Board of Directors
Whit Ewen
A native Austinite and graduate of the University of Texas, Whit's early career at Dell found him leading SME sales teams across Europe. He later became an entrepreneur, founding and running companies that delivered customer support and performance management services. As an investor, he has backed early-stage tech and health ventures.
Whit served on the Austin Planning Commission, where he chaired the comprehensive planning subcommittee for Imagine Austin. He then witnessed about 1.4% of Austinites use a Jim Crowe-era state law to block the much-needed update of rules on how housing can be built and realized the impacts of state law on local housing. He has also held board roles with the Alliance for Public Transit, the Rude Mechanicals theater company, and the Southwood Neighborhood Association. He and his wife love to travel and explore with their daughter.
Charles Coats
Charles Coats oversees the home buying program at Bryan / College Station Habitat for Humanity, including recruitment of low-income hardworking families, down-payment assistance and other government funding sources, loan closing and compliance and mortgage servicing of Habitat for Humanity homes. He works with community and government officials to promote good housing policies that will benefit families in Brazos County for generations to come. He received his Master of Arts from the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M. In his spare time, he helps prepare Texas residents to become American citizens by teaching English language skills and American history/civics lessons.
Dan Keshet
Dan Keshet co-founded Austin’s premier grassroots civics organization, AURA, helping guide it through important and successful reforms in Austin’s building code, as well as becoming an electoral force and a springboard to working on City Council staff. He maintains two publications dedicated to urbanism: Austin on Your Feet and Desire for Density, and his writings have been syndicated in national outlets such as Market Urbanism, Streets Blog, and Greater Greater Washington. He works in data science in the sports and live entertainment industries.