Speakers

Geoffrey Baer is an eight-time Emmy-winning Public Television writer, producer, and program host. He has been a fixture on Chicago’s PBS station WTTW for 30 years, best known as the host and writer of WTTW’s popular specials about the architecture and history of Chicago and its suburban areas.  His work includes more than 25 feature-length “television tours” including Chicago by ‘L’, The Chicago River Tour, and Chicago on Vacation.  Geoffrey hosted the WTTW series The Great Chicago Quiz Show and appeared for years on WTTW’s flagship nightly public affairs program Chicago Tonight answering viewers’ questions about Chicago architecture and history in a segment called “Ask Geoffrey.” Nationally he hosted the PBS primetime series 10 that Changed America about the built environment across the country. He also hosted and co-wrote the PBS primetime special Weekend in Havana.

Geoffrey has been a docent for the Chicago Architecture Center since 1987. In addition to his Emmy Awards, he has been honored by the American Institute of Architects Chicago, the Society of Architectural Historians, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Chicago Headline Club.

Lee Bey is architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.

He is also a member of the Sun-Times editorial board, where he writes editorials on city governance, neighborhood development, politics and urban planning.

Bey is the author of the much-praised book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side (Northwestern University Press, 2019), which showcases his architectural photography and social commentary.

He was also the host of the public television special, Building Blocks: The Architecture of Chicago’s South Side, which aired on WTTW in 2023. Bey earned a 2023 Midwest Emmy nomination for his work on the program.

He is also the main photographer of the book. Who is the City For? Architecture, Equity and the Public Realm in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2022), written by Blair Kamin.

Bey is currently working on a book about the architecture of Chicago’s West Side.

Bey’s photography of the built environment has appeared in magazines and periodicals such as the NewYork Times, Architectural Digest, Chicago Architect, Architect, CITE, and in international design publications such as Bauwelt, and Modulør.

He is also an in-demand speaker and media commentator on the subjects of architecture, urban planning, Chicago history and late 20th century Black history and culture.

Bey’s previous positions include stints as director of media and government affairs for the Chicago office of SOM, executive director of the Chicago Central Area Committee, and deputy chief of staff for architecture and urban planning under Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Bey is also an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture.

He is the recipient of the 2021 Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award, and the 2019 Distinguished Service Award by the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Bey lives in an 1893 rowhouse in Chicago’s historic Pullman community.

Jacoby Cochran is an educator, south sider, and the enthusiastic senior host of City Cast Chicago. The essential daily news podcast was named Best of Chicago the last three years by the Reader.Whether behind the mic or on stage, Jacoby is a dynamic and captivating performer and an award winning storyteller. You can also catch him breaking down all things Chicago on local NPR and PBS broadcasts, and voicing national ads during the commercial breaks. Follow his work at jacobycochran.com

Ayana Contreras is a cultural historian, memory worker, radio DJ and archivist.  An avid collector with over 9000 vintage vinyl records, she hosts the Reclaimed Soul program on WBEZ and Vocalo Radio in Chicago. A 2014/15 University of Chicago Arts + Public Life Artist-In-Residence, she is also a columnist for DownBeat magazine and her writings have been published in The New York Times, Chicago Review, Oxford American and Bandcamp Daily among other publications. She is a regular contributor to the NPR Music New Music Friday Podcast, and her book on Post-Civil Rights Era cultural history, titled Energy Never Dies: Afro-Optimism and Creativity in Chicago, was published December 2021 through University of Illinois Press.

Nina joined CNT in September 2023 as our new CEO. As a native Detroiter, Nina understands firsthand how the built environment shapes the lives of society’s most vulnerable populations. This fuels her passion for empowering people to be change agents through urban planning.

Previously, she served as Chicago Recovery Plan Director for the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, where her primary focus was to ensure equitable grant distribution across 11 critical program initiatives supporting Chicago’s economic revival. In addition to overseeing a staff of 19 and dozens of delegate agency contracts, Nina helped create and lead a data management and impact team to create new standards for how the department analyzes its economic investments for equitable outcomes.

She has also helped to lead MUSE Community + Design, where she served as Director of Planning, and has previously served as a planner for the City of Los Angeles.

Nina specializes in equitable community development, inclusive outreach strategies, and organizational innovation for planning agencies. She has three  awards from the American Planning Association; is a Vanguard Fellow, a New Leaders Council Fellow, and a Civic Leadership Academy Fellow; and was also honored with a SHEro award by Los Angeles Councilmember Curren D. Price, Jr. for her community leadership.

