Christine Gaspar is a designer and planner with over 15 years of experience in community engaged design practice. Since 2009, she has been CUP’s Executive Director. Before that, she was Assistant Director of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, Mississippi, where she provided architectural design and community planning services to low-income communities of color recovering from Hurricane Katrina. She is a founding member of the Design Futures Leadership Forum Advisory Board and holds Masters in Architecture and in Urban Planning from MIT and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Brown University. As a first generation American whose parents worked as a domestic worker and in a factory, she experienced some of the ways marginalized communities face barriers to accessing rights, services, and a political voice and deeply believes in CUP’s mission to change that. She is also deeply committed to expanding who has access to design and how it is used as a tool for community-led change. Follow CUP at: Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/welcometocup Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/we_are_CUP/ Twitter:  https://www.instagram.com/we_are_CUP/ LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-center-for-urban-pedagogy-cup- Listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, and anywhere else podcasts can be found. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Podcast art by Maliya Naz.