Harris Policy Innovation Challenge Announces 2025 Winning Team

A team of Harris School MPP students took home $10,000 for winning the 2024-25 Harris Policy Innovation Challenge with a bold vision to revitalize downtown Chicago that includes transforming Michigan Avenue between Wacker Drive and Monroe Street into a pedestrian-, bus- and bike-only corridor.

Their comprehensive proposal, which emphasizes “culture and connection,” reroutes car traffic to enhance the city’s pedestrian experience, revitalizes the Chicago Pedway System, and creates affordable housing for artists, impressed judges at a Shark Tank-style pitch event at the Keller Center on April 16. 

“More than anything, I am so grateful,” said Samantha Anderson, MPP Class of 2025, as she and teammates Krista Brown, also MPP Class of 2025; Ashton Mayo-Beavers, MPP Class of 2026; and Uchenna Andrew Offorjebe, MPP Class of 2025, celebrated their win.

The Challenge — which asked, “What can Chicago do over the next three years to create a thriving downtown for the next twenty years?” — was Harris Public Policy’s second such competition.

Such Challenges provide “an opportunity for our students to do two really important things,” said Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, dean and Sydney Stein Professor at Harris. “One is to spend a year learning, thinking and analyzing in a really serious and rigorous way, but also at the same time work on a real policy challenge in our community.”

The student teams, he added, have “done incredible work. Participating in the Policy Innovation Challenge is no small deal in the midst of your studies. These are all students who are doing tons of difficult coursework.”

For the Challenge, Harris partners with the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation.

“What the Mansueto Institute is all about is taking great ideas from the university, usually from faculty, and trying to bring them out into the world,” said Christopher Berry, the William J. and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor at Harris and director of the Mansueto Institute. “This event is taking great ideas from students and trying to bring them out into the world, so it's perfect for us. I thought there was a good balance of practicality and outside-the-box thinking at this pitch.”

The four finalist teams pitched to six judges, including World Business Chicago President and CEO Phil Clement, AM/MBA’93; Better Chicago CEO Beth Swanson, MPP ’02; and investor David Wells, MBA/MPP ’98, who was previously CFO for Netflix.

“The quality of the students’ work was really outstanding,” said Research Professor Justin Marlowe, the director of the Center for Municipal Finance, who oversaw the Innovation Challenge, helping students navigate the process and assembling the Harris alumni who served as coaches and mentors. “I’m very proud of the students.” 

Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic emptied city centers, many still have not figured out how to recapture their former vibrancy. That includes Chicago. The four finalist teams, whittled down from an initial field of more than 20, outlined distinct approaches the city could take to overcome this challenge. 

They shared roadmaps to make the downtown more family friendly. They used examples of success stories from cities around the globe, including Paris and Denver. They tallied commercial building vacancies and weighed Gen-Z isolation and how co-living spaces could address that. Judges prodded them for answers on traffic patterns and building conversions. And when judges stepped away to deliberate, teams answered a barrage of questions from the Keller Center audience. 

Highlights of the pitches included the plan from Harris MPP students Alison Collard de Beaufort, Melodie Slaughter and Paul Zee-Cheng to build a Young Professional Housing Network in converted office buildings that have become “high-rise ghost towns.” These affordable co-living spaces would feature private micro units complemented by shared kitchens, lounges and co-working spaces, the team said. Residents would access features across multiple buildings, such as a rooftop garden in one building, a fitness center in another, a coworking space in the third, all through a unified membership system, building community connections, they said.

The plan from Harris master’s candidates Dustin Cather, youth program manager at Blind Service Chicago; Haley Dudzinski, a senior specialist in client account management at Deloitte; and business owner Luis Montgomery called for extending the 606 trail through downtown to Ping Tom Memorial Park (driving foot traffic into businesses). They also suggested creating co-living floors (instead of individual studio units) in buildings undergoing commercial-to-residential transition and bringing the Chicago motto of "Urbs in Horto" ("City in a Garden") to life by developing a vertical farm and grocery store in a now-parking garage at 211 W. Adams.

Master’s candidates Marlin Exton, the director of post-secondary options in career resources and scholarships at Mercy Home for Boys & Girls; Hannah Flint, a Chicago Police Department detective; and Liz Schutz, the Lewis-Sebring program director for careers in education professions at the University of Chicago set their team’s focus on keeping Millennials in the city when they start their families, disrupting the usual move to the suburbs. Key to keeping families downtown are ensuring adequate stock of larger apartments and condos (two- and three-bedrooms) and opening elementary schools, the team said.

Drawing inspiration from ideas like the 16th Street Mall in Denver, Colorado, the winning team seeks to build on key assets including 12 museums, 120 public art installations, and $2.25 billion in economic impact from cultural outings, as well as 153 bus stops, 40 Divvy stations, and 20 CTA and Metra stations currently in the Loop. The team’s plan drew attention for its idea to shut a section of Michigan Avenue, activate and enliven Chicago’s underutilized Pedway System, which spans more than 40 blocks, with shopping and cultural enrichment, and leverage that culture and connection. Their recommendations for the Cultural Mile — the cultural asset-rich section of Michigan Avenue stretching from the Chicago River to Roosevelt Road — will, they said, “ensure that downtown remains the city's economic engine and cultural heart.”

The winning team is now set to showcase its plan to civic leaders across Chicago.