Amanda Phillips de Lucas, Ph.D. is the Director for BNIA-JFI. Dr. Phillips de Lucas came to BNIA-JFI in 2023 from Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. There she did a postdoctoral fellowship studying perceptions and governance of urban greening projects in cities across the United States. During her time at Cary Institute, Amanda built relationships with organizations, agencies, and individuals working to advance environmental justice in Baltimore.
In 2018, she received her Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech. She also has degrees from Virginia Tech (MS), NYU Gallatin (MA), and Bennington College (BA). Her dissertation examined how activists and communities in Baltimore used data to protest urban interstate construction in the late 1960s and 1970s. This research was published as a chapter in Justice and the Interstates: The Racist Truth about Urban Highways (Island Press, 2023), co-edited by Dr. Phillips de Lucas. This work inspired a passion for understanding how communities use data to advocate for their needs and develop tools to advance community-defined goals.
Contact Amanda Phillips-De Lucas at (410) 837-5817 or email at [email protected]
Cheryl Knott is the Assistant Director for the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance – Jacob France Institute. Since 2007, Cheryl has worked to ensure the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of BNIA-JFI’s community indicators that describe the quality of life for Baltimore City communities. She coordinates with staff and external data-creating agencies to produce customized statistical and research reports and evaluations.
Cheryl is a proponent of data democratization and has a strong interest in making data open and usable to the public, students, and other professionals. Consequently, she have created several open data portals to disseminate BNIA-JFI data, reports, and visualizations, and has coordinated with the City of Baltimore to disseminate data on the Open Baltimore portal (data.baltimorecity.gov). Some of her recent projects and initiatives include creating award-nominated data visualizations describing the intersections of housing affordability, housing voucher utilization, and demographics, describing longitudinal and spatial data trends for the Baltimore Community Change 2010-2020 Project, conducting spatial equity analyses of Capital Improvement Program (CIP) allocations for Baltimore City, and providing data services for the Choice Implementation Grant for Perkins Homes.
Cheryl studied at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Geography and Environmental Systems (GES) and a certification in Cartography in 2007 and a Master’s degree in Applied Sociology in 2013, focusing on quantitative relationships between crime and housing variables in Baltimore. To support her professional development goals, she received a graduate certificate in Organizational Leadership from the University of Baltimore in 2022.
In 2017, Cheryl was awarded the University of Baltimore Staff Award for Extraordinary Public Service to the University and Greater Community for her work on communicating data and information. She recently served two terms as the Data and Resources Subcommittee Chair for the Maryland State Geographic Information Committee (MSGIC) and is currently a Governor’s Appointee to the Maryland Council on Open Data. In her spare time, Cheryl is an Adjunct Instructor in the Geography and Environmental Systems department at UMBC where she teaches upper-level and graduate-level classes on GIS, cartography, and open data. She also serves as co-editor for HUD’s Cityscape publication – Spatial Analysis and Methods (SpAM) and is active in her community association, participating in cleaning and greening activities and running a book club.
Contact Cheryl Knott at (410) 837-4377 or e-mail at [email protected]
A Baltimore City resident and University of Baltimore alumnus, Logan is a Research Analyst at BNIA-JFI. In addition to conducting geographic analysis for the preparation of the annual Vital Signs reports, he completes and assists with custom data-based and mapping-oriented projects for organizational partners. These projects often range widely in subject and technological requirements, from database design for public agencies to efficiently progress new programs, to educational tools on the economics of sustainable infrastructure, or monitoring the expenditure of federal dollars in Baltimore’s community.
He also assists in coordinating Baltimore Data Day, an event that focuses on data-backed stories/initiatives from the past year. Logan attends community association meetings and other group gatherings to introduce city residents to the data and exploration tools, in order to grow BNIA-JFI’s user base and inject community data into the everyday conversations of Baltimoreans.
Contact Logan Shertz at (410) 837-6652 or email at [email protected]