Jacob Koch leads client engagements with city governments on a range of sustainability, climate, and resilience projects, including low carbon development, carbon emissions reductions, tree planting and greening, and strategic urban planning.

Previously, Jacob worked for the Office of Healthcare Transformation and Innovation at the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Administration where he led a long-range strategic planning process for the comprehensive homeless program and forged new partnerships to better integrate patient-centered care, expand housing options, and provide legal services to homeless veterans. Prior to that, Jacob worked for EMBARQ Brasil in Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro where he directed a project to insert sustainable mobility into a city-wide neighborhood upgrading program and led one of the first studies to generate empirical data on transportation use in Rio’s favelas.

Jacob has a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University and a Master in Urban Planning from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. At the GSD he was part of a planning studio that was awarded the 2015 National Student Project Award.  He is on the advisory boards of Yale/City and the CUNY Guttman Community College Urban Studies program and is a frequent guest critic and lecturer.