Meet the 2026-27 cohort of urban leaders who will survey the world for courageous ideas to reclaim streets, expand public transit, and undo the dominance of the private car.
With leaders in architecture, planning, design, development, policy, engineering, journalism, and advocacy, this year’s Fast Forward Fellows are already immersed in reimagining the future of mobility in New York City.
Fellows are advocating for safer streets through New York’s first political action committee focused on street safety and public transportation; organizing campaigns with working New Yorkers to demand dignified bus commutes; investigating generational infrastructure developments like the Interborough Express (IBX); expanding connectivity and multimodal transportation at Brooklyn Marine Terminal; and more.
Fast Forward Fellows
Alexandra (Chip) Perro
NYC Emergency Management
Chip Perro is a Program Manager in the Planning Unit at New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM), where she works on citywide preparedness initiatives and supports activations as a Transportation, Utilities, and Infrastructure Emergency Support Function Coordinator. Chip holds an MSc in City Design & Social Science from the London School of Economics, where her research examined emergency preparedness in underground transit systems. She also received a Certificate in Horticulture from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, driven by an ongoing interest in street trees and the role of green spaces in urban resilience.
Anne Krassner
NYC Department of Transportation
Anne Krassner is an urban planner who believes transportation is about more than getting from place to place—it is about creating opportunity, independence, and a sense of belonging. She currently serves as Deputy Director for Mobility Management at the New York City Department of Transportation, where she leads initiatives that advance equitable and accessible transportation for older adults, people with disabilities, low-income New Yorkers, and communities with limited English proficiency. Throughout her career, Anne has worked across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including leadership roles at NYC DOT, Lyft, Citi Bike, and transportation projects in Brazil. Her work is driven by a commitment to equity and a belief community power can effect systemic change. She is passionate about building partnerships, working with communities, and riding her bike around NYC.
Beth Carliner Pine
Empire State Development
Beth Carliner Pine is a Senior Architect at Empire State Development (ESD) on their Real Estate Development and Planning team where she manages design and construction initiatives for New York State on underutilized state-owned sites primarily for housing. Beth is motivated by the work at ESD because of its focus on tackling the housing crisis. She is also committed to bringing sustainable and resilient design to ESD’s developments. A major design factor for these developments is their connection to a larger transportation network. Beth is excited to explore opportunities to reimagine transportation access to create safer and more enjoyable connections throughout the city.
Burkina Morgan
NYC Department of Transportation
Burkina Morgan is the Program Manager for the NYC Department of Transportation’s Open Streets program, where she oversees community partnerships, program operations, and initiatives that expand public realm access across the five boroughs. She brings a background in community health and behavioral change communication, grounding the program’s work in approaches that elevate community voice, public wellbeing, and neighborhood resilience.
Burkina’s experience spans international public health, local government, and community reinvestment and infrastructure initiatives. She has worked with UNICEF, the UK’s National Health Service, and Thrive LDN, and she holds an MPH from New York University. She is particularly interested in how the built environment shapes social connection, community health, and equitable access to opportunity.
Caitlin Falk
Times Square Alliance – Business Improvement District
Caitlin Falk is Director of Policy & Research at Times Square Alliance, where she leads work spanning public policy, economic development, data analysis, sustainability, and the public realm. A graduate of Columbia University with a concentration in East Asian Studies, and an incoming Master of Urban Planning candidate at Hunter College, CUNY, Caitlin’s academic and professional experiences have fostered a broad interest in how cities around the world approach mobility, public space, and urban development.
Across her work, Caitlin brings a systems-thinking approach, strong stakeholder collaboration, and a commitment to improving urban life for all New Yorkers. She is particularly interested in the role of placemaking and transportation in creating more connected, accessible, and equitable communities.
Charlie Townsley
NYC Economic Development Corporation
Charlie Townsley is a Senior Project Manager in NYCEDC’s Neighborhood Strategies department, where he helps plan new neighborhoods, greenways, and public-realm improvements across New York City. Born in Chicago and raised on an organic farm, Charlie has long been interested in both the promise and the challenges of cities. Before joining NYCEDC, he studied equitable development in Philadelphia and worked as an architectural designer in Minneapolis.
