Deepak Lamba-Nieves is the research director & Churchill G. Carey, Jr. Chair in Economic Development Research at the Center for a New Economy (CNE). He also teaches at the University of Puerto Rico’s Graduate School of Planning. Lamba-Nieves has been researching Puerto Rico’s socioeconomic prospects and development trajectories for two decades. At present, he is conducting research on postdisaster reconstruction as part of CNE’s Blueprint Initiative, a collective effort that aims to define a path forward for housing and land use in Puerto Rico. His current book project, based on dissertation fieldwork carried out in the Dominican Republic and the United States, examines collective grassroots projects carried out by migrants and their counterparts back home as a window into how community development takes place across borders. Lamba-Nieves was a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and completed a PhD in urban and regional studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.