Kelsey Nocket
Kelsey Nocket combines housing policy, emergency response, and public systems design to advance more responsive and dignified support for people experiencing displacement. Her work spans contexts shaped by natural disasters, conflict, and chronic systemic inequities.
Most recently, Kelsey served as a foreign service officer with the United States Agency for International Development, where she managed humanitarian assistance programs in El Salvador, Ukraine, and Somalia. She previously led homelessness initiatives as the City of San Luis Obispo’s first homelessness response manager and adjudicated protection claims as a refugee officer with the US Department of Homeland Security. In addition to her federal and municipal service, Kelsey has worked as an emergency response consultant, advising nonprofit organizations on program design and implementation in Indigenous and underserved communities.
Kelsey is particularly interested in how small design choices within systems—communication, process, and accountability—can have outsized impacts on trust and long-term outcomes. As a Loeb Fellow, she will deepen her understanding of housing systems and urban planning to help facilitate and innovate new approaches to displacement. Kelsey holds a master of public administration from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a bachelor of arts in politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.