Meet our cohort of emerging leaders exploring how to care for green streets and public spaces in every neighborhood.
Forefront is an action lab for emerging urbanists. This year’s interdisciplinary cohort will explore how to transform public spaces into living, adaptive, and sustaining landscapes of care.
Working across the fields of design, landscape architecture, planning, economic and community development, policy, journalism, transportation, and land stewardship, our tenth Forefront class draws talent from 38 early-to-mid-career professionals, each engaged in work shaping New York City’s future. Fellows steward parks in the Lower East Side; organize programs in public spaces across Jamaica; support community-based climate action projects in the Hudson Valley; develop natural resource protection programs across New York State; train practitioners in street design and sustainable mobility internationally; and much more.
We thank our selection panel of Forefront alumni and city partners for their careful consideration of many excellent candidates: Génesis Abreu, Nicole Cheng, Genea Foster, James Francisco, Neil Gagliardi, Nicholas Pettinati, and Melody Stein.
Living Roots Fellows
Alan Chan
di Domenico and Partners
Alan Chan is an Associate at dD+P. He leads dD+P’s Innovation Group and co-chairs the EDI+B Initiative. With degrees in both architecture and urban planning, his diverse portfolio encompasses civic projects that range from urban-scale designs to impactful community projects across New York City. He has presented his work at International Placemaking Week, The Architectural League of New York’s Current Work series, and the APA National Planning Conference. Alan is deeply passionate about community-centered solutions. By merging place-based insights with creative approaches, Alan aims to create projects that not only resonate with but also enrich the communities they serve.
Alanis Allen
Stantec
Alanis Allen is a Climate Resilience Planner at Stantec. A Brooklyn native who is driven to develop equitable climate adaptation solutions that support vibrant, livable communities across New York City and beyond, she strives to support projects that deliver a community-centered vision of climate resilience.
Andrew Blancero
New York State Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation
Andy Blancero is an Empire State Fellow with the Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation. A born and raised Staten Islander whose worldview is rooted in a deep understanding of the Island’s history and ecology, Andy studies and works at the intersections of the built and natural environments.
Anne Chen
Gensler
Anne Chen is an architect and landscape architect designing civic, cultural, and educational spaces where buildings and landscapes come together to foster connection and belonging. She also teaches Site Planning at City Tech, helping future architects develop ecological thinking and a deeper understanding of place.
Chao Li
Snøhetta
Chao Li is a landscape and urban designer based in New York. He has spent the past five and a half years working on large-scale urban and public realm projects, and is interested in how design shapes cities, infrastructure, and everyday life.
Chase Louden
Southside United-Los Sures
Chase Louden is the Comida Program Director at Southside United-Los Sures. Chase is interested in assisting in the creation of embedded forms of land stewardship infrastructure, which includes food systems planning, and climate resilience through researching food sovereignty, solidarity economy and co-working with urban agriculture practitioners. He is also a board member of the Cooperative Economic Alliance of NYC and Farm School NYC.
Christina Weiler
Groundwork Hudson Valley
Christina Weiler is passionate about how nature strengthens communities and finding the right infrastructure and partnerships to make it happen. As Community Adaptation Manager at Groundwork, she co-leads resident Working Groups that empower vulnerable neighborhoods adapt to climate risks, from extreme heat to flooding. Before this, she designed and led place-based, intercultural, and trilingual activities in Galicia, Spain under a Fulbright grant.
Danny DiMarino
Street Lab
Danny DiMarino is an educator and development professional working to improve and expand public space in NYC. He works at Street Lab, a nonprofit that reimagines city streets through design and community programming, and has a background in youth development, environmental justice, and placemaking. He lives and works in Brooklyn.
Denise Martin
Sustainable Cities Fund
Denise Martin is an operations and grantmaking professional committed to supporting communities in their pursuit of sustainable solutions, and is especially passionate about strengthening their connection to nature. Elsewhere, she can be found knitting, browsing the cookbook section of a bookstore, or doing a jigsaw puzzle.
Devin Fields
NYC Innovation Team – Mayor’s Office of New York City
Devin Fields is a Civic Designer for the New York City Innovation Team within the Mayor’s Office of NYC. He specializes in community engagement and data strategy; translating the experiences of marginalized communities into equitable policy and design interventions. Outside of work, he is a DJ building community through music.
Eduardo M. Llinás Messeguer
Alliance for Paseo Park
Eduardo M. Llinás Messeguer is a Puerto Rican urban designer, architect, and public-space advocate based in New York City. His work focuses on streets, public space, and civic spaces as lived, everyday environments. Through community-led design and advocacy, he advances people-first approaches that center equity, culture, and inclusive civic life across neighborhoods.
