Meghan Curtis

Meghann Curtis is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs where she studies, among other things, urban development in developing nations. After graduating from Vassar College, Meghann worked as an urban planner for the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development in their divisions of housing finance and large scale development. She later went on to serve as Policy Director for New York City Council Member David Yassky, where she was intimately involved in the redevelopment plan for the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront. Just before returning to school Meghann worked as a journalist for the South African Broadcast Corporation in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Daniel D’Oca

Daniel D’Oca is an urban planner, educator, and curator who specializes in the politics of the contemporary built environment in America. He is Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Design School, Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory & Criticism at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Principal and co-founder of Interboro Partners, a New York-based architecture, planning, and research firm that has won many awards for its innovative projects, including the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices and Young Architects Awards, and the New Practices Award from the AIA New York Chapter. His forthcoming book The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion will be published by Actar in 2012. He has worked with CUP on several projects, including Urban Renewal: The City Without a Ghetto. 

Sarah Dadush

Sarah Dadush, a CUP co-founder, is a lawyer currently serving as legal counsel at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome, Italy. She is also a member of the Rome-based faculty of Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches a class on the Architecture of International Development. Her research explores the legal, economic, and political dimensions of marketizing philanthropy and the growing field of social investing.

Damascus Citizens for Sustainability

In February 2008, concerned residents formed Damascus Citizens for Sustainability (DCS) to protect this invaluable water resource which has been targeted by the gas extraction industry. The Delaware River Watershed provides drinking water for some 20 million people from four states: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.  Drilling into the shale rock that lies below this watershed to extract the natural gas would introduce a long list of toxic chemicals into the environment, thus putting drinking water at risk. DCS has helped to lead the charge to stop the drilling through public education, legal action and grass-roots organizing. DCS is currently working with CUP to produce the Fracking in the Delaware River Watershed MPP.

Damayan Migrant Workers Association

DAMAYAN is a 10-year old grassroots, membership-based organization of low-income Filipino im/migrant workers, primarily women domestic workers. DAMAYAN organizes Filipino workers to defend their rights and to understand and challenge the root causes of forced migration and poverty. Through its programs and campaigns, DAMAYAN has effectively addressed exploitation, health problems and gender violence against Filipino women domestic workers. It uses solid organizing to combine political analysis and education with services, basebuilding, leadership development, and advocacy. It is a democratic organization with a wide base of over 800 members and an elected Board of Directors of all women domestic workers. DAMAYAN worked with CUP on Work Forced, a video about the labor trafficking of Filipino domestic workers.

Liz Danzico

Liz Danzico is part designer, part educator, and part editor. In her practice, she cultivates strategic design and user-centered programs through collaborative methods in education, in digital design, and in technology to foster positive change. She is co-founder and chair of theMFA in Interaction Design Program at the School of Visual Arts. She is an independent consultant, working with businesses on design, planning, and execution of short- and long-term digital programs for global companies and nonprofit organizations. She is advisor to startups, nonprofits, and global companies alike and frequent lecturer. She has written for design-minded publications, including Eye Magazine, Fortune Magazine, Interactions Magazine, and writes part of her time at bobulate.com.

Dillon de Give

Dillon de Give is an artist and educator who acts in a spirit of humane experimentalism. His projects set a stage for subtle alterations to everyday social performances and expose novel and equitable methods for distributing an experience of art. Dillon holds a BS in Radio/Television/Film from Northwestern University and an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University.  He is a co-founder of the Walk Exchange, a cooperative walking group. He organizes the annual Coyote Walk Itinerancy, a retreat that traces a path between New York City and the wild.  Dillon worked with CUP to produce the videos “Common Cents,” “Now Boarding,” and “Who Rules?”

Meredith Degyansky

Meredith Degyansky, often under the alias of The Work Intern, is an artist, educator, student debtor, precarious laborer, and counselor. Her artwork explores alternatives to capitalism by suggesting and enacting economies that aren’t based in current economic structures. Past projects include attempting to barter down her student loan debt with Sallie Mae; successfully exchanging her labor for rent payments to her landlord; creating a currency, monies, that represents unpaid and under recognized labor; and one-on-one conversations with the public to discuss how we can renegotiate our relationship to work, wage, debt, time, and education. She experiments and creates situations for free learning in urban environments for high school youth through her project, ThinkerSpace, and for adults, through Mapping Your Free Education.

Lauren Dellaquila

Lauren Dellaquila currently works as a designer and art director in Brooklyn, NY where she lives with her two cats, Massimo and Lella. She works with clients ranging from global branding agencies and international action-sport companies, to start-ups and non-profits. She specializes in spatial experience, branding, art direction, conceptual process, and human-centered design. Lauren is a 2009 Project M alumnus, where she refined her skills as a socially-minded designer. Her pro-bono work includes Community Darkroom, BetterGrads, Pizza Farm, COMMON, OpenIDEO, Brooklyn Skillshare, Transforme and most recently, Food Shift. Lauren continues to advise Project M sessions in Belfast, ME, Greensboro, AL and give occasional lectures to budding design students around the north east. laurendellaquila.com

Pema Domingo-Barker

Pema was CUP’s Program Assistant for youth education programs. She previously worked at the Queens Museum and was a Public Allies New York fellow. Pema grew up in Bangkok and went on to study art at the University of Washington and the University of the Arts London.

Susannah Drake

Susannah Drake is the founding principal of DLANDstudio. The firm, winner of the AIA New Practices New York Award, is also the recipient of City, State, and National AIA and ASLA Awards for their work. Susannah was awarded the AIA Young Architects Award and Fellowship in the ASLA, and was recognized as an Architectural League Emerging Voice. She has received numerous grants and awards for adapting infrastructure corridors for storm water capture, climate resilience and park creation. DLANDstudio’s projects include QueensWay, MoMA Rising Currents Exhibit, BQGreen, and Gowanus Sponge Park. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.

Susannah received a BA from Dartmouth College in 1987 and MArch and MLA from the Harvard University GSD. She is a registered architect and a registered landscape architect.

James Dunphy

James is a Queens-born graphic designer / problem solver looking to contribute to innovative projects with a social impact. His work is primarily centered around typographic design and branding along a wide range of media. After graduating from Parson School of Design as a Valedictorian in Communication Design, he moved to Portland, Oregon to work for Nike. Three amazing years later, he moved back to NYC to pursue life as a freelance designer, currently working towards creating amazing work for organizations that he admires and on projects that he believes in.

James was a 2013-2014 Public Access Design Fellow.

Nayelly Escobar

Nayelly was a BCCP student in the I Heart East New York Urban Investigation.

Julia Espero

Julia was CUP’s summer intern. She is currently pursuing a BA at Stanford University in Urban Studies and Social Change. She loves learning about the multidimensional aspects of people and their stories manifested into art. In her own life, she’s exploring the Filipina diaspora in her artwork and scholarship. As a person of the world, she’s invested in practicing and finding ways to hold and actively create space for individuals and communities to live healthy and full lives. 

Matthew Evans

Matthew was an intern at CUP. He recently graduated from the Academy of Innovative Technology. In the fall, he will be attending SUNY Cobleskill to study Culinary Arts. He is a former intern at Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation and was drawn to CUP because they also did work surrounding housing rights. Also, he loves the creative aspects of CUP’s projects. He hopes to take his experience from CUP and incorporate the knowledge he gains this summer towards his goal of bringing food and health justice to low-income, minority New Yorkers.