Chase Rudner
Northeast Corridor Commission
Chase Rudner is a Senior Project Manager at the Northeast Corridor Commission, where he allocates nearly $2 billion in capital and operating expenses across corridor operators, including Amtrak and state partners. Prior to the Commission, Chase worked at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, overseeing the Department of Transportation’s finances and crafting the initial $904 million investment in New York City’s Streets Plan. Chase earned a Master of Urban Planning degree from New York University, during which time he was an Eisenhower Transportation Fellow.
Daniel Suckewer
NYC Economic Development Corporation
Daniel Suckewer is a lifelong New Yorker, born and raised on the Upper West Side. After nine years working in commercial real estate, Daniel left the private sector to join the Real Estate Transactions (RETs) team at New York City’s Economic Development Corporation in October 2022. As a Vice President on the RETs team, Daniel works on the disposition of City-owned land – managing public RFPs, negotiating with selected developers and partner agencies, and evaluating new sites for future projects.
Daniel holds a bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University, where he majored in economics and history and minored in art history.
Daniela Castillo
El Puente
Rooted and continuously molded by lessons from the so-called lands of HTX/MX/NYC as teachers and homes, Daniela Castillo (elle/ella, they/she) brings deep love and energy for the expansive possibilities that live within the intersections of urban/environmental/multi-species ecologies. As the Program Director of the Green Light District at El Puente, Dani is always motivated and driven by processes of collective visioning and world-building. With on-the-ground experience mutual aid coordinating, organizing with neighbors, and stewarding green spaces/gardens locally, Dani remains grounded and guided by movements that prioritize Solidarity, Imagination, Community Care, Radical Interdependence and Cooperation towards Liberatory horizons.
Emily Kennedy
TYLin (formerly Sam Schwartz)
Emily Kennedy is a Senior Transportation Planner at TYLin, where she focuses on advancing safer, more equitable streets through bicycle, greenway, and multimodal infrastructure projects. Her work focuses on reimagining streets as safer, more equitable public spaces — places that not only move people efficiently, but also support vibrant, connected communities.
Emily brings a global perspective shaped by her experience as a Fulbright researcher and policy analyst in Buenos Aires, as well as work in Ireland and with the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Complete Streets. With a background in community organizing, she is deeply committed to embedding equity, resilience, and local voices into the planning process.
Emily holds a BA from Providence College and a Master of City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.
G. Antonio Casalduc
Alloy
Antonio is a designer at Alloy where he is currently involved in the architectural design and execution of a series of large scale, mixed-use projects in Brooklyn, New York. His work focuses on multiple scales, carefully coordinating relationships between the intimate and the urban to strengthen a sense of place in the neighborhoods he works in. He is interested in how rapidly changing cities can build from existing communities’ knowledge to preserve and create places that encourage the exercise of public freedoms. This stems from a belief that careful planning should be informed by accessible, affordable, and spontaneous local efforts to create experiences that prioritize living well in the city.
Originally from Puerto Rico, a place with its own history of transportation challenges, he is seeking to develop a primer for addressing mobility issues across geographical, political, and cultural lines.
Gloria Campbell
NYC Department of Transportation
Gloria is the Director of the Reconnecting Communities Planning Unit at the New York City Department of Transportation. She is responsible for developing the agency’s approach to reducing highway- and arterial-related barriers in New York City communities to foster more connected, livable neighborhoods. She leads comprehensive corridor vision planning and capital project design for the Conduit Boulevard/Avenue, Cross Bronx Expressway, and BQE North and South corridors. Before joining the Department of Transportation, Gloria worked at the New York City Economic Development Corporation and began her career as a civil engineer.
Greyson Clark
Guidehouse
Greyson is an avid cyclist and has biked thousands of miles, experiencing first-hand how different cultures and political systems design their built environment. He has practiced as an urban planner in both London and New York, with work spanning transportation planning, master planning, stakeholder engagement, and the planning, design, and delivery of major infrastructure projects. He is a senior consultant at Guidehouse, working mostly with the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Transportation Administration. His favorite project has been helping to improve the FTA’s grant program which funds transit-oriented development studies across the country.
Hilda Cohen
Matiz Architecture and Design
Hilda Cohen is a registered architect in NY State, and designs and manages projects across NYC for non-profits and community focused clients for Matiz Architecture & Design. She is a well seasoned safe streets advocate, and has founded groups that work to establish a livable and equitable use of our public space; including a founding board member of StreetsPAC, co-founder of KiDiCAL MASS NYC, BikeBus.nyc & the amazing Bergen Bike Bus.
