Kevin C. Desouza, PhD is the director of the Metropolitan Institute and an associate professor at the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech. Before joining Virgina Tech, he was an associate professor at the University of Washington (UW) Information School and held adjunct appointments in the UW’s College of Engineering and at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. At UW, he co-founded and directed the Institute for Innovation in Information Management (I3M); founded the Institute for National Security Education and Research, an inter-disciplinary, university-wide initiative, in August 2006 and served as its director until February 2008; and was an affiliate faculty member of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy. He holds a visiting professorship at the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana. He has held visiting positions at the Center for International Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, the Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) Business School in France, and the Accenture Institute for High Business Performance in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA). In the private sector, he founded the Engaged Enterprise and its think-tank, the Institute for Engaged Business Research. The Engaged Enterprise was a global strategy consulting firm with expertise in the areas of knowledge management, crisis management, strategic deployment of information systems, and government and competitive intelligence assignments.

Desouza has authored, co-authored, and/or edited nine books and has published more than 125 articles in prestigious practitioner and academic journals. His work has also been featured by a number of publications such as Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Businessweek, Washington Internet Daily, Computerworld, KM Review, Government Health IT, and Human Resource Management International Digest. He has been interviewed by the press on outlets such as Voice of America, Manager (Slovenia), among others. He has been invited to edit special issues of several prominent journals such as Technology Forecasting and Social Change, Information Systems Journal, and the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, among others. In addition, he serves on a number of editorial boards, including the board of the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and has reviewed research for government agencies such as the Research Council of Norway, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, the National Research Foundation of South Africa, and the Qatar National Research Fund-Qatar Foundation, among others.

Desouza has advised, briefed, and/or consulted for major international corporations and government organizations on strategic management issues ranging from management of information systems, to knowledge management, competitive intelligence, government intelligence operations, and crisis management. He is frequently an invited speaker on a number of cutting-edge business and technology topics for national and international, industry, and academic audiences. He has given more than sixty invited talks in a wide assortment of venues. Desouza has received over $1.4 million in research funding from both private and government organizations.

Joseph Schilling is the Associate Director of the Metropolitan Institute. He leads the Institute’s Sustainable Communities Initiative that explores the intersection of design, planning and collaboration in the development of sustainable regions, communities and neighborhoods. His field work serves as a living laboratory for research, service learning, and policy change by extracting and disseminating model programs and practices. Through case studies, policy roundtables and planning studios Professor Schilling’s research and technical assistance activities cover diverse topics, such as sustainability planning, vacant property reclamation, urban regeneration, smart growth, active living and zoning code reform. He is also an accomplished public policy facilitator having organized dozens of research, policy, and community forums.

Professor Schilling’s extensive field and research experiences have led to a similarly diverse body of academic output. His work has been published in the Albany Government Law Review, the Journal of the American Planning Association, theJournal of Health Policy, Politics, and Law, the Thomson West’s Real Estate Review, along with policy reports and case studies for the Department of Defense, theEnvironmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields and Smart Growth Offices , and theRobert Wood Johnson Foundation. Professor Schilling regularly presents at numerous national conferences and regional workshops, such as the New Partners for Smart Growth, American Planning Association, Active Living Research, and for the Federal Reserve Banks.

Schilling’s outreach and community engagement work illustrates his philosophy of linking policy and practice. From 2007-2009 he led the Eco City Studio to devise an Eco-City Charter and Environmental Action Plan for the Institute’s home town of Alexandria, Virginia. For the 2009-10 academic year he launched Virginia Tech’sShrinking Cities Studio by leading students on a three day study tour Cleveland and a two day study tour of Baltimore that examined the plight of these “cities in transition”  and the promise of a more sustainable future. The next studio is slated for spring 2011.

Professor Schilling teaches courses in Negotiations and Community Involvement, Land Use Law and Policy, Zoning Administration and Code Enforcement, Redevelopment of Vacant Properties, Greyfields and Brownfields, Public Health and Planning, and Environmental Policy and Sustainability Planning. In addition to teaching at Virginia Tech, Professor Schilling also teaches Sustainable Regional Growth and Local Government Law for George Washington University Law School. He holds a Masters of Environmental Law (LL.M.) from George Washington University and a J.D. fromHastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

Jessica Hanff is the Operations Manager for the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.She serves as the Managing Editor of Housing Policy Debate and previously, Ms. Hanff served as the Managing Editor of Opolis, the first academic journal devoted to suburban studies and served as an editorial assistant on the JAPA Book Review.  With nearly 15 years of program management experience, Jessica handles the daily operations of the Institute alongside the editorial oversight of the journal. Additionally, Jessica’s professional experience includes several years working in the non-profit sector on campus sustainable operations. She completed her undergraduate work at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and received a Master’s degree in urban planning from Virginia Tech.