Portfolio & Publications

What I can help with:

  • Project management and supervision of teams and delivery of milestones within specific timelines. My project management philosophy is based on authentic engagement with involved stakeholder groups.

  • Experience with teaching courses, leading workshops, and facilitating discussions and public meetings. Creation of programming materials and texts including workshop activities, charades, and discussion formats. Special focus on participation and engagement within minority and immigrant communities.

  • Designing qualitative research parameters and engaging in ethical practices in ethnographic research. Experience with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) & census data retrieval.

  • Technical experience in land use zoning and environmental regulations at the local, state, and federal levels in California and New York. Experience with urban design possibilities for adaptive re-use and invigorating underutilized public spaces.

  • Political and non-profit campaigning for legislation/platforms from planning & management to door-to-door knocking. Experience in the grievance procedure/shop steward role.

  • Editing and publications of reports, guides, flyers, informational materials, programmatic materials, and more. Well versed in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, hand drawn illustration, basic film and audio editing.

  • I am a senior housing policy specialist at the California Department of Housing and Community Development, assisting local governments in approving zoning legislation and meeting state requirements for Housing Elements, Annual Progress Reports, and disposing of parcels related to the Surplus Land Act

  • I can help with academic consulting for thesis and dissertation projects, as well as basic translation or transliteration in English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic MSA.

Resume

Organizations I have worked with and campaigns I have worked on:

  • The Surdna Foundation announced that a nearly $13 million has been committed to support artists of color working to advance racial justice within their local communities. The funds will be distributed through an artist regranting initiative featuring a diverse cohort of eleven intermediary organizations, which are national and regional in scope, and include several municipal and local partnerships.

    As part of Surdna’s Thriving Cultures program, the artist regranting initiative will support artists of color around the country, funding up to 87 artist-led projects each year and approximately 260 projects over three years. Regranting partners will distribute Surdna’s funds to artists, artist collectives, and small artist organizations to work with their communities to imagine and practice racially just systems and structures at a local scale.

  • The Together We Thrive: Black Business Network is a coalition that will provide Access to Capital, Networks and Technical Assistance to support Survival, Success & Sustainability of Black-owned businesses. Unlike other loan or grant programs, this initiative will provide wraparound services designed by and for Black-owned businesses while also strengthening the entire Black business ecosystem to promote self determination, generational wealth, and equitable neighborhoods.

  • Hester Street partnered with Local Progress and the Advocacy Institute to design a training tailored to the needs of newly elected NYC Council Members around land use and zoning. The training included historic and contemporary applications of land use, showcased the effects of policy on New Yorkers, and illustrated processes and programs relevant to Council Members’ work. Our goals for this training were to:

    1. Ensure all Council Members have a comprehensive understanding of land use and zoning in NYC.

    2. Provide Council Members and their staff with a visually compelling Land-Use Training, Land-Use Glossary of Terms and Applications, and Land-Use One-Pager to serve as a reference in their land use-related work after the training.

    3. Help Council Members gain a better understanding of how land use will affect their office’s work and how to utilize their knowledge of land-use to represent the values of their communities, improve co-governance structures, and expand progressive leadership across our city.

  • The COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding economic crisis have undermined the health and economic wellbeing of American workers. Millions of Americans, many of whom are people of color, immigrants, and low-wage workers, continue to put their lives on the line every day to keep the country functioning through the pandemic. And more than 9.5 million workers have lost their jobs in the wake of COVID-19, with 4 million out of work for half a year or longer. Without additional government assistance, the economic and public health crises could drag on and our national vaccination program will be hobbled at a critical moment.

    The American Rescue Plan will change the course of the pandemic and deliver immediate relief for American workers. The plan will build a bridge to an equitable economic recovery and immediately reduce child poverty. The bill is one of the most progressive pieces of legislation in history, with more than two thirds of its tax cuts and direct payments going to families making less than $90,000 per year.

  • Missouri Jobs with Justice is a coalition of community, labor, student and religious groups committed to fighting together for economic justice in Missouri. Organizations and individuals make up the base of Jobs with Justice. Since 1999, MO JWJ has shown up for workers across the state.

  • Powered by low-wage workers in the natural resource and care economies, Firelands advocates for workers’ rights across rural Washington through education and narrative change work.

  • The Billion Minds Institute will focus attention on the goal of a humane and regenerative social climate for human sustainability. Getting to that goal has to include the perspective of the mass effects of emotional and psychological change, suffering, and damage. This scale is not typically the driving paradigm for the public mental health field. This way of thinking calls for a new diversity of collaborations and partners, knowledge and data sharing, tools and policy packages, methods and testable models — linking social innovators and mental health innovators.

