Alex Schafran is a doctoral student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, where his primary research focuses on gentrification and the changing geographies of race and class in American cities. Prior to coming to Berkeley, he worked for a decade as an organizer, advocate, policy analyst and planner for a variety of social justice organizations in New York and California. He holds a MA in Urban Planning from Hunter College, CUNY, and a BA in History from Stanford University.