Assemblyman Mark Leno with our annual “Housing Hero Award.”