Students from Fast Trash

CUP worked with students from the Child School on a project about Roosevelt Island’s pneumatic garbage disposal system. Those students were: José Benítez, Charlie Brister-Ramírez, Freddy Domenech, James Patrick Escalante, Avery Fennick, Isaack Nudell, Matt Patterson, Stephen Purk, Isaiah Reed.

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.

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 Fast Tracked

Sarai Arroyo, Kharee Boyd, Lawrence Daise, Juan Garcia, Isaiah Ortiz, Dayhana Santos, Aldo Sorcia, Chun Fung (Ronex) Tse, Shadiq Williams, and Steven Mejas were all part of the Fast-Tracked Urban Investigation in 2011.

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.

Alexandra Woolsey Puffer

Alexandra Woolsey Puffer is an artist-designer in New York City and principal collaborator with Publicworks Office. Her interests include social systems and symbolic capital.

Stephen Fiehn

Stephen Fiehn is an artist from Chicago, now based in Brooklyn, working in collaboration, performance, sound, visual art, and writing. He co-founded the collaborative art duo Cupola Bobber in 2000 and the sound group Fessenden in 2005. Other recent collaborative projects include: Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never.(2010) and Testimony 2.2 (2013) with Every house has a door. His work has been shown across the U.S. and Europe.  Most recently, Stephen worked with CUP and the Academy of Urban Planning on a two week class consisting of a series of micro-investigations viewing federal, state, and city governments through the businesses and streets of a small area in Brooklyn, NY. The class culminated with the production of a booklet titled Field Guide to Federalism: Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York in collaboration with designer Jennifer Korff.

Students from Field Guide to Federalism

Students from the Academy for Urban Planning in Mr. Sandoval’s 9th grade US History class worked with CUP on Field Guide to Federalism

Jen Korff

Jen Korff is the founding principal art director and designer of Sophik Studio, a small one-woman shop that works to create positive change via an illustrative aesthetic and unique strategic approach. Jen’s intention and instinct guides her thinking as she works to build effective solutions that encourage conversation and engagement in and across communities to effect positive social change. Jen predominantly works with a handful of wonderful folks in Brooklyn and Chicago. Jen’s other interests include baking, experimental theatre, drawing her breakfast, cat snuggling, Johnny Cash, the films of Buster Keaton and Ang Lee, gardening, cheese, and golden retrievers. Jen designed CUP’s “Field Guide to Federalism” city studies book alongside teacher extraordinaire, Stephen Fiehn and CUP’s “Are you Ready for a Ruckus?” Urban Investigation book.

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. 

Carmen Rosa López

Carmen López is a design researcher and social innovator with the heart of an artist. She combines her visual communication skills, design thinking, and ethnographic research to positively impact the world. Born and raised in Ecuador, moved to California to study at Art Center College of Design. She became a resident at Fabrica of Benetton in Treviso, Italy, and worked at La Facultad, an independent advertising agency in Ecuador. Her diverse background has given her the right tools to work on her passion to make a difference. She recently graduated from the Design for Social Innovation MFA program at SVA.

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.

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.