Karl Beitel is the Director of the Public Bank Project, supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation, which is dedicated to supporting municipal governments in finding viable alternatives for funding local community-centered economic development, affordable housing, and large-scale infrastructure investment. He is also currently a Visiting Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute in New York, where he is developing both city- and region-specific studies on options for creating publically controlled financial institutions; and conducting research on the relation between ongoing transformations in national and global financial markets and the shifting policy framework of urban development. He is working on a new book that critically examines mainstream and heterodox monetary theory.

Karl Beitel holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Davis. He was formerly employed as policy analyst for Food First, and has 5+ years experience conducting policy-related and legal research for public sector unions in the Bay Area (SEIU 1021, American Federation of Teachers, and International Federation of Technical and Professional Employees Local 21). He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics spanning land use policy and affordable housing (Urban Affairs Review), the impacts of financial market dynamics on urban development (Environment and Planning A), and the U.S. and global economy (Historical Materialism, Socialist Register). His work has also appeared in publications such as Counterpunch and Monthly Review. His recently completed book Local Protest, Global Movements: Capital, Community, and State in San Francisco (Temple University Press, 2013) is an in-depth analysis of the history of community opposition to gentrification in San Francisco, and has been reviewed in leading academic journals such as Urban Affairs Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Housing Studies.