I have always been driven to understand how our complex urban systems work so that we can work to improve lives through systemic policy interventions. Urban Institute’s work provides a critical foundation of knowledge and evidence that is grounded in the realities that practitioners face. I am excited to help serve as a bridge between that critical research and the challenging implementation.
Andrew Trueblood is a housing, economic development, and land use professional who brings a local policymaker’s lens to urban policy research. Between 2018 and 2021, he was the director of the DC Office of Planning, where he prioritized agency efforts around housing and equity. He shepherded the update of the Comprehensive Plan and led the office’s support of Mayor Bowser’s housing efforts. Trueblood also championed regional coordination, including through his role as chair of the Planning Directors Technical Committee at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, where he helped formulate regional housing targets.
Before joining the DC Office of Planning, Trueblood was chief of staff at DC’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, where he supported economic development policy and projects and created the Economic Intelligence program to improve the agency’s data and analysis capacity and provide more open and accessible data and analysis. Before joining the District government, Trueblood helped start the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and worked at the US Treasury's Community Development Financial Institution Fund. Before his federal government service, Trueblood worked on redevelopment planning and finance for the DC Housing Authority. Trueblood holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs and a master’s degree in city planning from MIT.
Trueblood is a senior advisor at America Achieves and the DC Policy Center and visiting faculty member at Georgetown University.
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