Simon McDonnell is the Chief Research Officer at New York State Homes and Community Renewal. In this role, he established and manages the Office of Research and Strategic Analysis consisting of a dozen researchers and policy analysts. Using quantitative and analytic tools, the ORSA team provides insights for the executive and programmatic leadership on a wide array of housing-related topics. Some of the major projects ORSA has worked on include developing analytic frameworks for COVID-19 recovery programs, NYS Climate Act implementation, rent stabilization law renewal and implementation, the State's Housing Plans, and the Governor's land use and pro-housing reforms. Prior to coming to HCR in 2017, Simon was the Director of Research at the New York State Governor's Office of Story Recovery where he was the analytic lead for the largest disaster recovery waiver in HUD history. He also created and developed annual and quarterly reporting, HUD Action Plan analyses, and led the benefit-cost analysis for NYS disaster resilience application that resulted in an additional $36m in funding for the state. Previously, he was the urban policy project leader at CUNY Policy Research and a research fellow with a focus on land use/transportation at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy with a focus on zoning reform. Simon has published more than 15 academic articles and chapters on topics related to housing, disaster recovery, resilience, transportation, and climate policy. Simon holds a BA in Economics, an MSc in Environmental Economics and Policy, and a PhD in Planning and Environmental Policy from University College Dublin, Ireland.