Ojan Mobedshahi

San Francisco, CA, USA

Finance Director, East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC)

Ojan is the Finance Director and a co-founder of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC), a democratic, BIPOC-led cooperative that takes land and housing off the speculative market to create permanently affordable, community-controlled land and housing. Ojan was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and is committed to resilient, equitable and community-driven development. He is joining the part-time MRED+D program at UC Berkeley so he can continue to steward EB PREC while increasing his capacity to take on larger and more complex projects with and for the community.

Ojan graduated from Pitzer College with a B.A. in economics and a minor in Spanish. Becoming disillusioned with the false solutions of neoliberal economics while at Pitzer, he helped organize a local chapter of the Occupy movement and served meals with Food Not Bombs. Before working in real estate, Ojan became involved in urban agriculture and became a certified permaculture designer working on healthy land use, starting a design-build company. Through his work at EB PREC he brings community organizing, technical know-how, healthy land use, and cooperative economics together to create more equitable neighborhoods.

On a personal level, Ojan lives in a “tiny house” with his partner and daughter and shepherds a flock of eight sheep who manage grasslands for soil health and fire maintenance in the hills of Contra Costa.