Brian was born and raised in an upper middle-class family of six children in Huntington, NY. He received his BS in Economics from UPenn, with a concentration in Local Development in a Globalized Society. A white man of Polish and Irish heritage, he then spent one year in Guatemala as a human rights accompanier, using his international/racial privilege as a deterrent against politically motivated violence. In rural Guatemala, Brian was inspired by community-driven action led by returned refugees to govern their community. In the mountains of Huehuetenango, the question arose: What does economic development look like when there is limited infrastructure, limited state involvement, and a limited cash economy? Upon returning to Philadelphia, he began work on the community planning and organizing project known as Shared Prosperity, which takes an asset-based community development approach to ensure just and equitable development that is simultaneously people- and place-based. The limitations of community development work, inside the context of a structurally unjust society, moved him in the direction of the Gund Institute. He is a MS candidate in the Community Development and Applied Economics program, and his primary research focuses on just distribution of economic rents associated with natural resources, specifically looking at development of the Vermont Common Assets Trust. Additional interests include how the structure of the monetary system corresponds to persistence of economic growth doctrine and how social justice memes spread through society. Passions include: swimming, cards, oats, Sinead O'Connor.

Research Interests: Public Banking, Resource Rents, Systems Overthrow
Thesis (working title): How can the institutionalization of common assets fundamentally restructure the false dichotomy of public vs. private trade-off in resource management and depletion