Families For Freedom

Families For Freedom is a New York-based multi-ethnic defense network by and for immigrants facing deportation. It is a source of education and action for directly affected families, and an organizing support center for directly affected communities.  FFF works for change through community mobilization, legal advocacy, media work, and congressional outreach. FFF collaborated with CUP on the MPP Immigrants Beware!

Christine Gaspar

Christine is the Executive Director of CUP. She has over fifteen years of experience in community design. Prior to joining CUP, she was Assistant Director of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, Mississippi, where she provided architectural design and city planning services to low-income communities recovering from Hurricane Katrina. In 2012, she was identified as one of the “Public Interest Design 100.” She holds Masters in Architecture and in City Planning from MIT, and a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University.

She’s been a CUP fan since 2001, and a staff member since 2009.

Tamara Maletic

Tamara is a principal at Linked by Air, which she and Dan Michaelson founded in 2005. The studio specializes in the design and production of public space both physical and online. Their clients include The Whitney Museum of American Art, AIGA, Do-Ho Suh, MOS Office, ArtAsiaPacific, Public Art Fund and Yale University. Tamara holds an M.F.A. in Graphic Design from Yale University School of Art and she teaches typography class at Parsons. She worked with CUP on the website for Making Policy Public, and together with Lana Cavar, on the MPP Immigrants Beware! Linked by Air has designed CUP’s new website, which they truly enjoyed working on.

Rosten Woo

Rosten Woo is a cultural producer living in Los Angeles. He makes work that helps people understand complex systems and participate in group decision-making. He produces that work in partnership with local and national groups ranging from the American Human Development Project to the East Los Angeles Community Corporation. His work has been exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial, the New Museum, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Netherlands Architectural Institute, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, on the internet, and in various public housing developments, tugboats, shopping malls, and parks in New York City and Los Angeles. His first book, “Street Value,” was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2010. He is co-founder and former executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP). His website: www.wehavenoart.net

Fielding Hong

Fielding is a Youth Education Program Manager at CUP. He has over 10 years of experience as a youth educator working at the intersections of history, the arts, and social justice. Fielding has worked as both a high school history teacher in Philadelphia and a museum educator in New York. He holds a B.A. in Film Studies from Wesleyan University, a teaching degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master’s in Culture and Gender Studies from Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. 

Hugo Rojas

Hugo Rojas is a Media and Art educator, and multimedia artist. He has a B.A. in International Relations from Mexican University and an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School. With over nine years of experience in education having taught from Spanish Language to Photography and video production in Mexico, Brazil, and NYC. Currently, he is teaching residencies in Manhattan and Brooklyn. He also explores public space through his art intervention, and in his spare time he bikes around Brooklyn.

Katrin Bichler

is a multidisciplinary designer focusing on data, social and environmental justice, cats and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Siyona Ravi

Siyona is CUP’s Program & Communications Coordinator. Before joining CUP, she worked on several creative advocacy projects, including the Fundred Project, a campaign led by artist Mel Chin, and a documentary film for a TGNC branch of a sex workers’ labor union in Kolkata, India. In 2019 she was a Create Change Fellow with the Laundromat Project. She holds a BA in Visual Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She was born in Bangalore, grew up in Chicago, and now lives Crown Heights, where you can find her making a mess in the kitchen. 

Yasmin Safdié

Yasmin Renée Safdié is the Director of Programs at CUP. She is a radical social worker, community organizer and educator. Her work is grounded in an anti-oppressive framework, which seeks to ensure that those most affected by social issues are centered in movements for justice. For over a decade, she has worked on a range of social justice issues including: ending mass incarceration, anti-racism, and gender justice. Yasmin has extensive experience designing and facilitating anti-oppressive trainings and leadership development programs. Prior to CUP, Yasmin was the Senior Manager of Organizing and Advocacy at the New York City Anti-Violence Project where she worked to end violence against the LGBTQ community. Yasmin is currently an Adjunct Lecturer at Columbia University School of Social Work and CUNY Hunter College. She is a member leader and Board Member at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, where she co-founded the Mizrahi Caucus, which organizes Arab/Middle Eastern/North African/Central Asian Jews. She received her M.S. in Social Work from Columbia University and her B.A. in History and Anthropology from McGill University. In her free time Yasmin loves to do ceramics and dance. 

