Lize Mogel

Lize Mogel is an artist who works with the interstices between art and cultural geography. She has mapped public parks in Los Angeles, future territorial disputes in the Arctic, and wastewater economies in NYC. She is co-editor of the book/map collection “An Atlas of Radical Cartography”. Her individual and collaborative work has been shown internationally including at the Sharjah and Pittsburgh Biennials, in “Greater New York” and “Experimental Geography”. She is also a grantwriter and development consultant, fundraising for art and social justice organizations for almost a decade. She has worked for CUP since August 2005.

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.

Ron Morrison

Ron Morrison is a curious amalgam: both amateur cartographer and print media enthusiast, June Jordan devotee and lover of lab coats. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign with a background in Chemistry, Psychology and Gender Studies. For the past four years he had been working in New Orleans creating popular education pedagogies using art and design to demystify processes of attaining and preserving housing. He believes that people should have full participatory access to shaping their cities and communities and sees design as a medium for creating knowledge and deconstructing discursive power paradigms. He is currently a graduate student in the Design and Urban Ecologies program at Parsons the New School for Design.

Silas Munro

Silas Munro is Chair of the MFA Program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts. His mission is in service of beautiful, smart design with empathy for humanity. 

Before his current practice, Munro was Design Director at Housing Works in New York, Designer-In-Residence at NC State and Design Fellow at the Walker in Minneapolis. He holds a MFA and BFA in Graphic Design from CalArts and RISD, respectively. 

Based in Miami, Munro’s From the Desk of: creates design for varied audiences across media that has won awards from ADC, AIGA, Print and SAPPI Ideas that Matter. Silas’ writing about design has been published by GOOD, SpeakUp and the Walker.

Aubrey Murdock

Aubrey Murdock is a graduate of the Design & Urban Ecologies program at Parsons The New School (M.S.) and Columbia College (B.A., Film Production). She focuses on the role of transdisciplinary media and design within civic education and involvement. Her most recent work includes a short film outlining a history of discriminatory planning policies in the United States and University of Orange’s long term site-based oral history project: Hidden Treasure of Our Orange. She is currently researching collaborative natural resource management and remediation projects in her home state of Wyoming.

Students from Museumopolis

CUP, Dia:Beacon, and CUP teaching artist Katarzyna Balug worked with students from Dutchess County on a project to find out the role of the museum in a city. Those students were Mary Akinmola, Ira Cekici, Jazhane Crockett, Curtis Eckley, Catherine Felton, Zachary Gacer, Sean Grogan, Jazlen Mason, Michelle Moynihan, Rachel O’Mara, Elisabeth Olivencia, Patrick Roa, Aurora Saradjian, Adrianna Simmons, and Airika Yee.

Kristen Myers

Kristen Myers is a communications designer, design educator, and dog lady living in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently a Senior Graphic Designer at the NYC Department of Design and Construction, Thesis Advisor at Pratt Institute, and Visiting Lecturer at Rutgers University-Newark. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Miami University and an MFA in Communications Design from Pratt Institute. Her work has been recognized by 50 Books | 50 Covers, Print Regional Design Annual, Graphis Design Annual, Core77 Design Awards, and featured by TIME, GOOD, Complex, Hypebeast, and Paste Magazine, among others. She likes people, design, and staying up too late on the internet. 

Momoe Narazaki

Momoe Narazaki is a designer and illustrator. She is from Saitama which is next to Tokyo in Japan. She likes making stuff which is not too intellectual but joyful, invigorating, simple almost elementary.

Gileen Navarro

Gileen Navarro was CUP’s 2019 Fall Intern. She was born in Manila, Philippines and grew up in Long Beach, CA. Gileen is a junior at Stanford University majoring in Product Design. This past summer, she worked as a Design Student Assistant for the Stanford Graduate School of Business Library and also collaborated with Bayani Art, a Pilipino arts organization in the Bay Area, to create a female-empowering shirt design. Gileen’s passion for creative expression and advocating for those who are under-represented fuels her interest in working at CUP, and she strives to learn the role that design thinking plays in social issues.

Oliver Neumann

Oliver Neumann is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. At UBC, he is also an Associate Chair of Wood Building Design and Construction.

Oliver Neumann’s research focuses on the role of digital technology in the building process and in broader speculations of emerging material culture. His research, including design-build projects, explores contemporary fabrication technologies, mass-customization processes, and their implications for design concepts, design methodology, and construction processes.

Oliver Neumann developed an exhibition layout and concept, and designed and fabricated exhibition display units for The Programmable City – Building Codes (with Mari Fujita and Damon Rich) at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, NY, in 2001.

New Economy Project

New Economy Project (NEP) is a resource and advocacy center for community groups in New York City. Its mission is to promote community economic justice and to eliminate discriminatory economic practices that harm communities and perpetuate inequality and poverty. NEP employs multiple strategies – including community outreach and education, advocacy, coalition organizing, policy research and analysis, media outreach, technical support for community groups, and direct legal services – to expand access to fair and affordable credit and financial services needed to develop and sustain healthy and safe communities. NEP will be worked with CUP on the Change It Up! MPP.

New Immigrant Community Empowerment

New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE) is a community-based, non-profit organization that works to ensure that new immigrants can build social, political and economic power in their communities and beyond. Over the years, NICE has built community power to effect change for our base, made up primarily of day laborers in the construction industry and domestic workers. We have markedly increased the visibility of the issues facing our base, including wage theft, and have taken the lead and/or joined forces in key campaigns for immigrant workers’ rights, for the rights of immigrant consumers, and for just and humane immigration reform. NICE worked with CUP on ¡No me han pagado!, a guide for day laborers about how to prevent wage theft.

New York City Environmental Fund

The New York City Environmental Fund was established in 1994 by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Hudson River Foundation to foster active community stewardship of waterways, shorelines, parklands and open spaces in and around New York City.

New York Foundation

is a steadfast supporter of community organizing and advocacy. Their grants support community-initiated solutions to solve local problems, constituents mobilizing for adequate and equitable resources, and groups organizing a collective voice among those whose voices have not been heard.

The New York Immigration Coalition

• The New York Immigrant Coalition (NYIC) aims to achieve a fairer and more just society that values the contributions of immigrants and extends opportunity to all. NYIC is made up of more than 150 member organizations serving New York’s low-income immigrant communities. Their work includes advancing more equitable policies, building immigrants’ political power, empowering immigrants through community education, and providing training and technical assistance to other community groups and advocates.