    Billion Minds will advance policy and action that contends with the sheer scale of the mental health burdens and challenges to a resilient and humane social climate also at stake in the climate crisis. It will be an anchor “think-action tank” to provoke and mobilize content, aims, learning, and policy momentum building blocks for this new field of applied mental health for human sustainability.

  • Rockaway Initiative for Sustainability & Equity (RISE) is a community-based organization in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York, that provides enriching youth and community programming to inspire all generations of Rockaway residents to care for their environment and community in order to advance social equity and the physical well being of our vibrant, coastal community.

  • El Puente is a community human rights institution that promotes leadership for peace and justice through the engagement of members (youth and adult) in the arts for social change, education, social justice organizing, wellness and environmental advocacy. Founded in 1982, El Puente currently integrates the diverse activities and community campaigns of El Puente Arts and the El Puente Green Light District within its 6 Youth Leadership Centers, the MS50-El Puente Community School, its nationally recognized public high school, the El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, the El Puente Global Justice Institute, and the El Puente Latino Climate Action Network. Organizing in North Brooklyn and beyond, El Puente remains at the forefront of community & youth development, and as such, initiates/impacts social policy locally and nationally.

  • I worked with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to implement a $31 million large-scale installation of a pneumatic waste collection system that will serve the NYCHA campuses of Polo Grounds Towers and, subject to funding, Rangel Houses in Upper Manhattan. Once completed, the project will fully modernize trash collection and disposal methods at the campuses, by retrofitting the existing garbage chute in each building to enable vacuum-based depositing of refuse and recyclables through an underground pipe system. According to Authority estimates, the innovation will save NYCHA hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in operating costs and recover thousands of hours of time spent by building caretaker staff to move trash from interior to exterior compactors. The measure is also expected to improve overall safety for staff – as garbage handling is the leading cause of workplace injuries at NYCHA.

  • As part of the 2019 United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agreement, the New York City Housing Authority’s (NYCHA) Transformation Plan outlines critical improvements to the Authority’s management structure, policies and operations. Through the continuing implementation of this plan, NYCHA is working to improve residents’ quality of life and the delivery of services at its 335 developments, while addressing specific compliance pillar areas, including lead-based paint, leaks and mold, heating and elevator services, and pest and waste management, across the portfolio.

  • The Racial Justice Commission (RJC), formed in 2021, is a charter revision commission tasked with examining structural racism within NYC. The RJC has examined the City’s Charter to identify structural barriers facing Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern and all People of Color (BIPOC*) in NYC and, based on community input, has put forward Ballot Questions aimed at eliminating barriers and promoting racial equity.

  • Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer initiated a Religious Facilities Task Force that brought together stakeholders to meet and discuss strategies around issues congregations are facing as it relates to development pressures and the impact on communities. This Action Guide was developed in partnership with graduate students at NYU’s Wagner School as a primer for congregations facing land use issues for the first time. Religious institutions are a bedrock of neighborhood life and identity, and serve as a spiritual, social, and cultural resource for our city. The pressure of being in New York shouldn’t have to mean that congregations close—or that they “cash in” from a once-in-a-generation real estate boom.

  • 250 Water Street is a site in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is currently occupied by a parking lot, located in the South Street Seaport, one of the city's historic districts.

  • The Broome Street Development is a comprehensive master plan compromised of two mixed-use buildings totaling approximately 400,000sf facing Norfolk, Broome, and Suffolk Streets in the Lower East Side, across from the new Essex Crossing development.

    The first building will be a cultural heritage center surrounded by the preserved remnants of the Beth Hamedrash Hagodol (BHH) synagogue, with a 16-story mid-rise above, consisting of 115 low-income senior housing units.

    The second building will be a 30-story mixed-use contextual high-rise, which will serve as the flagship headquarters for the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), the nation’s largest Asian-American social services organization. Complementary to the headquarters will be neighborhood retail and rental homes, including 25% set aside for permanent affordability. The proposed design relates to the existing neighborhood context of historic Lower East Side low rise buildings and the existing Seward Park towers.

    Together, the two buildings represent more than 40% permanent affordability.

  • SoHo and NoHo are dynamic mixed-use neighborhoods with a diverse blend of residential, office, creative and retail spaces. The SoHo/NoHo Neighborhood Plan seeks to expand housing opportunities for New Yorkers and promote equity, support continued cultural and economic success in a holistic way and reduce regulatory burdens for the people who live and work there.

  • The East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) Project is a coastal protection initiative, jointly funded by the City of New York and the federal government, aimed at reducing flood risk due to coastal storms and sea level rise on Manhattan's East Side from East 25th Street to Montgomery Street. The boundaries of this project correspond with the natural "pinch-points" in the 100-year floodplain: areas where the land is higher along the coastline, making it easier to close the system off from water entering from the north and south. The project design integrates flood protection into the community fabric, improving waterfront open spaces and access, rather than walling off the neighborhood. Construction on the East Side Coastal Resiliency project began in Fall 2020 and will continue through 2026.

