Deja Holden

Deja was the Design Assistant at CUP. She received her BFA from Parsons School of Design in Communication Design and her BA from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts in Political Science. She is interested in design as a tool for demystifing public policy, and its role as a vehicle for broader civic engagement. 

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.

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.

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.

Grace Robinson-Leo

Grace Robinson-Leo is a graphic designer living and working in New York. She holds an MFA from Yale University and prior to that, studied Architecture at Barnard College. She has worked for Project Projects, Thumb, and Manuel Miranda, and is currently a Communications Design Intern at IDEO. Personal clients include Marc by Marc Jacobs, Trou Normand Restaurant in San Francisco, and a forthcoming book on the artist Morgan Fisher for the Aspen Art Museum.

David Reinfurt

David Reinfurt is an independent graphic designer and writer in New York City. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1993 and received an MFA from Yale University in 1999. On the first business day of 2000, David formed O-R-G inc., a flexible graphic design practice composed of a constantly shifting network of collaborators. Together with graphic designer Stuart Bailey, David established Dexter Sinister in 2006 — a workshop in the basement at 38 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side in New York City. The workshop is intended to model a Just-In-Time economy of print production, running counter to the contemporary assembly-line realities of large-scale publishing. This involves avoiding waste by working on-demand, utilizing local cheap machinery, considering alternate distribution strategies, and collapsing distinctions of editing, design, production and distribution into one efficient activity. Dexter Sinister published the semi-annual arts magazine Dot Dot Dot from 2006-2011 and is currently regathering under a new umbrella project called The Serving Library. David is 2010 United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow in Architecture and Design and currently teaches at Princeton University.

Damon Rich

Damon Rich is a designer, artist, and the founder of CUP. In his exhibitions, graphic works, and events, sometimes produced in collaboration with young people and community-based organizations, Rich creates fantastical spaces for imagining the physical and social transformation of the world. His work represented the United States at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, and has been exhibited at PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and the Netherlands Architecture Institute. In 1997, he founded CUP, and was Executive Director for 10 years. Damon currently serves as the Urban Designer for the City of Newark, New Jersey, where he leads design efforts with public and private actors to improve the city’s public spaces.

Sam Stark

Sam Stark is the author of the children’s book Diderot: French Philosopher and Father of the Encyclopedia. He works as an assistant editor at Harper’s Magazine.

Sam Stark has worked on Building Codes, and Social Security Risk Machine.

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

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.

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. 

Zach Postone

Zach Postone is interested in neighborhood planning, community gardens, climate change politics, and technologies of the future.  He’s originally from Berkeley, CA, and studied Political Science and Art at Swarthmore College. As an intern at CUP, Zach was involved with several CUP projects, including “What the Cell?”, the Soda Census, and the Zoning Toolkit.

Students from Soda Census

Students from the Academy of Urban Planning, in Aisha Haynes’ English Language Arts Class, collaborated with CUP on “Soda Census.”

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.

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.

Chat Travieso

CHAT TRAVIESO is an artist and architectural designer based out of Brooklyn, NY. He was the teaching artist for The Big Squeeze, an Urban Investigation that explores the issue of housing size in New York City. Chat’s work takes the form of playful and interactive design/build urban interventions that encourage people to question their assumptions of the built environment. Check out his website www.chattravieso.com to see what he’s up to these days.