Howie Levine
MTA
Howie Levine is a senior government professional at the intersection of policy, strategic communications, and transportation. He is currently Senior Accessibility Officer at the MTA, where he loves working with stakeholders to find creative solutions to difficult infrastructure problems. Howie spearheaded Zoning for Accessibility which promotes transit accessibility improvements alongside new development and has already spurred two newly accessible subway stations. Outside of work Howie volunteers with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Repair Café El Barrio, and is on the board of the Center for Urban Pedagogy.
Isaac Tejeira
Kohn Pedersen Fox
Isaac Tejeira is a designer at KPF in New York, where his work spans urban design, master planning, and mixed-use projects across the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia. He has been part of developing KPF Urban, engaging in projects, business development, project acquisition, and the strategic direction of the group.
He studied architecture at Cornell and went on to earn a Master in Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard. His work sits at the intersection of infrastructure and the public realm, exploring how density, mobility, and productive ground-floor programming can come together to create central social districts that are full of life and economic energy. He is drawn to the places where design, policy, and community ambition have to find common ground.
Iwona Alfred
Consultant
Iwona Alfred is an urban planner and inclusive-mobility specialist with over a decade of professional experience in sustainable transport, accessibility, transit-oriented development, and adult learning design. Her experience includes resilience and recovery initiatives in New York City, as well as extensive international work at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), where she led global learning, capacity-building, and knowledge-sharing programs focused on sustainable and equitable urban mobility. Her work has included advancing transit-oriented development, walkable communities, public transport improvements, and integrated land use and transportation planning.
She is currently consulting with the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI), developing a global curriculum for city and transport practitioners on disability-inclusive transport planning and universal accessibility, building on her work and the flagship publications she co-authored, Cities for All Through Universal Accessibility and Building Inclusive Transport for People with Disabilities.
Fluent in English and Polish, Iwona brings expertise in stakeholder engagement, curriculum development, communications, and translating complex urban challenges into practical tools for practitioners and decision-makers.
Jen Shin
WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities
Jen Shin is the Global Lead of the Prize for Cities at the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. Through this initiative, Jen leads a global platform that elevates holistic solutions to tough urban problems and advances urban action among city leaders, practitioners, and researchers worldwide. Before joining WRI, Jen held positions in architecture and urban research, contributing to urban synthesis reports and helping deliver public libraries, community parks, housing, and green infrastructure projects across NYC and the East Coast. She teaches in design and sustainability at various institutions. Her experience has informed a simple belief: that public realm, streets, and transit are not just infrastructure, but the foundation for healthier, more connected, and more equitable communities. Jen looks forward to collaborating with a diverse cohort of New Yorkers to examine how transportation, public space, and civic partnerships can create a more equitable and connected city for all.
Jocelyn Dupre
Arcadis
Jocelyn Dupre is the National Mobility Advisory Director at Arcadis, where she leads a multidisciplinary team of transportation planners, engineers, and communications specialists to advance innovative and sustainable mobility solutions for public and private sector clients. With more than 15 years of experience, including leadership roles at WSP USA and NYCEDC, she has led transformative initiatives such as the Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan, Inwood NYC Neighborhood Plan, and 5th Avenue Redesign. As a lifelong New Yorker and mother of two young boys, Jocelyn is passionate about leaving better places for future generations to enjoy. Her work spans climate resilience, active transportation, transit access, safer streets, equitable mobility, cleaner air, and technology-enabled transportation systems.
John Moody
NYC Department of City Planning
John is an urban designer, strategist, and visual storyteller focused on creating inclusive, imaginative spaces rooted in the unique spirit of place. He began his career in cinema, working on film sets in Hollywood before earning a master’s in city planning from MIT. After running his own collaborative studio and leading design and creative strategy on large-scale resiliency and sustainable transportation plans at Arup, he joined NYC Department of City Planning, where he currently serves as the Special Study Urban Designer for a citywide study to expand waterfront public access.
John Raymond
NYC Economic Development Corporation
John Raymond is a Vice President on the Real Estate Transactions team at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Previously, he worked on World Trade Center development at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. John is interested in how transit can be integrated into large scale real estate development projects, and how value can be captured from such projects to promote further density and support transit improvements. John is also interested in how bureaucracy can be reduced so more projects can be constructed faster. Additionally, John has an interest in the development history of New York City, global mega projects, and global sport stadiums.
