Katherine Mella Transitions into the Director of the Planning and Policy Lab for BCDI
She’s a leader, a planner, and an inspiration for those seeking to catalyze change through the wisdom and expertise of community members. For the last five and a half years, Katherine Mella has been part of the Just Urban Economies Program at MIT’s Community Innovators Lab (CoLab), most recently, as the Program Director for Participatory Planning and Policy. As part of the team, Katherine has been based in the Bronx working closely with BCDI and other community partners on key issues, including health justice and development without displacement. CoLab, which has been a core partner of BCDI’s since 2011, has provided ongoing strategy and planning support to incubate our core infrastructure projects. For CoLab, BCDI’s community transformation model is a source of rich learning and inspiration, and has informed other community-led efforts for economic democracy and self-determination across the Americas.
As a graduate of MIT and Brown University, Katherine’s goal is to use her skill set as an urban planner to act, innovate, and work with communities of color to set the agenda for development in neighborhoods that historically have been marginalized, disinvested in, and been the targets rather than the agents of planning and policy decisions.
In her role at CoLab, Katherine began to set the groundwork for the Planning and Policy Lab (PPL), one of BCDI’s six core projects. She did this primarily through her efforts co-convening the Development without Displacement Roundtable, which brought together community organizations from across the borough to develop fight-forward tools and strategies to advance equitable economic development in response to growing gentrification and displacement pressures. BCDI is excited that she is formally joining the team and will continue to build out the Bronx’s local planning capacity along with community stakeholders toward a Bronx-wide, comprehensive, and long term plan for equitable economic development.
Born in the Dominican Republic, raised in Washington Heights and Boston, and now a Bronx resident, Katherine understands intimately the issues and concerns faced by many black and brown families in NYC. We welcome Katherine to share her knowledge and wisdom in this next phase of BCDI’s growth.
“I'm very excited and humbled to build on the work I have been advancing in the Bronx for the last five and a half years by formally joining BCDI as the Director of the Planning and Policy Lab! As an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, I chose to pursue a career in urban planning because I recognized that my own experiences growing up gave me intimate knowledge into both the challenges and potential solutions for addressing critical issues that immigrant communities and communities of color grapple with on a daily basis. I see the field of planning as an avenue through which to tackle persistent, systemic challenges that have shaped me and the neighborhoods I grew up in, and that similar communities across the country are also dealing with.
As the Director of the Planning and Policy Lab, I look forward to continuing to: deepen partnerships with local stakeholders who have a long history of organizing, planning, and fighting for dignity and respect; center the voices and experiences of those most impacted as experts and leaders; and work alongside Bronxites and aligned partners to craft a long-term vision and plan for a more equitable, sustainable, and democratic Bronx future.”
