Mychal Cohen, MPP, Associate, has more than 10 years of experience in conducting research and evaluation, organizing communities, and improving systems at the intersection of housing and racial justice, with an emphasis on housing affordability, community ownership models and power building, and equity in public land use. They are steeped in qualitative and quantitative methods, statistical modeling, and data visualization, including R, SQL, Tableau, ArcGIS, Qualtrics, STATA, and NViVo.
At Community Science, Mychal is involved in research and evaluation studies and implementing strategies for equitable community development, community power building, and youth development. He uses his knowledge and skills to compile, collect, analyze, and synthesize secondary and newly collected data to inform the funders’ strategies. Prior to joining Community Science, they managed research studies at Houston in Action where they worked with 15 Black organizing and civic engagement organizations to use data to inform their power building efforts. Before that, they managed a multi-year formative evaluation of the 11th St. Bridge Park’s (District of Columbia) equity planning process by the Urban Institute. As part of the effort, they partnered with several nonprofit organizations working in three focus areas—housing, small business entrepreneurship, and workforce. Mychal published a brief about Bridge Park’s commitment to build power in the communities surrounding the park. While at the Urban Institute, they also managed a database of affordable housing in D.C., conducted a multi-year evaluation of permanent supportive housing in Missouri, led a quantitative analysis of mental health data for Tulsa, Oklahoma, and wrote several briefs on using secondary data to track and mitigate gentrification and neighborhood displacement. Prior to working at the Urban Institute, they were a Public Policy Fellow at the National Housing Trust for two years, tracking and commenting on state-level allocation plans for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit.
Mychal received a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University. In his free time, Mychal is starting and restarting the next great Black American novel and covering his coffee table in art projects.