Elifmina Mizrahi
New York Climate Exchange
Elifmina Mizrahi is the Capital Project Manager at the New York Climate Exchange, supporting the development of a new climate campus on Governors Island. With a background in finance and urban planning, and shaped by life in Istanbul & Chicago, she brings a people-first approach to reparative, sustainable urban development.
Fikayo Walter-Johnson
Pregnancy Justice
Fikayo Walter-Johnson is a social science researcher committed to transformative social movements. She is the Senior Research Associate at Pregnancy Justice, documenting the extent and nature of pregnancy criminalization and its impact on individuals and communities. She holds a BA in Sociology & Public Policy from the University of Chicago.
Hayrettin Günç
Global Designing Cities Initiative
Hayro Günç is an Istanbul-born, New York City–based urbanist shaping public spaces, strategies, and stories that center people and place. With a decade of global experience, Hayro blends urban design, data, and visual storytelling. From big-picture thinking to on-the-ground tactics, he helps cities bring ideas to life.
Jahnavi Aluri
Downtown Jamaica Partnership
Jahnavi Aluri is an urban planner with seven years of NYC public and nonprofit experience. In her current role, she leads economic revitalization, public space, and neighborhood development initiatives, securing investments and fostering partnerships to advance equitable, community-centered planning. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia University and is AICP certified.
Jasmin Tepale
NYC Department of City Planning
Jasmin Tepale is the Senior Lead for Community Planning at the NYC Department of City Planning. She is focused on rethinking and improving City Planning’s community planning processes in citywide and neighborhood planning initiatives to foster collaboration between city agencies, elected officials, and community members to shape a collective future.
Jessica Arias
SCAPE
Jessica Arias is a landscape architect dedicated to the design of inclusive and resilient public spaces. At SCAPE, she has worked extensively on New York City agency and resilience projects. Her design approach is informed by previous work in public and installation-based art.
Julia Bontempo
Dewberry Engineers
Julia Bontempo is a resilience planner working with communities nationwide to prepare for, address, and recover from climate change. From projects in offshore wind to hazard mitigation, she wields her love of design and research to envision a more equitable climate future and make environmental stewardship creative, collaborative, and joyful.
June Greeman
Karp Strategies
June Greeman is a practicing planner who roots her work in the connections between people, transportation, land use, and the built environment. She brings cross-sector experience utilizing data analytic methods to capture on-the-ground realities, with an emphasis on equity and social outcomes.
K.C. Alvey
Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice
K.C. Alvey is a Senior Policy Advisor for the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice and has 15 years of experience working with city agencies and non-profit organizations focused on climate equity, public space, and green infrastructure. K.C. holds a Master of Urban Planning from Hunter College and a B.S. in Natural Resources from Cornell University.
Karenna Northland
Arborpolitan
Karenna Northland is an arborist focused on creating innovative solutions to our everyday needs. Karenna works to reimagine our systems, restore our ecology, and nourish our environment. She is inspired by Lucrecia Martel, Forensic Architecture, and volcanoes.
Kateryna Maksimentseva
Starr Whitehouse
Kateryna Maksimentseva is a multidisciplinary designer with a background in landscape architecture and architecture. This dual focus, honed in Germany, has been informed by her diverse experiences working across Ukraine and the US. At Starr Whitehouse, Kateryna is working on two major affordable housing projects: the Seniors First Kingsborough development in Brooklyn and the Lambert Houses Affordable Housing project in the Bronx. Kateryna received both her master’s in landscape architecture and bachelor’s in architecture from Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture.
Katherine Rivard
The Red Hook Star-Revue
Katherine Rivard is an urban planner who values public spaces, big ideas, and kind people. She writes for the Red Hook Star-Revue, serves as a board member for the Carroll Gardens Association, volunteers for 350Brooklyn’s Plastic Free Working Group, and is spearheading a public space project in her neighborhood.
Laraib Tariq Ali
LoveHappy.Space
Laraib Ali is a Bahraini land steward, designer and material researcher with a multifaceted love for spatial design & the intersection of health and education based on Lenape lands (Brooklyn/NYC). Her background as a farmer and herbalist deeply informed her approach to design and craftmaking. Drawing inspiration from indigenous resourcefulness, communal care and land practices, her work emphasizes the importance of the built environment adapting to and reflecting the needs of residents and the surrounding natural environment.
