Tawkiyah Jordan, a professional urban planner and self-described city scientist, is a fierce advocate, ally, political strategist, convener, negotiator, policy expert and translator of power brokers and community stakeholders. Serving currently as Senior Director of Housing and Community Strategy at Habitat for Humanity International, Jordan is an expert in housing, especially regarding long-term affordability models. The heart of Jordan’s approach is to utilize her training, networks and skills to carry out work that increases civic engagement among people often overlooked in decisions that impact them and their families directly. She firmly believes that elevating the voices of marginalized communities is the best way to create long-lasting, equitable housing, environmental justice and lively public spaces solutions for urban areas. A native New Yorker who spent much of her adolescence working in a Bronx youth center run by her mother, Jordan studied urban planning in Michigan and worked as a planner in several locales before returning to the Bronx and applying for a job at Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice. There she coordinated the group's long-term community development projects: cleaning the Bronx River, revamping Starlight Park and connecting the waterfront greenway, re-envisioning the troubled Sheridan Expressway. She also spent more than seven years working for the city of New York in various housing roles, including as a senior program manager leading multiple neighborhood planning studies.
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