John Surico
Center an Urban Future + New York University
John Surico is a journalist, researcher and educator, focused on cities and how they’re changing. He teaches cities-focused reporting at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, and serves as the Senior Fellow for Climate & Opportunity at Center for an Urban Future, one of the city’s leading policy organizations. Closer to home, he chairs the 31st Ave Open Street Collective, a volunteer nonprofit that facilitates a pop-up public space every weekend from April to December in Astoria, Queens.
Jolyse Race
Riders Alliance
Jolyse Race is senior organizer at Riders Alliance, a grassroots organization that fights for more affordable, reliable, and accessible public transportation in New York City. She has spent the last six years organizing with bus riders across the city to win better bus service, most notably on Flatbush Avenue, Fordham Rd, and in Jamaica, Queens. She cares deeply about organizing and collective liberation, and is excited to continue working to get there through street equity and transit justice.
Juan Restrepo
Lime
Juan Restrepo is a transportation professional, born and raised in Queens, who has spent the past decade in community organizing and advocacy work to make our city the best place in the world to walk, bike, and take mass transit. As the former Director of Organizing and Advocacy at Transportation Alternatives, Juan built political and grassroots support for street-redefining projects including Congestion Pricing, Universal Daylighting, Open Streets, the Queensboro and Brooklyn Bridge mobility paths, and dozens of local efforts across the five boroughs. He is now joining Lime as a Senior Regional Lead for Government Relations to expand micromobility options throughout New York City. Whether organizing in community spaces or negotiating in City Hall, Juan remains driven by a simple belief: that the way we move shapes the way we live, and that every New Yorker deserves a real choice in how they get around.
Judy Chang
it’s electric
Judy is an urban planner with 15 years of experience delivering projects that rethink how streets can be used to improve urban quality of life. Based in Brooklyn, she is the Project Director at it’s electric, a startup deploying curbside EV charging in neighborhoods least likely to have at-home access. Her work focuses on expanding equitable services regardless of historic investment; she has now helped partner cities meet their climate risk reduction goals in seven cities across the country. Outside of her professional work, she enjoys learning about native plants, follows organizations advancing racial justice, and tracks climate adaptation initiatives across sectors.
Kenismael Santiago-Pagan
NYC Department of City Planning
Kenismael Santiago-Pagán is an Associate Urban Designer at the New York City Department of City Planning and a part-time PhD student in Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. His professional work focuses on the relationship between mobility systems, public space, and urban design, advancing strategies that address fragmentation and improve access to the public realm by re-connecting communities. His academic research examines post-colonial infrastructures not as a neutral technical system, but as a political project that organizes space, redistributes vulnerability, and shapes uneven landscapes of risk, belonging, and state power. Drawing on comparative cases from Puerto Rico, Mauritius, New York, and Latin America, he is particularly interested in how communities navigate, contest, and rework the material and governance legacies of infrastructural development.
Kimberly McNabb
Office of the Bronx Borough President
Kimberly McNabb is Deputy Director of Planning & Development for the Office of the Bronx Borough President, where she works on land use, infrastructure, and transportation initiatives across the borough. She previously worked at NYC DOT leading freight and curb management programs, including the expansion of Off-Hour Deliveries citywide. Kimberly is passionate about transportation equity, public space, and how cities can better connect communities through thoughtful infrastructure investment and planning.
Mae Francke
Transportation Alternatives
Mae Francke is an ethnographer, community organizer, and designer focused on justice-centered urban transformation. Specialized in participatory-action research and community engagement, she has an extensive background in grassroots organizing, research, and strategic design. Mae holds an MSc. in Design and Urban Ecologies from Parsons School of Design, and a Bachelors in Cultural Anthropology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.
She is currently a Queens-based Community Organizer with Transportation Alternatives, working as an advocacy strategist and coalition builder. Her approach sits at the intersection of grassroots organizing and policy advocacy; developing local campaigns, influencing city-making, and building power for communities. Her work is centered on artivism, immigrant justice, oral history, and critical cartographies. A compulsive organizer and tupperware thief, in her spare time she enjoys boxing, graphic novels, and watching ducks at the park.
