Jenn Anne Williams

Jenn was CUP’s Youth Education Program Manager. With a strong belief that all youths deserve equitable access to the arts, Jenn has developed inclusive programs, published curriculum guides, and trained educators in how to use the arts as a tool for understanding, development, and social change with over 100 New York City public schools and community based organizations.  Jenn continues her pursuit of art as a tool for empowerment as a practicing artist, designer, educator, and administrator implementing high-quality, interdisciplinary art programs. You can follow her creative pursuits at artjawdesigns.com.

Emily Young

Emily Young is a Chinese-American artist and designer living in Brooklyn, NY. Since graduating from New York University in 2014, she has been exploring how experimental art and architecture can bring about a more conscious relationship between humans and the built environment. Her favorite subjects as of late include informal cities, Chinatowns, youth culture, and fermentation practices. Most recently, she was the teaching artist for Our Voice, Our Choice: Why Vote in Local Elections?.

Clair Beltran

Clair Beltran is CUP’s Program Coordinator and is also a former intern. She is a recent graduate of Middlebury College where she studied Architecture and Geography. She is interested in the intersections between sociology and design and how different people experience space. Having spent the past 5 years in Vermont, she is excited and overwhelmed at being back in her hometown of New York City and relearning what it has to offer. 

Elijah Bobo

Elijah Bobo was the 2019 CUP Fellow for Change in Design. He is from Flint, Michigan and is a recent graduate from Eastern Michigan University with a BFA in Graphic Design. With his time at Eastern he worked for many on-campus organizations such as the Center for Diversity and Community Involvement, the Undergraduate Research Symposium, and the School of Art and Design, organizations that use their platforms to promote inclusivity, research, and culture. Elijah wants to take what he has learned about critical thinking and creative problem solving to apply them to issues that are impacting the communities where he grew up, and where he has recently relocated, New York City.

Brooklyn Defender Services

Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) is one of the largest public defense providers in the United States. BDS provides innovative, multi-disciplinary, and client-centered criminal, family, and immigration defense, civil legal services, social work support and advocacy, for tens of thousands of clients in Brooklyn every year. CUP teamed up with public defenders from Brooklyn Defender Services to create What You Need to Know About ACS and What Do Incarcerated Parents Need to Know About ACS?

Both guides break down the complex and difficult to navigate ACS investigation process, so parents know what’s coming and what they can do to make sure they get the best results for their family. http://bds.org/

Community Voices Heard

Community Voices Heard (CVH) is a membership-based community group that works to engage low-income families in organizing campaigns to influence policy that affects their families and their communities. CVH was started in 1994 by women on public assistance who wanted to fight to have their voices included in the national debate on welfare reform. CVH places priority on leadership development, policy education, direct action, participatory research and community outreach to build the tools necessary to engage community members and win on policy issues. CVH is currently working with CUP on the Public Housing Participation MPP.

Glen Cummings

Glen Cummings is a graphic designer, design critic and the principal of MTWTF – a graphic design studio specializing in publications, environmental graphics and identity systems. MTWTF engages in collaborative projects with partners in other disciplines, such as architecture, industrial design, and urban planning. They believe that conversation and negotiation are essential to the design process. MTWTF was founded in 2008 and is located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Glen has worked with CUP on a number of projects including Predatory Equity, Participatory Budgeting, and What is Affordable Housing?

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.

Josh Lerner

Josh Lerner is Director of The Participatory Budgeting Project, an organization that works with elected officials, public agencies, and community groups to open up public budgets to public participation. He completed his PhD in Politics at The New School for Social Research and a Masters in Planning at the University of Toronto, and he has taught at Fordham University and The New School. He has published in venues such as “The Christian Science Monitor”, “The National Civic Review”, “YES!” Magazine, “The Good Society”, “Shelterforce”, and the “Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management”.

Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A

Through innovative neighborhood-based advocacy, Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A assists individuals, families, organizations, and coalitions in sustaining vibrant, healthy communities primarily in Brooklyn and throughout New York City. We embrace the meaningful role that lawyers have in combating poverty. We firmly believe that legal services organizations are accountable to low-income communities and are charged with the responsibility of understanding their needs and collaborating with them, through an array of advocacy methods, to address the problems they confront. Together with the voices of our communities, we advance social and economic justice.

Everyday We

Everyday We is a research-driven, collaborative design studio that uses design to translate pressing public and social urban issues into innovative communication strategies, services and programs. Everyday We collaborates with designers, educators, advocates, students, and communities in order to create opportunities for discovery around the everyday. Amy Findeiss and Christopher Patten believe that by closely analyzing these behaviors we can amplify community knowledge and networks into new models of ownership, governance, and public policy through communication and awareness.

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.

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.

Valeria Mogilevich

Valeria is a visual storyteller who creates tools for participation in collaboration with social justice organizations. She also consults with cultural institutions, education non-profits, and others on community engagement and youth education. Valeria was formerly the Deputy Director of CUP, where over the course of eight years she created popular education tools with community-based organizations and developed curricula to help public high school students change the way the see their own neighborhoods. She has shared her thoughts on project-based learning, collaboration, and design for social impact at places like the New Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt, Pratt Institute, and institutions from Indianapolis to Rotterdam. Valeria holds a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University in Modern Culture and Media.

Students from Pay Dirt

In the fall of 2013, CUP worked with students from Danielle Cardarelli’s Economics class at the Urban Assembly School for Criminal Justice. Those students were Iqra Ahmed, Kiran Amin, Saeeda Batool, Zasica Chowdhury, Quratulain Chughtai, Zannatul Farah, Rose Flores, Sedef Iqbal, Alyssia King, Shania Lett, Aisha Loane, Sidrah Malik, Robyn Pacheco, Dulce Parra, Amna Riaz, Khadija Sarwar, Shazma Shahzad, Shaiza Shakeel, Sanya Shema, Iqra Tariq, Rasanya Taylor, Lizmarie Vazquez, Fevzie Vila, and Jazmine Williams.

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.