WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS
TAMARA ROY, Principal, Stantec, 2016 BSA President
Tamara Roy is an architect and urban designer specializing in residential, academic, and mixed use master planning projects. Voted one of Boston’s Top 50 Power Women in Real Estate, she was the design team leader for the new residence tower at MassArt, describedas ‘the most interesting highrise in years’ by the Boston Globe. KATIE SWENSON, VP of Design, Enterprise Community Partners
Katie Swenson is the Vice President of Design at Enterprise Community Partners and a national leader in sustainable design for low-income communities. Katie overseas a portfolio of programs designed to advance the quality and application of design in affordable housing and community development nationwide. ATYIA MARTIN, Chief Resilience Officer, City of Boston
Dr. S. Atyia Martin was appointed by Mayor Martin J. Walsh as the Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Boston as part of the 100 Resilient Cities, pioneered by the Rockefeller foundation. She is also adjunct faculty at Northeastern University in the Master of Homeland Security program. |
KEYNOTE
HYEOK KIM, Deputy Mayor for the City of Seattle
Hyeok Kim is Deputy Mayor for the City of Seattle focused on external and community relations. She was appointed to this position by Mayor Ed Murray in January 2014, becoming the first Asian American woman to hold such a position in Seattle’s history. Deputy Mayor Kim is responsible for helping to develop and promote meaningful connections and relationships between the Mayor’s office and city government with the diverse neighborhoods and communities of Seattle, and with state, federal, and international partners. Before joining the Murray Administration, she was Executive Director of InterIm Community Development Association (InterIm CDA), a nonprofit affordable housing and community development corporation based in Seattle’s Chinatown/ International District. Prior to that, she was a senior policy analyst for Speaker of the House Frank Chopp and the House Democratic Caucus in the Washington State Legislature, where she staffed affordable housing, human services, foster care, welfare and workforce development, and early learning issues. Over the past decade and a half, Deputy Mayor Kim has volunteered extensively in the community and in civic life. She is a former Commissioner on President Barack Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (2010-2013), and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Northwest Area Foundation, a philanthropic organization that serves an eight-state region with a mission to alleviate poverty, especially in Native American communities. |
TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION: OWNING OUR HISTORY
ALEXANDER VON HOFFMAN, Senior Fellow, Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University
Alexander von Hoffman is a Senior Fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He is the author of House by House, Block by Block: The Rebirth of America’s Urban Neighborhoods (Oxford University Press) and Local Attachments: The Making of an American Urban Neighborhood, 1850 to 1920 (Johns Hopkins University Press). |
INEQUITY MEETS THE GROUND: LOCAL STORIES
CEASAR MCDOWELL / MODERATOR, Professor of the Practice of Community Development, MIT
Ceasar McDowell is Professor of Practice of Community Development at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He recently served as President of Interaction Institute for Social Change. As founder of MIT’s Co-Lab (previously named Center for Reflective Community Practice), Ceasar works to develop the critical moments reflection method to help communities build knowledge from their practice. JIM VRABEL, Author, A People’s History of the New Boston
Jim Vrabel is a former newspaper reporter, longtime community activist, and local historian. He was a founder of the Back of the Hill Community Development Corporation on Mission Hill and of the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School in Hyde Park, and served as assistant director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services, executive assistant to the Boston School Committee, and senior research associate and editor at the Boston Planning and Development Agency. |
IVÁN ESPINOZA-MADRIGAL, Executive Director, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice
Iván Espinoza-Madrigal is the Executive Director of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice. In a decade as a public interest lawyer, Iván has worked on a wide range of civil rights issues, including racial justice, immigrant rights, and LGBT/HIV equality. He was formerly at Lambda Legal, where he focused on LGBT/HIV issues, including marriage equality. |
SUZANNE LEE, Educator, Boston Public Schools and Community Leader
Suzanne Lee has been a community leader for more than four decades, helping immigrant mothers to launch the first Chinese Parents Association, unemployed garment workers to secure Boston’s first bilingual training programs, as well as working closely with the Boston Foundation to address persistent poverty in the city. She was lead founder and longtime chair of the Chinese Progressive Association. Most recently, Suzanne helped pass the Bilingual Ballot for Chinese and Vietnamese community. |
THE STATE OF EQUITY: WHAT DOES CURRENT DATA SAY?