Lauren Newman
Transportation Alternatives
Lauren Newman is a community organizer focused on equitable access to greenspace and mobility justice. With roots in DC and now NYC, she partners primarily with young people and school communities to reimagine streets and public space, bringing a facilitative, joyful leadership style grounded in collective care, climate resilience, and community-led change.
Lizbeth Martínez
Neighborhood Safety Initiatives
Lizbeth “Liz” Martínez is a Chicana graphic designer from the Bronx whose multidisciplinary work bridges art, culture, and community. She is currently the Designer at Neighborhood Safety Initiatives, a non-profit serving public housing developments across the five boroughs. Her biggest ambition is to create social impact through her work.
Maximillian Brown
CSS Under Contract to NOAA
Max Brown is a coastal policy analyst, communicator, and program manager from NYC. He is currently a contractor at the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science. Previously, Max studied water quality and ecology in the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary, earning a M.A. in Environmental Science from Queens College.
Michelle Edwards
WSP-Built Ecology
Michelle Edwards is an urban planning and project management professional with experience across state, city, and private-sector roles. She has experience in infrastructure, government facilities, open space, and neighborhood-scale projects focused on climate resilience, sustainability, and public health, and enjoys working collaboratively to bring strategic and community-centered ideas to life.
Nupur RoyChaudhury
Office for the Next Environment
Nupur RoyChaudhury is an architectural and urban designer dedicated to shaping a resilient and equitable public realm. With experience spanning New York City to the Pacific Islands, she applies expertise in multi-hazard resilience and climate adaptation to create safer, more just, and livable urban futures.
Olivia Jia
WXY Studio
Olivia Jia, AICP is a planner and designer focused on climate and community-led design processes in her work. She believes streets and in-between spaces are critical junctures for promoting more complete neighborhoods and the equitable redistribution of access to public space. She is a Senior Planner at WXY.
Raísa Lin Garden-Lucerna
El Puente
Raísa Lin Garden-Lucerna is a community/environmental justice advocate, artist, and caregiver. She received a BA in Environmental Health/Urban Policy and Planning from CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies program (2021). She graduated with a M.Sc. in Sustainable Environmental Systems from Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and Environment (2024).
Saradine Pierre
NYCEDC
Saradine Pierre is a Senior Project Manager at NYCEDC where she helps lead engagement efforts for large-scale planning projects including the Harlem African Burial Ground and the Future of Fifth. She is passionate about equity and transparency in public planning processes and centers community feedback in all projects she takes part in. Through the Fellowship, she is excited to explore how public realm initiatives can be used to empower historically marginalized communities.
Sarah Abdallah
Downtown Brooklyn Partnership
Sarah Abdallah is the Business + Innovation Community Director at the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, leading the Make It in Brooklyn initiative to strengthen the local innovation ecosystem. Her work spans sustainable waste initiatives in Riyadh to co-editing publications, including Open Gaza, at the Michael Sorkin Studio in New York. She holds an MS in Urban Planning from Columbia University.
Shana Sanichar
Port Authority of NY & NJ
Shana Sanichar is a Transportation Planner focused on streets in the NY Metro area as tools for connection. She is passionate about community-centered planning that addresses historical harms in transportation systems to create more sustainable and inclusive public spaces. Shana holds a M.S. in Public and Urban Policy.
Sonja Hartmann
Arup
Sonja Hartmann is a Senior Civil Engineer at Arup. Her experience spans master planning, design, and construction of public realm projects including airports, train stations, waterfront parks, and green infrastructure. She is passionate about reducing carbon and enhancing biodiversity in the built environment to enable a more sustainable future.
Stephen Williams
Lower East Side Ecology Center
Stephen Williams is the Stewardship Manager at the Ecology Center, where he leads stewardship activities and oversee the maintenance of our green spaces in East River Park, Tompkins Square Park, and Pier 42. Stephen is passionate about native plants; and works to introduce more local species and bring more beneficial insects into our gardens.
Sudeshna Sen
Sasaki
Suna Sen is an urban designer dedicated to equitable, resilient and civic-minded projects. An interdisciplinary leader, she navigates complex stakeholder landscapes to build consensus and deliver grounded, implementation-focused frameworks. Her experience spans mixed-use districts, streetscapes, and citywide master plans in New York, across the United States, and internationally.
Victoria Yan
IDEO.org
Victoria Yan is a Communications Lead at IDEO.org, shaping narratives on how design can create a future where everyone thrives. Previously, she led communications at Brooklyn Grange, a leading green roofing company in the northeast. With a background in journalism from Beirut and a degree from Smith College, she’s dedicated to building a more livable New York City.