Jason Anderson

Jason Anderson, one of CUP’s co-founders, is an architectural designer in New York City. Originally from Seattle, Jason has worked and taught in New York and Beijing, where he lived for four years after being awarded the Henry Luce Scholarship in 2005. Jason holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University. Jason served on CUP’s board and as Treasurer from 1997-2006. He continues to be a supporter and a huge fan.

Andrea Meller

Andrea Meller has worked on “PHTV: What’s up with public housing?”, and “Garbage Problems.”

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.

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

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.

L & L

L & L is the design partnership of Leigh Mignogna and Liz Seibert. We first started working together as MFA students at Pratt, where we developed a design process that is iterative, collaborative and concept-driven. With every project, our goal is to identify core values and extend them into intelligent, engaging designs. We received recognition for our typeface design at the 26th International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno in 2014 and at AIGA/NY in 2013. Previously, we published a book through Pratt Press on interdisciplinary design education, called Five Conversations on Graphic Design and Creative Writing.

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.

Students from Get Money

CUP and CUP teaching artist Becky Slogeris worked with students from College Now at Hostos on “Get Money”, a City Studies project on financial aid. Those students were: Atreyu Aguilar, Elizabeth Samaroo, Junisha Tavarez, Ebony Lowery, Oscar Przezdziecki, Qiqi Mei, Ashlee Kelly, Pei Jun, Amory Gregory, Suilong Luo, Tamera Imhiavan, Alexis Mcdowell, Sanasa Kaba, Dacia Duncan, Dahlia Hatab, Ava Bryan, and Destiny Serulle 

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.

Becky Slogeris

Becky Slogeris is a social designer and educator based in Baltimore, MD. A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, her work is focused on re-thinking public education and empowering students to create change in their communities. She worked with CUP and students at CUNY College Now to create “Get Money!” Becky’s website is http://designing-education.com/

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. 

Housing Court Answers

Housing Court Answers has been advocating for people without lawyers in NYC’s Housing Courts for more than 30 years. They staff information tables, run a hotline and train advocates who assist low income people facing eviction and homelessness. Housing Court Answers has led the fight for the use of plain language in the courts, better treatment of “pro se” litigants (those without lawyers), and an end to tenant “blacklisting”. And they continue to advocate, as they have since their founding, for a right to counsel for low income tenants in eviction cases. CUP has collaborated with Housing Court Answers many times and has created Housing Court Help, Keep Your Family’s Home, Mantenga el hogar de su Familia, and Get Support in Housing Court!  http://housingcourtanswers.org/

Mark Torrey

Mark Torrey was a Community Education Program Manager for CUP, working on Making Policy Public and the Envisioning Development Toolkits. Previously he spent a good long while working as an Information Technology Specialist (computer guy) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, but then decided to firm up his understanding of cities by getting a Masters in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. He wears his pants in the Highwater fashion, which most of the CUP staff find to be ridiculous, but it keeps his pants from getting caught in the bike chain.

He was a CUP staff member 2011-2020.

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.  

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.

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.