Also in 2023, Nina was elected the first Black President for the Illinois Chapter of the American Planning Association. She is also a board member of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

Nina is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California. She is currently a resident of the Archer Heights neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side.

As the Vice President of Community Impact for The Chicago Community Trust, Marisa Novara leads the team that oversees the development and implementation of the Trust’s strategic initiatives, its policy agenda, and grant making to reduce the racial and ethnic wealth gap in the Chicago region. She has more than 25 years of experience engaging with communities to create innovative programs that respond to their needs and drive policy change. Most recently, Marisa served as Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Housing. She led the passage of nine bills in four years, conducted the country’s first Racial Equity Impact Assessment on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program and in 2021 invested a record $1 billion in affordable housing.

Before joining the City, Novara was vice president of the Metropolitan Planning Council, where she designed and managed the Cost of Segregation project, which concluded how decades-old racial and economic segregation patterns cost the Chicago region an estimated $4.4 billion in additional income each year. She also led the subsequent creation of the region’s first comprehensive guide to a more racially equitable future. Before that, Novara directed affordable rental and for-sale housing development for Lawndale Christian Development Corp. in the North Lawndale community, where she lived and worked for more than a decade.

Novara has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in sociology, master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice, certificate in affordable housing finance, development, and management from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and master’s in urban planning from the Istituto Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy.

Nik Theodore is a professor in UIC’s Department of Urban Planning and Policy as well as the director of the Center for Urban Economic Development. His current research focuses on the industrial change and the restructuring of employment regimes, economic informality, and urban governance. His research agenda is motivated by core commitments to understand how processes of urbanization are remaking and entrenching social inequalities, patterns of uneven development, and modes of political-economic exclusion. He currently serves as an editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Rachel Weber is a professor in the Urban Planning and Policy Department at the University of Illinois Chicago where she teaches courses and conducts research in the fields of economic development, urban politics, and public finance. Her research has advanced a novel approach to the study of city planning by examining the “financialization” of urban development. Cities’ deepening relationships with financial markets have brought about extensive changes in the ways they budget, fund infrastructure, and manage their assets. She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning, a compilation of 40 essays by leading urban scholars. Her latest book, From Boom to Bubble: How Finance Built the New Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2016) won the Best Book Award from the Urban Affairs Association. She is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as numerous book chapters and published policy reports. She has served as an advisor to planning agencies and community organizations on issues related to financial incentives, property taxes, and neighborhood change. She was appointed to then-presidential candidate Barack Obama´s Urban Policy Committee in 2008 and by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the Tax Increment Financing Reform Task Force in 2011.

Oscar A. Chacón is a co‐founder and executive director of Alianza Americas, a national network of Latin American immigrant‐led and immigrant serving organizations in the US. Chacón is a frequent spokesperson, domestically and internationally, on economic, social, political, and cultural struggles involving Latin American immigrant communities, including the nexus between systemic inequities, democratic governance, the role of narratives, and human mobility.

Chandra Christmas-Rouse is an urban planner, advocate and artist based in Chicago, IL. A background in community development and environmental justice informs her design approach of working with community stakeholders in a participatory process to support capacity building, achieve place-based solutions, and reimagine systems. Chandra currently serves as a Director at Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC). At MPC, she developed and leads a training initiative called Change Lab which works with city departments, advocates, community-based organizations and CDFIs on how to better coordinate and implement systems change efforts like newly adopted equitable policies and practices. She also directs MPC’s housing policy work and supports land use & planning and equitable transit-oriented development (eTOD) programs by advancing research, policy advocacy, and outreach efforts.

Prior to joining MPC, Chandra developed program, policy, and capital initiatives with local partners that focus on environmental resilience, eTOD, and healing-centered engagement at Enterprise Community Partners. While at Enterprise, she worked with the City of Chicago’s Department of Housing to develop the country’s first Racial Equity Impact Assessment (REIA) of rental housing developments which are supported by Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). She also provided real estate consulting services to support CBOs with developing and implementing economic mobility plans. Her past experiences include integrating policy and strategy consulting with technical knowledge to advance economic mobility and sustainability for a number of organizations and firms including the United Nations and Jacobs Engineering Group. Chandra is also the author of a graphic novel entitled Where the Sidewalk Grows and creator of the Maplibs Project. She holds a BA in Environmental Sciences & Policy with distinction from Duke University and a Master of Urban Planning from Harvard University.

