Sarah Karlinsky has served as SPUR’s Policy Director since 2005. She is responsible for managing SPUR’s housing, community planning, regional planning and disaster planning work and for coordinating SPUR’s policy efforts. Prior to joining SPUR, Sarah developed affordable housing throughout the Bay Area with Mid-Peninsula Housing Coalition (MPHC), one of the largest non-profit developers of affordable housing in the Bay Area. Sarah is a board member of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC) and has taught land use planning at San Francisco State University. She is the author of “Smart Growth and Community Development Corporations: Putting Policy into Practice,” published by the National Reinvestment Corporation and the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. Sarah began her career teaching urban planning to middle school students as a Teach for America Corps Member in Baltimore, Maryland. She received her Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Urban Planning from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and her BA in History from Columbia University.