Miles Barretto

Miles Barretto is a NYC based graphic designer originally from the Philippines. His work specializes in print and his main interests lies in creating design that explores social issues. He graduated from Parsons the New School of Design with a BFA in Communication Design. 

Ro Garrido

Ro Garrido is a Youth Education Program Coordinator at CUP. Ro was born in Lima, Peru and grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. Ro is a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist and educator whose work grapples with memory and intimacy. They work with mixed media, sculpture, fiber, archives, installation and community engagment. Ro’s work has been featured at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Goddard College, and Flux Factory. Ro was a 2014 Create Change Fellow and 2016 Commissioned Artist with The Laundromat Project. Ro is currently a 2018-19 Engaging Artists Fellow at More Art and a 2019-20 Artist in Residence at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Ro has a BA in Individualized Studies with a focus on Visual Art and Mental Health from Goddard College.

Fielding Hong

Fielding is a Youth Education Program Manager at CUP. He has over 10 years of experience as a youth educator working at the intersections of history, the arts, and social justice. Fielding has worked as both a high school history teacher in Philadelphia and a museum educator in New York. He holds a B.A. in Film Studies from Wesleyan University, a teaching degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master’s in Culture and Gender Studies from Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. 

Melissa Gorman

Melissa Gorman is a multi-disciplinary designer, artist, and entrepreneur living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She recently earned an MFA in Design from the School of Visual Arts. Her design practice is primarily concerned with visual identity and branding for local startups and small businesses. In her art practice, she is interested in the idea of preservation through illustration, creating a time capsule of aspects of the city through portraits of places bound for extinction. She likes cats more than dogs, finds that yellow is the predominant color in her work, and finds it hard to turn down dessert. costd.com

Oscar Nuñez

Oscar was a Community Education Program Manager at CUP. He is a graduate of the City and Regional Planning Master’s Program at Pratt Institute with a concentration on Community Development. While completing his studies at Pratt, Oscar worked and interned in various local community organizations and groups, including CUP, on issues dealing with planning, design, and community education and engagement. Previously, he received a B.A. in Sociology and Latin American Studies from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.  Originally from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, he moved to Washington, D.C. at a young age. He is fluent in English, Spanish, and French and can give pretty good directions in Portuguese.

Mark Torrey

Mark Torrey was a Community Education Program Manager for CUP, working on Making Policy Public and the Envisioning Development Toolkits. Previously he spent a good long while working as an Information Technology Specialist (computer guy) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, but then decided to firm up his understanding of cities by getting a Masters in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. He wears his pants in the Highwater fashion, which most of the CUP staff find to be ridiculous, but it keeps his pants from getting caught in the bike chain.

He was a CUP staff member 2011-2020.

Association For Neighborhood and Housing Development

Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD) is a 501c3 membership organization founded in 1974, comprised of 98 nonprofit neighborhood housing groups serving low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. Over the past decade alone, ANHD’s training, policy research, advocacy, strategic communications, and leadership development for grassroots groups and residents has leveraged over $1.3 billion for affordable housing, rescued over 30,000 apartments and 160 buildings for low-income residents, and created break through policies for community development. ANHD is collaborating with CUP on an MPP about the Responsible Banking Act and contributed to the development of the Affordable Housing Toolkit and Zoning Toolkit.

Christine Gaspar

Christine is the Executive Director of CUP. She has over fifteen years of experience in community design. Prior to joining CUP, she was Assistant Director of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, Mississippi, where she provided architectural design and city planning services to low-income communities recovering from Hurricane Katrina. In 2012, she was identified as one of the “Public Interest Design 100.” She holds Masters in Architecture and in City Planning from MIT, and a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University.

She’s been a CUP fan since 2001, and a staff member since 2009.

Oscar Nuñez

Oscar was a Community Education Program Manager at CUP. He is a graduate of the City and Regional Planning Master’s Program at Pratt Institute with a concentration on Community Development. While completing his studies at Pratt, Oscar worked and interned in various local community organizations and groups, including CUP, on issues dealing with planning, design, and community education and engagement. Previously, he received a B.A. in Sociology and Latin American Studies from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.  Originally from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, he moved to Washington, D.C. at a young age. He is fluent in English, Spanish, and French and can give pretty good directions in Portuguese.