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. 

Jonathan Bogarín

Jonathan Bogarín is an artist, filmmaker, and educator. He believes that art is a tool for understanding our world that can help us become more active, creative, and conscientious citizens. Jonathan is currently co-directing Invisible Murals, a PBS supported documentary about myths, murals, and oil in Venezuela. He has created numerous public artworks in collaboration with youth including CUP projects “Bodega Down Bronx” and “Scary, OK with it, Good.” Jonathan thinks CUP is cool.

Nikki Chung

Nikki Chung is a graphic designer and the principal of Once & Future, a design studio in NYC dedicated to bringing thoughtful visual order to complex information. Once & Future makes identities, websites, mobile apps, books, illustrations, and more for small businesses and cultural organizations. Nikki received a BA in Architecture from UC Berkeley and a MFA in Graphic Design from RISD. She has worked with CUP on Scary, OK With It, Good, Soda Census, and Draw the Line. Her website is http://once-future.com

Aisha Haynes

Ms. Haynes is an English Language Arts teacher at the Academy of Urban Planning and has worked on several City Studies projects with CUP. 

Students from Scary, Ok With It, Good

Students from the Academy of Urban Planning, in Aisha Haynes’ English Language Arts class, collaborated with CUP and Jonathan Bogarín on “Scary, OK With It, Good.”

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

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.

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.

Silas Munro

Silas Munro is Chair of the MFA Program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts. His mission is in service of beautiful, smart design with empathy for humanity. 

Before his current practice, Munro was Design Director at Housing Works in New York, Designer-In-Residence at NC State and Design Fellow at the Walker in Minneapolis. He holds a MFA and BFA in Graphic Design from CalArts and RISD, respectively. 

Based in Miami, Munro’s From the Desk of: creates design for varied audiences across media that has won awards from ADC, AIGA, Print and SAPPI Ideas that Matter. Silas’ writing about design has been published by GOOD, SpeakUp and the Walker.

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. 

Diamond James

Diamond James is a social designer whose work explores intersections of race/space/class and design in American cities. Her practice includes creating tools for making human-centered design personable, writing about the field, teaching, and youth civic engagement. A former Washington Post journalist, Diamond is interested in the ways people share stories to promote self-or group-identity catalyzing social change. She is a Los Angeles native who has lived in almost every region of the country since leaving home for undergraduate study at Northwestern University. She holds a Masters of Arts in Social Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

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.

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.

Ingrid Haftel

Ingrid was the Community Education Program Director for CUP. Before CUP, she was Curator of Exhibitions at the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF), Chicago’s leading forum for the exchange of ideas on urban design. While at CAF, Ingrid developed major exhibitions that helped public audiences think critically about complex issues related to urban planning and architecture. Ingrid received her B.A. in English and Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington, and her M.A. in Humanities from the University of Chicago.