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?

John Mangin

John Mangin is a construction manager and housing litigator at Fair Share Housing, an affordable housing developer that grew out of the Mount Laurel exclusionary housing cases in the 70’s and 80’s. He was formerly a homebuilder and continues to take building and furniture-making jobs out of his Philadelphia studio. He graduated from Yale Law School in 2008. He was one of three staff members at CUP from 2008 to 2010.  

Tenants and Neighbors

Tenants and Neighbors is the largest tenant’s rights organization in the New York State, with 15,000 members. For more than 30 years, through grassroots organizing, T&N has forged a powerful movement in the fight to preserve affordable housing, strengthen tenant protections, and sustain diverse and livable communities. They collaborated with CUP on the MPP Predatory Equity.

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

Codi Haigney

Codi was CUP’s 2018-2019 Public Ally. She holds a BA in Feminist & Gender Studies from Colorado College. She is excited to learn more about design as a tool for social change and community development. Codi interned and continues to work with the Parole Preparation Project, an organization that provides advocacy and direct support to currently and formerly incarcerated people and seeks to transform the parole release process in New York State. 

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. 

Marianna Olinger

Marianna Olinger is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher working on various media with a focus on inspiring, and contributing to human development in harmony with other species and the planet.  

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. 

Sucharitha Yelimeli

Sucharitha Yelimeli is CUP’s Program Coordinator. She hails from Northern California, and has a background in architecture, art, and teaching. Before coming to CUP she designed single-family homes and before that, was an art teacher. She’s interested in how people respond to design, especially at the city scale, and likes taking seemingly unapproachable ideas and making them friendlier. Some things she enjoys doing on the side are getting lost in a good book, making very intricate coffee cup doodles, and trying to win the affection of street cats.

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. 

Sucharitha Yelimeli

Sucharitha Yelimeli is CUP’s Program Coordinator. She hails from Northern California, and has a background in architecture, art, and teaching. Before coming to CUP she designed single-family homes and before that, was an art teacher. She’s interested in how people respond to design, especially at the city scale, and likes taking seemingly unapproachable ideas and making them friendlier. Some things she enjoys doing on the side are getting lost in a good book, making very intricate coffee cup doodles, and trying to win the affection of street cats.

CAAAV

Founded by Asian women as the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence in 1986, CAAAV is one of the first pan-Asian grassroots organizations in the U.S. to educate and provide advocacy on behalf of victims of hate crimes. CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities works to build grassroots community leadership and power across diverse low-income Asian immigrant and refugee communities in New York City to fight for institutional change towards racial, gender and economic justice. CAAAV is currently working with CUP on an Issue of Making Policy Public that focuses on rent regulation rights In New York’s Chinatown. 

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.

Sam Holleran

Is an artist, designer, and writer. Sam was CUP’s Communications Coordinator from 2011 to 2014. He attended the the Cooper Union where he was the recipient of the Herb Lubalin Fellowship for Typography and the Benjamin Menschel Fellowship for Creative Inquiry. Sam has worked extensively in printmaking; his fields of interest include: photogravure, letterpress, Ukiyo-e, and silkscreen.

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.

Sam Holleran

Is an artist, designer, and writer. Sam was CUP’s Communications Coordinator from 2011 to 2014. He attended the the Cooper Union where he was the recipient of the Herb Lubalin Fellowship for Typography and the Benjamin Menschel Fellowship for Creative Inquiry. Sam has worked extensively in printmaking; his fields of interest include: photogravure, letterpress, Ukiyo-e, and silkscreen.

IntraCollaborative

IntraCollaborative is David Frisco, Chantal Fischzang, Natalie Sims, Richard Hall and Leigh Mignogna. Our recipe is an educational methodology: a designer/professor with many years experience combining design with public service, and three former and one current Pratt Communications Design MFA students who’ve worked closely for the last several years.

IntraCollaborative worked on the Rent Regulation Rights Making Policy Public project with CUP and CAAAV. The project has gone on to be translated into Spanish for both New York and San Francisco residents, and most recently has been awarded a Sappi: Ideas That Matters grant which funded the 2015 MTA Subway poster campaign.

Clara Amenyo

Clara was the Program Manager for CUP’s Public Access Design program from 2012 to 2014. Before coming to CUP, she worked in Structured Credit for Barclays Capital. Clara has a Bachelor of the Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.

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.

Jenny Kutnow

Jenny Kutnow is an interdisciplinary designer who uses graphic design to elevate architecture and urban design through open discourse and civic engagement. She holds a Masters in Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Jenny has worked with Pentagram, OLIN, and Arquitectonica and she has lectured and critiqued at MICA, the University of Pennsylvania, and Miami-Dade College. Jenny is currently writing a book on the relationship between graphic design and architecture and she will be working with CUP on the upcoming Educator’s Guide, “Backyard Politics.” jennykutnow.com