Maria Lombera
NYC Economic Development Corporation
Maria Lombera is a real estate and urban development professional focused on the intersection of public-private development and culture. Raised in Santiago, Chile, she began her career at The Wing, a women-focused community and workspace, where she developed an eye for how the built environment shapes culture. After earning her MS in Real Estate Development from NYU, she joined the NYC Economic Development Corporation as a Senior Associate on the Real Estate Transaction Services team, where she structures complex public-private transactions that turn city-owned land into community assets. Her active projects include a 25,00-seat MLS stadium at Willets Point, a city-backed grocery initiative, and the future expansion of the Whitney Museum.
Mehnaj Tabassum
Grimshaw
Mehnaj Tabassum is an Associate Principal at Grimshaw, where she leads the design of complex transportation and civic infrastructure projects across North America. Her work includes Newark Liberty International Airport Terminal A, the Penn Station Expansion, Charleston International Airport, and the Sustainability Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai. Working across public agencies, engineers, and multidisciplinary teams has shaped her interest in how infrastructure can become a catalyst for civic identity, belonging, and equitable public space. A native New Yorker, Mehnaj is passionate about creating places that strengthen communities and reflect the diverse stories of the cities they serve.
Melissa Sáenz Gordon
Soft Power Vote
Melissa Sáenz Gordon is an award-winning multimedia producer and cultural worker based in Queens, New York. Her work sits at the intersection of audiovisual storytelling, digital strategy, and urban planning. In 2020, she cofounded Soft Power Vote, a civic engagement initiative working to make voting more accessible in NYC, with informative content about government structures, community events and connecting the dots of how creative expression is an essential tool for social change. Soft Power Vote is currently a member of NEW INC, a cultural incubator of the New Museum. As a public and multimodal transportation advocate, Melissa is interested in deepening her belief that transit hubs are also vibrant social spaces that have the capacity to foster community pride and camaraderie.
Naomi Delphin
NYC Department of Transportation
Naomi Delphin is the Senior Program Manager for Metered Curb Planning at NYC Department of Transportation. She will be a part of the newly formed Office of Curb Management. Her work focuses on curb management and how to make the curb safer and more efficient. She is most interested in safety, mobility, and street design on a human scale.
Nicholas Mosquera
Bloomberg Associates
Nicholas Mosquera is an urban planner on the Transportation team at Bloomberg Associates, bringing over 15 years of experience to work with clients to hone bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly improvements to roadways and public spaces, build public and political support, and harness transportation data to achieve cities’ mobility goals.
Nicholas also co-manages the Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Initiative, which helps cities create arts-driven street redesigns that improve pedestrian safety, revitalize public space, and engage local communities. Previously, Nicholas worked at the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) under Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan where he helped develop messaging around transformative transportation projects undertaken by the city. With past experience on tactical street designs in Mexico City, he looks forward to again applying these skills to help solve some of the city’s most pressing transportation challenges.
Rachel Webster
Community Development
Rachel Webster is an urban affairs and community development practitioner with over a decade of experience working across housing, economic development, and community finance in New York City and beyond. She has held roles at LISC, NYCEDC, and HR&A Advisors, and most recently as Chief of Staff at IMPACCT Brooklyn, a 60-year-old affordable housing nonprofit. A Macaulay Honors College alumna and lifelong New Yorker, Rachel knows how cities work — and has spent her career making them work better.
Rebecca Cook
Gehl
Rebecca Cook is a Project Manager at Gehl, where she works across disciplines to deliver planning and design projects focused on public life, mobility, and the public realm. Her work explores how the design of streets, public spaces, and transit environments can improve both movement and the everyday experience of urban life. Rebecca has contributed to major transit initiatives including New York’s Interborough Express and Austin’s Project Connect, with a focus on passenger experience and urban integration. As a planner and designer, she is passionate about advancing mobility solutions that improve everyday urban experiences.
Santiago Salamanca
HR&A Advisors
Santiago Salamanca is a Principal at HR&A Advisors, a real estate, economic development, and public policy consulting firm. His work centers on transit-oriented development, infrastructure finance, housing policy, and inclusive economic development, advising transit agencies, development banks, and city governments on how transit investment can drive equitable growth and affordable housing production. He has worked across the United States and Latin America, including with the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, helping design financing frameworks that connect mobility infrastructure to land value capture, neighborhood revitalization, and community benefit. On a daily basis, and as a train rider and cyclist, Santiago experiences firsthand how transit shapes the neighborhoods it serves.
