Cole Gibson

Full Name: Cole Gibson

Degree & Graduation Year: Master of Public Policy and Administration, 2024

Title: Organizing Director

Current Employer: Reclaim Roxbury

Job Summary: Leads community organizing efforts for Reclaim Roxbury, collaborating with residents and community partners for housing justice, securing affordable housing, equitable housing policies and fair housing standards to combat gentrification and displacement.

How did you find your current position: Through a networking event hosted by the Urban League of Massachusetts

Favorite part of your job: My favorite part of doing this work is interacting with community members. Whether it’s through educational workshops to give them more information about an issue or working alongside them as advocates, being able to tap into that energy every day sustains me when doing this work.

Are there any skills or lessons learned while in your program that you use often: Field analysis is a constant mainstay of effective organizing. Being able to assess who the key stakeholders on an issue are and how they intersect with each other combined with thorough power mapping allows me to understand the nuances of any given policy process. Policy analysis gives me the ability to critically evaluate housing justice policies for efficacy and feasibility, keeping our efforts focused on advocating for policies that we know work.

My time in nonprofit management helps me understand compliance and nonprofit law so that I can maximize our organizing capabilities for a variety of issues while ensuring that we stay out of trouble. Public management taught me how to more accurately assess how different events, issues, data, and changes to city and state policy affect organizational operations and functions at multiple levels both inside of places like City Hall, the State House or the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA) and the external impacts to nonprofits, CBOs and residents.

How your program/degree prepared you for this role and career: My time at the School of Public Policy completing my MPPA prepared me for my career as a community organizer because it helps me identify policy failures and connect the dots between them and the problems they cause for our residents on a daily basis, and then determine the best policy option available and develop a methodology for achieving change through our advocacy and organizing. Without this knowledge, I only had a portion of the recipe needed to be an effective changemaker.