2021 Business of Aging

Alan is a senior fellow with the Center for Community Progress in Washington, D.C. and is widely known for his work on housing, neighborhoods, and urban revitalization.

He teaches in the graduate city planning program at Pratt Institute in New York City and has studied urban issues and lectured across the U.S. and in Europe and Japan. Previously he served as director of housing and economic development for the city of Trenton, New Jersey and taught at Rutgers University and Stockton State College.

He is the author of many books, articles, and research studies; his most recent book, The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America, explores the uneven effects of urban revival on lower income residents and communities of color. His other prominent works include:

• A Decent Home: Planning, Building, and Preserving Affordable Housing
• Inclusionary Housing Programs: Policies and Practices 
• Rebuilding America's Legacy Cities: New Directions for the Industrial Heartland

Tam is an Associate Professor at the Wayne State University School of Social Work. Her research addresses urban aging from a life course perspective, focusing on how underserved older adults navigate their social and built environments in times of instability and change.

She is co-director of the NIH funded Community Liaison and Recruitment Core of the Michigan Center for African American Aging Research. She also currently serves as research chair for a multi-agency coalition, Senior Housing Preservation Detroit. She has recently been selected to be a fellow in the Gerontological Society of America and currently serves as president of the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW).

Jennifer is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and a Lecturer in Housing at the Graduate School of Design. She leads the Center’s work on housing and aging, which focuses on demographic and housing trends as well as policy solutions to increase the supply of affordable, accessible housing, service delivery to the home, and livable communities supportive of older adults.

She was lead author on the Center’s major reports on the challenges of housing an aging society, including The State of the Nation’s Housing for Older Adults (2018 and 2019) and Housing America’s Older Adults: Meeting the Needs of an Aging Population (2014). She also serves on the steering committee for The Chan School of Public Health Initiative on Health and Homelessness at Harvard and co-directs the Healthy Places Design Lab at the Graduate School of Design.

Reverend Vanessa Oliver Ward is the President of the Omega Community Development Corporation (Omega CDC) and Pastor Emerita of the Omega Baptist Church. As President of the Omega CDC she oversees the organization’s mission of providing services that help to develop and improve the lives of the youth, the families and the community of Northwest Dayton. Since 2016 she has been leading the redevelopment of the church’s 30-acre Harvard Campus (formerly United Theological Seminary).

Under her leadership the Omega CDC has partnered with MVAH as co-developer for the construction of a $13 million, 81-unit senior housing complex, the Omega Senior Lofts, which opened in May 2020. This senior housing development complements the $11 million Hope Center for Families, an evidence-based, two-generational model for the reduction of poverty, which opens in November 2021.
 
Rev. Vanessa Oliver Ward has been a recipient of various local awards, including the Dayton YWCA Women of Influence Award; the 2018 Brother Raymond L. Fitz, S.M., Ph.D. Award, and Honorary Doctorate in Ministry from United Theological Seminary.