The AARP Livability Index™ Team

PPI Livability Index Core Team

Rodney Harrell, PhD, Enterprise Lead/VP Family, Home & Community

Dr. Rodney Harrell has led the creation and underpinnings of the AARP Livability Index™ platform since its inception.  His research and insights on housing preferences, neighborhood choice, and community livability shaped  the conceptual framework for the platform, and he is the lead media spokesperson for the platform and related concepts. He is one of the core team members who developed the initial concept for the AARP Livability Index™ platform, and is the lead on survey and other research related to the AARP Livability Index’s design. Read more

Follow Rodney @DrUrbanPolicy and on Facebook.com/DrUrbanPolicy. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rodneyh Media requests: media@aarp.org

Shannon Guzman, MA, MCP, Director, Housing and Livable Communities

Shannon Guzman’s planning and communications expertise contributes to all aspects of the AARP Livability Index™ platform, from survey research to the tool’s design and functionality. She provided data analysis and research that contributed to the selection of AARP Livability Index™ metrics and policies. Shannon has also coauthored several AARP Livability Index™-related research publications. Read more

Follow Shannon @SGuzman6

Ari Houser, MA, Quantitative Methods Advisor

Ari Houser contributed his expertise to the scoring methods within the AARP Livability Index™. He advised the AARP Livability Index™ team on technical details, including weighting, scaling, missing data, and metric reliability. Read more

Sibora Gjecovi, Senior Research Advisor

Sibora Gjecovi applied her expertise in geographic information systems and Census geographies to enable scores to be calculated for neighborhoods, cities, counties, zip codes and states. Read more

Christy Kwan, Policy Advisor

Christy Kwan joined the AARP Livability Index™ team in June 2024 and applied her expertise to review metric and policy data, as well as analyze scores for platform-related research publications. Read more

Paul Lingamfelter, Policy Advisor

Paul Lingamfelter joined AARP in 2019 as a co-author of the Long-Term Services and Supports State Scorecard. He has assisted with several data updates to the AARP Livability Index™  as a subject matter expert for LTSS and disaster resilience. Read more

Expert Contributors

AARP would like to thank the following AARP Livability Index™ contributors:

National Advisory Panel (NAP) Members

• Angela Brooks, Chief Housing and Urban Development Officer, City of Philadelphia

• Abbey Cofsky, Managing Director, City Health Dashboard, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

• David Dworkin, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Housing Conference

• Aileen Fuchs, President & Executive Director, National Building Museum

• Jason Jordan, Policy Director, American Planning Association

• Tad McGalliard, Director, Research and Development, International City/County Management Association

• Jennifer Molinsky, Senior Research Associate, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Research

• Toccarra Nicole Thomas, Director Land Use and Development, Smart Growth America

• Mike Watson, Director, Livable Communities, AARP Programs

Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Members

• Richard Duncan, Executive Director, RL Mace Design Institute

• Regina Gray, Director, Affordable Housing Research & Technology, US Department of Housing & Urban Development

• Peter Haas, Chief Research Scientist, Center for Neighborhood Technology

• Carrie Kissel, Associate Director, National Association of Development Organizations

• Marynia Kolak, Assistant Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Amanda Lehning, Associate Dean and Associate Professor, University of Maryland School of Social Work

• Margaret Neal, Director Emerita, Institute on Aging, Portland State University

• Quynh Nguyen, AIntramural Investigator, National Institute of Nursing Research

• Jeremy Raw, Community Planner, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Planning

• Jagruti Rekhi, Social Science Analyst, US Department of Housing & Urban Development

• Jim Sallis, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, University of California, San Diego

• Ben Spoer, Director of Data & Analytics, NYU City Health Dashboard

  See the list of former technical advisors and prior TAC members.