Jeremy Cuebas is the transportation organizer  for the Northwest Side Housing Center. His work focuses on building relationships and empowering the youth specifically in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood. He lead a group of 30 students called the “Belmont Cragin Youth Leadership council”  who met 5 days out of the week, to organize, strategize, and meet with community stakeholders, elected officials, and residents on issues that they are passionate about. In 2019 Jeremy and the youth council rallied around the idea of improving public transportation in Belmont Cragin. With the support of Active Trans Alliance who provided hard core data for our youth council to analyze, they were able to hold meetings with Senator Durbin, Senator Tammy Duckworth, and their local Alderman’s to discuss how to improve public transportation in Belmont Cragin. The youth council was awarded $10,000 dollars from the Bright Promises Foundation, $20,000 dollars from DIVVY to support their efforts in the community, and $250,000 dollars from the Bright Promises Foundation to support their efforts. With the support and collaborative efforts from local alderman, CDOT and community partners the youth were able to win 13 divvy stations and over 15 miles bike lanes in Belmont Cragin.

Christian is Director of Equitable Community Development at Palenque LSNA (formerly Logan Square Neighborhood Association) and has led many successful campaigns for housing and immigrant justice over 12 years, winning policy reforms, affordable housing and new programs for housing stability against gentrification. Previously, he served as executive director of Chicago Votes where he helped steer a coalition to win Automatic Voter Registration in Illinois. His work has been featured on NBC Latino, WTTW Latino Voices, Bloomberg and VICE Magazine. He serves on the boards of In These Times Magazine and Elevated Chicago. Christian graduated with a B.A. in Global Studies at Warren Wilson College in 2012. In earlier lives, Christian volunteered at a home for children with disabilities in northern India, worked at a wolf sanctuary in rural New Mexico and taught English at a monastery in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Farzaneh Khayat is a postdoctoral fellow of Environmental Justice at the Institute for Racial Justice, Loyola University Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in Environmental and Community Land Planning from SUNY ESF. Initially drawn from architecture, she sees her research as part of a broader effort in the environmental and social sciences to study the relationship between inequity and planning and to explore strategies for addressing the challenges associated with environmental injustices from the global South to the North.

She truly believes that the study of environmental justice requires a range of intersectional thinking and approaches to better understand multisectoral and multiscale interaction of various stakeholders, governmental organizations and policies. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, Farzaneh’s research integrates various methods, including quantitative methodologies (such as GIS, i-Tree tools, and statistical analysis) and qualitative analysis (such as key informant interviews and focus groups). At present, results from her work have been published in peer reviewed outlets.

Her contributions extend beyond academia, as she believes her role as a researcher inherently requires active engagement with communities to address environmental disparities. Most recently during her Postdoc, she has had the opportunity to collaborate with communities in the Chicagoland area, specifically in Oak Park and Woodlawn.

Yolanda Lawler is a Program Officer at Steans Family Foundation’s North Lawndale initiatives, where she has worked for nearly six years. In her role, Yolanda works with community-based organizations to increase the number of North Lawndale children, aged birth to five years old, who are prepared to be successful in Kindergarten. Yolanda’s responsibilities include collaborating with community-based partners that mentor and support middle school students as they transition to high school.  Before joining the Steans Family Foundation, Yolanda was a Research and Policy Intern at the Safer Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission to support, through a full spectrum of services, the efforts of people with arrest and conviction records to become employed, law-abiding members of the community and, as a result, reduce recidivism. In her free time, Yolanda collects art, reads widely, and cares for a little free library.

Dr. Dominica McBride is a leading thinker in the realm of community psychology, community healing, and collective transformation. As a champion of Culturally Responsive Evaluation and a grassroots advocacy strategist, she has dedicated her work to building the capacity of communities to create the reality they desire and deserve.

In 2013, Dr. McBride founded BECOME with the belief that communities should be at the forefront of realizing their visions of thriving communities. Drawing on her experience in program development and evaluation projects in Arizona, the Chicago area, and Tanzania, Africa, she recognizes the power of culturally responsive evaluation as a tool for positive change.

With a background in community psychology, Dr. McBride has made significant contributions as a consultant, program director, adjunct faculty member, and therapist in the field. Her expertise and insights have made her a sought-after speaker and trainer for communities, coalitions, and organizations across the nation. She has also been recognized and honored with a range of awards for her outstanding work, including the Supervisor of the Year Award from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and the Marcia Guttentag Promising New Evaluator Award from the American Evaluation Association.

Dr. McBride holds a PhD in Counseling Psychology with a specialization in Consultation from Arizona State University. Aside from her professional accomplishments, she embraces the joy of motherhood and finds fulfillment in witnessing her two remarkable children flourish.

