Civic Leadership Program

Chenyan Wang is a New York–based designer working across architecture, landscape, urban design, and public engagement. Her work explores how climate infrastructure, land policy, and development decisions shape everyday urban life, with a focus on equity, resilience, and community voice. She currently works at Elizabeth Kennedy Landscape Architect, contributing to projects ranging from green infrastructure to institutional and civic landscapes. Previously, at Gans and Company, she worked on community-based climate resilience initiatives across New York City, including flood adaptation and housing mobility strategies in East New York and resident engagement processes with NYCHA communities in Coney Island. Beyond practice, she curates public conversations on design, culture, and civic life, and has spoken at forums including BSLA Fieldday at Harvard University. Wang holds an MS.Arch from The Cooper Union and a B.Arch from Zhejiang University, with training in both architecture and journalism.

Chenyang “Jane” Yu is a Designer at di Domenico + Partners. She received her Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, along with a certificate in Real Estate and Design. She was the recipient of Dales Travel Fellowship and was selected for the Future 100 by Metropolis magazine. Before pursuing architecture, she studied business and earned a dual degree in Management Science (B.S) and International Business (B.A) from UC San Diego. She previously worked at 3XN where she engaged in sustainable designs, and Polyhedral Structures Lab at UPenn where she explored parametric structural designs. Her professional experience includes educational, residential, commercial, transit, and civic projects. With her business background, she is sensitive to the economic and social impact of design in the city and has developed a special interest in using redesign to transform missed opportunities into positive economic impact for the community.

Harry Abrams is an urban planner dedicated to exploring the intersection of the built environment and local government in New York. As the Associate Project Manager for Capital Projects at the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, he utilizes expertise in design and inter-agency stakeholder management to work on complex projects, including the Borough-Based Jails and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design initiatives. Previously, he served as the Legislative Fellow for Councilmember Lincoln Restler. Originally from Baltimore’s exurbs, Abrams moved to Philadelphia to follow his desire to learn about urban environments before venturing across the Atlantic to pursue a BS in Urban Planning, Design, and Management from University College London’s Bartlett School of Planning. His diverse experiences, including working at a hostel in small-town Oregon, biking for DoorDash, and designing maps, inform his approaches to shaping the built environment. In his free time, Abrams enjoys attending indie-rock concerts, reading memoirs, and cooking.

Jess Mitchell is a New York City-based emergent architectural designer, interested in the intersection of public space and civic agency. Mitchell is a recent graduate of the Yale School of Architecture, Master of Architecture program, and a recipient of the Janet Cain Sielaff Alumni Award. Originally from the UK, she completed her Bachelor of Architecture at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, within the Glasgow School of Art. Mitchell is passionate about the role of civic engagement within projects, recently winning a commission to curate alongside collaborators Benjamin Johnson and Precious Ndukuba an exhibition at YSOA entitled A Repository of Black Knowledge. An active member of YBAN and YWA communities, Mitchell is keen to engage in the wider discourse around inclusion and engagement within the profession. Mitchell holds professional experience from a range of studios based in London, New York and New Haven. In London, she worked at AJ100 firm Levitt Berstein focusing on education projects. In the US, she holds experience working at the Yale Urban Design Workshop and Henning Larsen, focusing on masterplanning, and at Miller Knoll as part of the interiors team. Since graduating, she has been working as an Architectural Designer at Grimshaw, focusing on transit design. She is keen to continue to grow and develop as a professional through engaging with public and civic-led projects.

Rosanna Valencia is a Dominican-born, New York City-raised urban planner, architectural designer, and visual artist. She currently serves as a Predevelopment Planner at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, where she manages Request for Proposals on publicly owned sites. Her current work includes managing the preparation of the document, ensuring financial and legal compliance, and leading community visioning processes that integrate resident perspectives into development outcomes. Her background combines architecture and community-based planning, with experience in design, research, and public engagement across organizations and institutions like Van Alen Institute, Architects FORA, Hester Street, BlackSpace, and the University at Buffalo Food Systems Planning & Healthy Communities Lab. She has supported district-scale design strategies, conducted participatory outreach and research, and contributed to post-occupancy evaluation research for permanent supportive housing. Her broader research interests include how the architectural design of bodegas informs their role as infrastructures of care and cultural continuity. As a freelance designer, she uses visual storytelling as a form of civic engagement and collaborated with a nonprofit partner on the design and management of a site-specific and large-scale public mural. Across different scales, she is interested in how community knowledge can be documented, understood, and applied over time.

Sally Lape is an architect committed to public-facing design and community engagement, with experience leading civic and institutional projects in California and New York. As Project Architect for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research Institute at Stanford, Lape’s team implemented Design for Freedom principles and initiated design justice workshops for the design and client teams, modeling how advocacy can be embedded in both the design process and client relationships. She is now working with Beyer Blinder Belle on the Met Museum’s new Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art, where she is learning from the complexities of stewarding a major cultural institution. She also serves on the AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee and is eager to further immerse herself in New York’s complex network of institutions, stakeholders, and civic frameworks. She holds a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University and a Master of Architecture from UC Berkeley, and is a licensed architect in California and New York.

Samira Mohamed is a project manager at the NYC Economic Development Corporation where she works on capital projects across multiple agencies. Her experience spans waterfront infrastructure, civic facilities, ecological restoration, and ferry landings—a breadth that has given her exposure to varying scales and public investment. Before joining NYCEDC, she was a project manager at the NYC Department of Design and Construction, where she oversaw a portfolio of public building projects with a focus on resiliency. Before that, she worked as an architectural designer on hospitality and residential interior projects. In this shift from formal design work to managing public projects, she’s become interested in the broader machinery of city-building: the governance, public processes, and institutional capacity that shape what cities are able to build and maintain. She holds an M.Arch from Pratt Institute and a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Colorado Denver.

Hailing from the Philippines, Sherry Aine Te is a Project Manager at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, where she delivers capital projects, advancing infrastructure that generates jobs, strengthens waterfront resilience, and drives equitable economic growth across New York City; among her projects include the QueensWay Metropolitan Hub, Coney Island West Streets Reconstruction, and Future of Fifth. Her work sits at the intersection of design excellence and public impact, informed by experience at various design and construction firms such as MVRDV, AECOM, OMA and CannonDesign and grounded in her Master of Architecture and Master of Science in Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP. Recognized as a Metropolis Future100, AIAS Crit Scholar and as a Waterfront Scholar, Sherry emerges as a leading voice in transit-oriented and climate-responsive urbanism. As an Institute for Public Architecture Fellow in 2025, Sherry advocated for transit-oriented housing development and elevated public understanding of how New York Harbor is adapting to climate change, translating complex environmental systems into accessible civic narratives. Combined with her NSF-supported research at the Natural Materials Lab on low-carbon materials and her urban planning thesis on Accessory Dwelling Units, Sherry reflects a career dedicated to using architecture and urban planning as tools for the public good and economic development.