ALVARO LIMA / SPEAKER, Director of Research, Boston Planning and Development Agency
Alvaro Lima is the Director of Research for the Boston Planning and Development Agency (bpda). Originally from Brazil, he recently served as Senior Vice President and Director of Research of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), a non-profit organization founded by Harvard Professor Michael Porter. Prior to joining ICIC he was the Director of Economic Development at Urban Edge, a Boston-based community development corporation. |
DESIGNING FOR EQUITY: TAKING ACTION PANELIST
DANA MCKINNEY, MArch/MUP student, African American Student Union, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Dana McKinney is a fifth year Master in Architecture and Urban Planning student at the Harvard GSD. She is currently completing her thesis, designing a reentry housing community and restorative justice facilities for recently released offenders, probationers, and parolees in Newark, NJ. Dana has served as the President of the Harvard GSD African American Student Union and sat on the GSD’s Dean’s Diversity Committee, the Urban Planning Diversity Committee, and the Harvard Black Graduate Student Alliance. |
KORDAE HENRY, Associate Designer, MASS Design Group
Kordae Henry joined MASS in 2015 as an associate designer, and has worked on the Gallaudet University design competition in Washington, D.C. and The Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. His ongoing work delivers a clear narrative between architecture and landscape architecture as bridge connecting two parallel worlds. At night Kordae is co-director of a design collective poignantly entitled JUST NØT THE SAME. |
MIA SCHARPHIE, Principal, Creative Agency
Mia Scharphie is the principal of Creative Agency, is a design and research company focused on community building, place-based change and empowerment projects. Passionate about the potential of design to catalyze social change, in 2012 Mia cofounded Proactive Practices, a research collaborative that identifies and publicizes emerging business models of socially entrepreneurial design. Her writings on issues of equity in design have been published in the Christian Science Monitor and GOOD. |
ALLAN CO, Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow
Allan Co is a current Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow, working in partnership with Hudson River Housing in Poughkeepsie, NY and MASS Design Group in Boston, MA. His fellowship focuses on quality affordable housing, innovative public programming and community engagement as catalysts for equitable economic revitalization. Working with both non-profit organizations, Allan’s work seeks to build capacity of residents and foster local expertise to diversify development and build resilience in the Mid-Hudson Valley. QUILIAN RIANO, Founder and principal of DSGN AGNC
Quilian Riano is the founder and principal of DSGN AGNC, a collaborative design/research studio exploring political engagement through architecture, urbanism and art. In practice and academia, Quilian works with stakeholders and trans-disciplinary teams to create comprehensive research into policies that affect urban spaces that in turn can be used to propose a variety of spatial designs, targeted policies and actions that seek to increase agency at various scales. BRADEN CROOKS, Founding Partner, Designing the We
Braden Crooks is a founding partner at Designing the We, a social impact design studio based at the Centre for Social Innovation in New York City. He graduated from the innovative program MS Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons the New School for Design with departmental honors in May 2014. Braden has taught ecological thinking in urban issues at Parsons, produced a web series about New York and has continued his organizing work on environmental, social and economic justice. EMMANUEL PRATT, Loeb Fellow, Executive Director, Sweet Water Foundation
Emmanuel is also the Director of Aquaponics for Chicago State University and teaches courses within the college of Arts and Sciences. Emmanuel’s professional and academic work has involved explorations and investigations in such topics as architecture, urbanization, race/identity, gentrification, and most recently transformative processes of community development through intersections of food security. AYAKO MARUYAMA, Creativity Lab Design Lead, DS4SI (Design Studio for Social Intervention)
DS4SI is a space where activists, artists, academics and the larger public come together to imagine new approaches to social change and new angles to address complex social issues. Ayako’s work at DS4SI focuses on community engagement and includes leading the production of the Go Boston 2030 Visioning Lab, an unprecedented public space for Boston residents to express their vision for the City’s 15-year transportation plan. |