Through organizing, leadership on racial and gender justice, and a commitment to connecting on-the-ground perspective to policy, Harish I. Patel moves big ideas forward that have the power to transform our economy. Previously Harish founded and served as the director of Economic Security for Illinois. Harish started his career working in community organizing and then shifted to craft policy at innovative nonprofits such as New America Chicago and Accelerate Change. He co-founded Chicago Votes, a non-profit organization that has played a critical role in the passage of a few landmark voting rights laws in recent years in Illinois. Harish is a Crain’s Chicago 2022 40 Under 40 honoree, a former small business owner, and a proud immigrant. Harish holds a Masters Degree in Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Kalindi Parikh is the Strategy Director at Current, a Chicago-based water innovation hub. She also serves as the Inclusive Ecosystem Lead for Great Lakes ReNEW, an inaugural National Science Foundation regional innovation engine focused on transitioning to an inclusive, circular blue economy. Kalindi led the development of Upstream IL, a US Department of Commerce-funded blue economy strategy for Illinois, and now builds and implements inclusive water workforce development, entrepreneurship, and education programs to bridge equity and opportunity gaps in the Great Lakes Region.

Kalindi serves as an inaugural board member of Heal Chicago, an antiracism and community healing nonprofit. Previously, Kalindi was the Director of Planning for the Chicago Loop Alliance, and served as the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Officer for American Planning Association Illinois. She holds a Bachelor of Science in City and Regional Planning from Ohio State University and a Master of Urban Planning and Policy from University of Illinois Chicago.

Ayesha Qazi-Lampert is an Environmental Science Educator at Chicago Public Schools. She is a member of the Chicago Teachers Union Climate Justice Committee and is currently a Chair of the American Federation of Teachers Climate and Environmental Justice Caucus. She helped co-design and co-teach the CTU’s first Environmental Justice Freedom School. Ayesha is a UIC College of Education PhD student studying environmental education. She received both her Bachelors in Biological Sciences and Masters in Science Education at UIC. Through her work in public schools, collaboration at the Field Museum, and local and national teachers’ unions, her goal is to bridge work grounded in community to educational experiences.

Anjulie Rao is a journalist and critic covering the built environment. Based in Chicago, much of her work reckons with the complexities of post-industrial cities; explores connections to place and land; and exposes intersections between architecture, landscapes, and cultural change. She is the founder and editor of Weathered, a publication focused on cities and landscapes in the wintertime.

Anjulie is a Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Architecture/Interior Architecture and New Arts Journalism departments, and an Adjunct faculty member at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is a columnist at ARCHITECT magazine, and her bylines can be found in The Architect’s Newspaper, Landscape Architecture Magazine, The Architectural Review, The New York Review of Architecture, among others.

Dawveed Scully is Managing Deputy Commissioner of Planning and Development at the City of Chicago. Trained as an architect and urbanist, Dawveed has a strong passion to make design an essential tool to enhance the lives of everyday people. He has experience working on a variety of projects from vision strategies that create a framework for execution to developing implementation strategies that allow those visions to be realized.

Prior to joining the City of Chicago, Dawveed was an Associate Principal in the urban design and planning studio at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill in Chicago where he worked for almost 14 years on development around the world including that focus on housing, neighborhood and community planning, transit-oriented development plans, corridor plans, campus planning, inclusive placemaking and design equity.

His award-winning resume includes projects such as Detroit East Riverfront, Barangaroo Central, Atlanta University Center, and Robbins Park. Projects that all center on equitable and just outcomes in the built environment that elevate local culture and community, focus on health and wellness, facilitate economic mobility, and create connected and resilient places.

Dawveed is a graduate and currently an adjunct professor at IIT School of Architecture and featured in Crain’s Chicago Business 40 under 40 2020, ULI Young Visionary 2018 and Leadership Greater Chicago Class of 2021.

With a background in creative writing, environmental science, and urban planning, Kelsey is a spatial strategist and design researcher at the convergence of planning policy, climate justice, and social change. Kelsey is the keeper of Mental Landscapes, an on-going body of independent trauma-informed research and scholarship that centers psychological disability in park and public space design. Named the Fall 2023 Artist-in-Residence at Allerton Park and Retreat Center in Monticello, Illinois, Kelsey has facilitated design workshops around depression with participants ages 23 to 93. She is a Senior Associate at Muse, a Chicago-based woman-owned planning firm, and holds a master’s of Community and Regional Planning from the University of Oregon and a B.A. in Environmental Science from the University of Iowa.