Michael Casiano has served on the Board of Directors of Charm City Land Trusts, Inc. (CCLT) since 2016. In 2020, he was elected board president and continues to serve in this role. During his tenure with CCLT, he has written and coordinated grants to secure $1.5 million from Baltimore’s Department of Housing and Community Development for two low-income community land trust projects in East Baltimore, where he also lives. He has also written several successful operating capacity grants, one of which allowed for the hiring of CCLT’s first executive director in 2023.

Professionally, Michael is an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and a core faculty member of UMBC’s Public Humanities minor. He received his B.A. in English and American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) in 2012 and his Ph.D. in American Studies at UMD in 2018. From 2018-2019, he served as a postdoctoral associate at Rutgers’ Center for Historical Analysis (RCHA). His book, Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore’s Police State, examines the relationship between policing, municipal governance, and race in post-Civil War Baltimore.