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.

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.

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. 

Leigh Taylor

Leigh was CUP’s Development & Program Coordinator. She is a recent graduate from Bard College, where she studied Sociology with a focus on Gender & Labor. Following college, Leigh has worked for organizations invested in social justice education for young people, specifically youth from historically marginalized communities. She is involved in movements of justice for domestic workers, incarcerated folks, and young people of color. She is excited to work with CUP to create accessible tools for people from communities like hers.

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. 

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. 

Anti-Violence Project

The New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) empowers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected communities and allies to end all forms of violence through organizing and education, and supports survivors through counseling and advocacy. 

Erik Freer

Erik Freer is a designer, artist and writer who lives and works in New York City. Currently, Erik works managing the graphic design at the Neue Galerie Museum in Manhattan. Erik also maintains an independent cross-disciplinary practice. Contact Erik and find out more at his website, erikfreer.com. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mary Voorhees Meehan and Neil Donnelly

Neil Donnelly and Mary Voorhees Meehan are graphic designers who work in print, identity, interactive, exhibition, and motion design. Their clients include Yale University, Williams College, the New Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, The New York Times, Storefront for Art and Architecture, The New School, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They have been working together since meeting in the graphic design MFA program at Yale. Both are active design educators and live and work in Brooklyn. Neil and Mary will be working with CUP on the upcoming MPP Increasing Immigrants’ Access to Banks.

The Longshore Worker’s Coalition

The Longshore Worker’s Coalition (LWC) is a movement of ILA members and retirees organizing to build a stronger and more democratic longshore union. They have ports up and down the East and Gulf Coasts. They were partners with CUP on The Cargo Chain MPP.

Thumb

Thumb is a graphic design office that works on both commissioned and speculative projects, usually in the areas of architecture and urbanism. They collaborated with CUP on The Cargo Chain MPP.

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