People

Farm&City is a small, startup nonprofit growing to fill unmet needs at the state and regional level and to support the work of many people across the state. We believe Texas needs a complex entity that can house and support the work of diverse people, thought, disciplines, and backgrounds.

We believe that an organization like the one we are building works best by collaborating with other organizations and diverse people across the state. While we have stayed small for our first several years, expanding the board and staff is a key goal of 2022, along with formalizing the role of volunteers we works with across projects.

Board of Directors

Megan Howse Brendle
Jacob Clifton
Ben DiPietro
Toto Miranda

Staff

Jay Blazek Crossley
Executive Director
Jay@FarmAndCity.org

Jay Blazek Crossley was born in Whitney, grew up in Montrose, came to Austin for ten years to get two degrees from the University of Texas, moved back to Houston for ten years to work for Houston Tomorrow, and moved back to Austin in 2016 with his wife and young son to change the paradigm of transportation and urban planning in Texas. He holds a Masters in Public Affairs from the LBJ School at UT-Austin and the LINE Certificate from the Leadership Institute for Nonprofit Executives at Rice University.

Crossley serves on the Austin Pedestrian Advisory Council, the Capital Metro Project Connect Advisory Network, the Texas Strategic Highway Safety Plan Stakeholder Committee and several emphasis area teams, and as a member of the Board of Directors of Vision Zero ATX.

Scott White
Director, Vision Zero Texas
Scott@FarmAndCity.org

Scott White was born in Austin, and grew up in El Paso where he earned both his Bachelors and Masters degrees from the University of Texas at El Paso. Scott is a League of American Bicyclists certified instructor, and has been accredited by the Congress of New Urbanism. Scott is based in El Paso, where he continues to serve on the Velo Paso Bicycle-Pedestrian Coalition board, and as a member of the local Safe Routes to School and Complete Streets coalitions. He is also a member of the El Paso Vision Zero workgroup, helping to create the City’s, Vision Zero safety action plan.

His primary focus here with Farm&City is leading our Vision Zero Texas program, including our statewide advocacy, outreach and education initiatives, as well as building our programing capacity.

Daniel Kavelman
Daniel@FarmAndCity.org

Daniel grew up in Albuquerque, NM before attending the University of Oklahoma where he studied music performance and letters. He spent time reading classics, performing bassoon, studying economic development and deepening his understanding of what makes communities flourish. Daniel spent his summers working for the City of Albuquerque in the city’s environmental health department, and one memorable summer studying urban economics in London where he saw how density, walkability, and high-quality transit can bring a city to life.

Daniel is primarily working on Farm&City’s 50 Million Texans project, focusing on smart growth, inclusive regional planning, and modernizing local development codes into an equitable, sustainable vision for the future of the every Texas metropolis.


Future Job Openings

We have been quietly expanding our capacity and team, and are always looking for individuals who might support our current programming, or help us expand our support for Central Texas Families for Safe Streets as well as expanding this model statewide. If you share our vision, please feel free to contact Jay Blazek Crossley for more information or to share your resume and career goals.

Consultants

Ruven Brooks
Senior GIS Mapping and Research Fellow
Ruven@FarmAndCity.org

Ruven Brooks is retired from more than forty years of industrial and university work in software development and research on software development.   His current focus is on applying the skills he has acquired in data analysis and modeling to shaping public policy, particularly in the area of transit.

In addition to providing data analyses and models to support social change, he is also interested in using quality methods developed in the software industry to improve the ways in which governmental agencies perform their own data analysis and modeling, with the goal of making what are sometimes complex technical processes more accessible to the wider public.

He has a Ph.D. degree from Tepper School of Business at Carnegie-Mellon University.


Former Staff

Jesse Woche, Organizer, Vision Zero Texas

Ken Flippin, Lead Organizer, Vision Zero Texas
Ashkan Jahangiri, Policy Analyst & Daily Headlines, Streetsblog Texas
Alexandria Chloe Mayer, GIS Analyst

Former Interns

Caroline “Cara” Cook, UT-Austin, LBJ School of Public Affairs
Tynan J. Holt, UT-Austin, LBJ School of Public Affairs
Nafisa Iskandar, UT-Austin, Community & Regional Planning
Madilyn Jarman, UT-Austin, LBJ School of Public Affairs
Olivia Muehlberger, UT-Austin, LBJ School of Public Affairs
Kaia Robinson, UT-Austin, UT-Austin, Sustainability Studies/Smart Cities
August Stanley, UT-Austin, Community & Regional Planning
Nile Stewart, UT-Austin, College of Liberal Arts
Heather Yu, UW-Seattle, Evans School of Public Administration
Philip Jankoski, UT-Austin, LBJ School of Public Affairs
Laura Thomas, UT-Austin, LBJ School of Public Affairs