  • This 12-week workshop bridges the disciplines of urban planning, architecture, sociology, and anthropology by providing a broad overview of alternative discourses with two core learning objectives and parts: 1) a deeper understanding of alternative perspectives beyond historical, planning literature that remains inherently gendered, hierarchical, and euro-centric, and 2) learning to inclusively review planning, public policy and literature of cities both within the domestic U.S realm and abroad of which are becoming increasingly influenced by immigration, multi-ethnic, and transnational communities and labor economies. Topics include decolonizing planning, indigenous planning, health and disability studies, environmental studies and food justice, LGBTQI and feminist planning, gender in disaster planning, Chicanx and Latinx planning, labor, (im)migration, borders (neo-liberalization and nationalism), urban citizenship, and political mobilization.

  • This paper analyzes how the development of innovation districts in industrial waterfront zones affects the social vulnerabilities of working class, minority and immigrant neighborhoods towards gentrification. Research uses Sunset Park, Brooklyn as a neighborhood case study and incorporates a mixed-methodology design through archival research and qualitative interviews. This study first defines the pre-existing risks and relationship between industrial use zoning and neighborhood social vulnerabilities through archival research of neighborhood history and recent urban developments. Qualitative data is generated through interviews of neighborhood residents, community activist organizations and non-profits of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, tenants of Industry City, advocates of Innovation Districts, and urban planners to understand the potential, social impacts of innovation districts and their adaptive re-use schemes upon working class neighborhoods.

  • Beirut is a city divided. Following the Green Line of the civil war, dividing the Christian east and the Muslim west, today hundreds of such lines dissect the city. For the residents of Beirut, urban planning could hold promise: a new spatial order could bring a peaceful future. But with unclear state structures and outsourced public processes, urban planning has instead become a contest between religious-political organizations and profit-seeking developers. Neighborhoods reproduce poverty, displacement, and urban violence.

    For the War Yet to Come examines urban planning in three neighborhoods of Beirut's southeastern peripheries, revealing how these areas have been developed into frontiers of a continuing sectarian order. Hiba Bou Akar argues these neighborhoods are arranged, not in the expectation of a bright future, but according to the logic of "the war yet to come": urban planning plays on fears and differences, rumors of war, and paramilitary strategies to organize everyday life. As she shows, war in times of peace is not fought with tanks, artillery, and rifles, but involves a more mundane territorial contest for land and apartment sales, zoning and planning regulations, and infrastructure projects.

  • California’s housing affordability crisis has rightly received a great deal of attention by state lawmakers, the press, academics, and ordinary Californians. Important questions raised in this discussion are: What laws or regulations might impede housing construction in high-cost areas? What solutions might help reduce those barriers with a minimum impact on other important values, such as environmental protection, public participation, and equitable treatment of low-income communities of color? More specifically, does state environmental law (the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA), or local land-use regulations, constrain housing development? To help answer that last question, we collected data on all residential development projects (of more than five units) over a three-year period in five Bay Area cities (San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Redwood City, and Palo Alto). We analyzed the law applicable to these residential development projects, including the local zoning ordinances, and interviewed important actors in the residential development process in each of these five cities. We found that these local governments are imposing discretionary review processes on all residential development projects of five or more units within their borders. That means even if these developments comply with the underlying zoning code, they require additional scrutiny from the local government before obtaining a building permit. This triggers CEQA review of these projects. In other words, what drives whether and how environmental review occurs for residential projects is local land-use law. Our data shows that in many cases, these cities appear to impose redundant or multiple layers of discretionary review on projects. We also found that the processes by which local governments review residential development projects under their zoning ordinances and under CEQA varies from city to city. As a result, developers seeking to construct residential projects often must learn to navigate very different and complicated land-use systems, even if they work in the same region. This appears to particularly burden smaller development projects. Our data also shows that these cities rely on streamlined CEQA procedures for the majority of their residential projects, including many large projects. The effectiveness, however, of those streamlined procedures in terms of reducing timeframes for project approval varies greatly from city to city, indicating that a range of non-legal factors (such as practices in planning departments, or the amount of resources dedicated to planning) may impact development timelines. Finally, our own research process also revealed that the kind of project level data that we collected, while essential to crafting effective solutions to the California housing crisis, is not easily available. We therefore recommend that the legislature develop a consistent and uniform data reporting program for this data, which will benefit policymakers, developers, and the public as a whole.