Sean Yang
NYC Economic Development Corporation
Sean Yang is a New York State licensed architect and an Assistant Vice President at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, where he manages an active capital portfolio of over half a billion dollars in public projects. Fascinated by the intersection of the built environment, public policy, and economics, Sean investigates how city-building can best enable human flourishing.
Seema Shah
Urban Strategies & Solutions LLC
Seema Shah is Founder and Principal of Urban Strategies & Solutions LLC, an economic development consultancy advising public, academic, and startup clients on sustainable growth and stakeholder engagement strategy in a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Most recently, Seema was the Inaugural Executive Director of Civic Hall, the new connective hub shaping the future of learning, entrepreneurship, and work.
In her free time, Seema volunteers for various Democratic campaigns and serves on the Hudson County Community College Foundation Board in NJ. Seema earned her Executive MBA from the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, her Master’s in Urban Policy and Management from Milano, The New School University and her Bachelor’s from Barnard College, Columbia University.
Surabhi Jain
Elizabeth Kennedy Landscape Architects
Surabhi is a landscape architect who is passionate about designing meaningful public spaces where people feel connected, comfortable, and inspired. She believes that landscape architects have ability to shape not just the environment but also touch the lives of people who interact with it. She currently works at EKLA in Brooklyn, NY.
Her work focuses on equity in outdoor spaces, creating inclusive, engaging landscapes that strengthen community ties, inspire, heal and bring people together. She approaches design with care, curiosity and deep sense of responsibility. She designs through 4 key lenses – functionality, ecological sensitivity, cultural integration and artistic expression.
Tanushri Dalmiya
WRT
Tanushri Dalmiya is a hyper-urbanist, architect and storyteller – working as a Planner and Urban Designer with WRT where she leads comprehensive plans, federal neighborhood transformation plans and affordable housing strategy across the United States, through a community-first approach. Her work starts at the in-betweens: the sidewalk, the subway and the charged thresholds between destinations, where bodies are most active, hyper-aware and spatially legible. With a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, her scholarship focuses on gender, infrastructure of care and the political dimensions of public space – centering populations most routinely rendered invisible by dominant spatial logics and arguing for equitable access to opportunity as a determinant of upward mobility.
Vanessa Barrios
Regional Plan Association
Vanessa Barrios facilitates research, engagement, and advocacy for work related to affordable homes, accessible transit, public health, climate justice, and equitable economic development for the Regional Plan Association. As the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives, she ensures that every facet of RPA’s work (projects, planning recommendations, advocacy efforts, and internal work culture) reflects the organization’s values of making health, equity, sustainability, and prosperity attainable for anyone who lives and works in the tri-state region.
Vanessa’s ancestors are from the Philippines. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She enjoys tending to the tree beds on her block, organizing her neighborhood block association, and planning small dinner parties for five people but making enough food to feed a crowd.
About Fast Forward
Our Global Exchange fellowship for mid-career leaders surveys the world for bold solutions to New York City’s most intractable problems. Beginning in summer 2026, Fast Forward will explore cities taking courageous steps to reclaim streets, expand public transit, and undo the dominance of the private car. 41 Fellows from across sectors will engage leading local and global experts, travel to Mexico City to study its approaches to mobility, publish findings, and meet with local decision-makers to demand courageous public policy.
Support Our Work
Lead Sponsor
We thank Global Circle members Akerman LLP, Apple Bank, Crescere Collaborative, Fogarty Finger, HKS, Jamie von Klemperer, Jen Tausig Consulting, KPF, NDNY Architecture + Design, Office for the Next Environment, Skylight, and Upside Collab.
Global Exchange is made possible with additional support from our Board of Directors, Circle Members, and company and individual members. Our programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Global Circle members gather for events with esteemed speakers, travel together to a peer city, and connect New York’s decision-makers with their counterparts around the world. Their financial leadership enables us to offer the fellowship for free to advocates, public servants and journalists who need to be at the table.
Members receive benefits including network building, thought leadership, nomination of fellows, and visibility. For more information about how to join this league of supporters, along with a list of support tiers and benefits, please contact Miranda Bellizia, miranda@urbandesignforum.org.