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.

Aska Mukuti

Aska was CUP’s 2018 Fellow for Change in Design. After graduating from Boston University with a BFA in graphic design, she returned to her roots in the Bay Area to teach and tutor students through a local nonprofit. She loved creating individualized worksheets and activities to help engage her students and build their academic confidence. The experience augmented her interests in design as a tool for social impact, and it led her to move from California to New York to intern for IDEO.org as a Communications Designer. Aska is looking forward to combining her passions for design, teaching, and public service to foster community engagement and learn more about the local issues that affect New York’s diverse residents. As a directionally-challenged newbie to the city, she enjoys walking around to search for the best Caribbean and Jamaican food (the spicier, the better) in her new neighborhood of Crown Heights. askamukuti.com

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.

Siyona Ravi

Siyona is CUP’s Program & Communications Coordinator. Before joining CUP, she worked on several creative advocacy projects, including the Fundred Project, a campaign led by artist Mel Chin, and a documentary film for a TGNC branch of a sex workers’ labor union in Kolkata, India. In 2019 she was a Create Change Fellow with the Laundromat Project. She holds a BA in Visual Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She was born in Bangalore, grew up in Chicago, and now lives Crown Heights, where you can find her making a mess in the kitchen. 

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.

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.

Frampton Tolbert

Frampton is CUP’s Deputy Director. For more than 20 years, he has worked in development and communications for arts and architecture organizations. Previously he was the Deputy Director of the Historic Districts Council. He has received a New York State Council on the Arts grant and a James Marston Fitch Foundation Fellowship for his work examining vernacular modernism in the borough of Queens, and currently serves on several boards including Docomomo New York/Tri-State and Municipal Art Society’s Preservation Committee. Frampton holds a degree in historic preservation from the University of Mary Washington. 

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.

Jenn Anne Williams

Jenn was CUP’s Youth Education Program Manager. With a strong belief that all youths deserve equitable access to the arts, Jenn has developed inclusive programs, published curriculum guides, and trained educators in how to use the arts as a tool for understanding, development, and social change with over 100 New York City public schools and community based organizations.  Jenn continues her pursuit of art as a tool for empowerment as a practicing artist, designer, educator, and administrator implementing high-quality, interdisciplinary art programs. You can follow her creative pursuits at artjawdesigns.com.

Sandy Xu

Sandy was a Program Assistant at CUP. She has pursued her interest in all things sustainable and inclusive at a variety of places, including a civil society organization in China, a disaster relief nonprofit in Japan, and a political advocacy group in New Jersey. Originally from Hawaii, she studied Chinese and sociology at Peking University and has a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Harvard University. She can make herself understood, for the most part, in Chinese and Japanese; she is working on her Swedish.

Sucharitha Yelimeli

Sucharitha Yelimeli is CUP’s Program Coordinator. She hails from Northern California, and has a background in architecture, art, and teaching. Before coming to CUP she designed single-family homes and before that, was an art teacher. She’s interested in how people respond to design, especially at the city scale, and likes taking seemingly unapproachable ideas and making them friendlier. Some things she enjoys doing on the side are getting lost in a good book, making very intricate coffee cup doodles, and trying to win the affection of street cats.