  • A circular economy, broadly, is “restorative and regenerative by design and aims to keep products, components, and materials at their highest utility and value at all times… ultimately decoup[ling] global economic development from finite resource consumption” (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015). Specifically, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and their global network of partners have argued that the bio-cycle economy has unrealized potential to provide substantial economic benefits that could be gained by adopting more circular approaches to the way we manage organic nutrients (MacArthur, 2018). The bio-economy is estimated to be worth $12.5 trillion (17% annually of all global economic activity) (MacArthur, 2018). Within the bio-economy, the food and beverage industry is the largest sector and has “over 1 billion people working each day to grow, process, transport, market, cook, pack, sell and deliver food” (MacArthur, 2018).

    The world’s population is growing at a steady pace and is rapidly urbanizing. By 2050 the global population will grow nearly 30% to 9.1 billion people, of which, nearly two thirds will be living in urbanized areas (Ellen MacArthur, 2018; Hutson, 2018; United Nations, 2014). Increased population growth will place additional pressure on the global food systems—requiring a doubling of crop production to meet the growing demand for food (Foley, 2018). As a result, many actors along the food value chain have pointed out the need to focus on developing a circular economy focused on the food systems.

  • This piece discusses Yangon City’s historical development that arose out of colonial planning, including the impact upon immigrant communities and social stratifications in colonial Myanmar.

  • The studio centered around using urban design to improve residential health conditions for those living in the Rio de Janeiro social housing complex formally known as Conjunto Residencial Prefeito Mendes de Moraes (Pedregulho). This project aimed to explore multiple options to activate underutilized public spaces within the building through design and ethnographic studies.

  • The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) in partnership with the Center for Urban Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience (CUDRR+R), carried out a study from November 2015 to November 2016 to identify the type of authorities and capacities that local governments have for undertaking DRR activities to make cities resilient. This study aimed to provide an overview of authorities and capacities that empower local level action towards the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), as well as the distribution of responsibilities at local level, which is one of the indicators of disaster risk governance. This study also looked into the state of local-level DRR in different geographical contexts in terms of authorities, capacities and responsibilities, as well the DRR strategies and resilience building efforts of local governments.

  • During 2017-2018, 214 cities/municipalities from Asia (88), Americas (50), Sub-Saharan Africa (50), and Arab States (26) conducted the preliminary level assessment of the Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities, as part of the initiative “Making Cities Sustainable and Resilient: Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 at the Local Level”, supported by the European Commission. The report articulate the results of these preliminary Scorecard assessments into an analysis of the global trends of resilience actions, reflecting the progress in resilience building at the local level.

  • Next-generation lumber and mass timber products are becoming the latest innovation in building. Innovative new technologies and building systems have enabled longer wood spans, taller walls, and higher buildings, and continue to expand the possibilities for wood use in construction. Mass timber wood products are flexible, strong, and fire resistant, and can be used as a safe and sustainable alternative to concrete, masonry, and steel. Using wood helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by storing carbon and simultaneously offsetting emissions from conventional building materials. Wood can also help struggling rural forest communities. During the Recession, the drop in new construction and decline in home remodeling had a deep impact on wood manufacturing. However, if next-generation wood products can penetrate just five to fifteen percent of the non-residential North American market, it would mean roughly 0.8 - 2.4 billion board feet of lumber consumed annually. To put that in real-world context, roughly 35 jobs are created for each million board feet of wood processed.

    The two winning proposals – Framework and 475 West 18th – were selected by a panel of distinguished jurors in the architecture and engineering fields who are familiar with innovative wood building systems. While each took a unique approach, both projects met the Competition's criteria to showcase the safe application, practicality and sustainability of a minimum 80-foot structure that uses mass timber, composite wood technologies and innovative building techniques.

  • New York City is facing a youth unemployment crisis, but the city’s youth workforce development programs reach only a fraction of those in need of help and are too often misaligned to the developmental needs of young New Yorkers.

  • While more New Yorkers than ever are using the city’s public libraries, a significant share of the branches suffer from major physical defects and are poorly configured for how New Yorkers are using libraries today. This report provides a comprehensive blueprint for bringing these vital community institutions into the 21st Century.

  • The information provided in this manual is intended for individuals, in particular women and girls, who are in the United States and who fear they will suffer harm in the form of domestic violence by an intimate partner (husband, boyfriend, partner) if they are forced to return to their country of origin. This fear may be based on abuse by an intimate partner that occurred in your home country. Or it may have occurred in the U.S., if the abuser is now in your home country or may soon return there.

    This manual may be used by individuals in removal proceedings as a defense to deportation in immigration court, or by those who wish to affirmatively apply for asylum at the Asylum Office, bringing themselves to the attention of U.S. immigration authorities. Your immigration options, and the arguments you make to apply for asylum or other immigration options, may vary depending on your situation.