Victoria Shire

Victoria Shire has over 20 years of experience mobilizing public, private and philanthropic investments to advance community, neighborhood and organizational development. She is the Chief Program Officer at Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City, where she leads and develops programs that reach over 3,000 youth each year. Victoria holds an MPA from Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and a BA in philosophy from Wittenberg University. She lives in Harlem with her husband, daughter, and son, and has never given up on the Chicago Cubs. Victoria joined the CUP board in 2012.

Shristi Shrestha

Shristi was a Program Assistant at CUP. She received a BA from Mount Holyoke College with a major in Studio Art. She is interested in using art as a means of community engagement. As an artist for a public art project called Kolor Kathmandu, she painted murals around the city of Kathmandu, Nepal, where she was born and raised. Before CUP, she was an Intern at Renegade Performance Group. She enjoys walking, biking, and cooking.

Paul Shuette

Paul Schuette is an architect living in Los Angeles. Paul Schuette has worked on “The Connection between Abandoned Buildings and Homeless People.”

Nika Simovich

Nika Simovich, a New York based graphic designer, uses interactive experiences to explore the relationship between history and the internet. She is interested in non-designed spaces and the intersection of technology and design

Andrew Sloat

Andrew Sloat is a graphic designer and filmmaker. His studio makes books, identities, educational videos, ads, and websites for non-profits, cultural institutions, and corporate clients. He lives and works in Brooklyn, is active in local and state-level good-government activism, and teaches in the graphic design MFAprogram at RISD.

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/

Students from Soda Census

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

June Song

June Song was a senior Design major at City University New York Queens College who is interested in combining her passion for design with a desire to help people, particularly immigrants like herself, navigate confusing systems in the United States. She also holds an associate degree in Interior Design from Ducksung Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea. She is excited to work with CUP to help communities to use the power of design.

Maxwell Sorensen

Maxwell Sorensen is a Brooklyn- and sometimes Philadelphia-based director and animator specializing in stop-motion animation, traditional puppetry, and a handmade aesthetic. His work has been featured on MTV2, MTVU,FUSE, as an official selection at SXSW, and on small screens across the globe. He has experience as a stop-motion animator and as a digital motion graphics artist working in Adobe After Effects. maxwellsorensen.com

Maxwell was a 2013-2014 Public Access Design Fellow and worked on Shifty Business.

Juliette Spertus

Juliette Spertus is an architect and curator. Her work focuses on the relationship between architecture, infrastructure and public space. She uses cultural programming to publicly draw parallels between overlooked experiences of the recent past and current strategies for the built environment. She organized the exhibit Fast Trash: Roosevelt Island’s Pneumatic Tubes and the Future of Cities, and collaborated with CUP on the educational programming. She is continuing her research on pneumatic collection and is planning a new exhibition.

Stand for Tenant Safety

STS is a citywide coalition of community organizations who are fighting to protect the lives and homes of New York City tenants from landlords who are using construction as harassment. We define construction as harassment as when landlords use aggressive, disruptive, and unsafe construction as means to displace tenants from their homes. Through a community-driven effort, STS has worked with the New York City Council to pass eleven pieces of legislation to reform the Department of Buildings. The Coalition is led by St. Nicks Alliance, Cooper Square Committee and the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center (CDP).

Angela Starita

Angela Starita is a graduate student, freelance writer and teacher. Her work has been published in The Architect’s Newspaper, Print, Metropolis, The New York Times, and other publications. She is interested in industrial architecture and the work of Lina Bo Bardi and other Brazilian modern architects. Angela was an intern at CUP.

Students from Store Stories

Students from the BCCP collaborated with CUP and Mads Lynnerup on “Store Stories.”

Street Vendor Project

The Street Vendor Project is a membership-based project with nearly 2,000 vendor members who are working together to create a vendors’ movement for permanent change. We reach out to vendors in the streets and storage garages and teach them about their legal rights and responsibilities. We hold meetings where we plan collective actions for getting our voices heard. We publish reports and file lawsuits to raise public awareness about vendors and the enormous contribution they make to our city. Finally, we help vendors grow their businesses by linking them with small business training and loans.

The Street Vendor Project Collaborated with CUP on the Vendor Power! MPP.

Streetwise & Safe

Streetwise & Safe—also known as SAS—is a project by and for youth of color in New York City that shares the ins & outs, do’s & don’ts, and street politics of police encounters between LGBTQQ youth of color and the police. We also stand for and with LGBTQQ and youth with experience trading sex for survival needs. We feel knowing your rights makes you more confident in protecting yourself during and after interactions with the police. We also know that the reality is that the police don’t always respect our rights but knowing what they are is important so that we can fight for them later. We also create a space to share strategies to stay safe from all forms of violence experienced by LGBTQQ youth, and advocate for policies that will change the ways police interact with us.