Forum Network

Josh Zakim is an active Board Member of the Lenny Zakim Fund, founded in 1995 by his father and his activist friends, the Fund gives small grants to support local grassroots organizations seeking to address complex social issues. Zakim was elected to the Boston City Council in November 2013. He serves as the Chair of the Committee on Human Rights and Civil Rights. His legislative priorities center around social and economic justice. Image: [www.joshzakim.com](https://www.joshzakim.com/about "www.joshzakim.com")

Ona Ferguson is a Senior Mediator at the Consensus Building Institute and lecturer at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. At CBI, Ona designs and facilitates meetings on a range of environmental and public policy issues, as well as on organizational and strategic planning. For more than a decade, Ona has helped groups work constructively on natural resource and public policy issues including shoreline management, climate change planning, toxic site clean ups, and land use disputes. Image: [www.cbi.org](https://www.cbi.org/about/bio/ona-ferguson/ "cbi")

Marcela García writes editorials -- the daily unsigned essays representing the official view of the Boston Globe as a community institution -- and is a member of the Globe editorial board. García has been part of the op-ed and editorial pages since early 2014. Previously, she was a correspondent for Telemundo Boston, a special contributor to the Boston Business Journal, and the editor of El Planeta, Boston’s largest Spanish-language publication. Image: [Linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelagarcia/detail/photo/ "Marcia Garcia")

Armando Carbonell FAICP, Senior Fellow and Chair, Department of Planning and Urban Form, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Carbonell has led the urban planning program at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy since 1999. After attending Clark University and the Johns Hopkins University, Carbonell spent the early part of his career as an academic geographer. He went on to initiate a new planning system for Cape Cod, Massachusetts, as the founding Executive Director of the Cape Cod Commission. In 1992 he was awarded a Loeb fellowship in the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Carbonell later taught urban planning at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania and served as an editor of the British journal Town Planning Review. He has consulted on master plans in Houston, Texas, and Fujian Province, China, and is the author or editor of numerous works on city and regional planning and planning for climate change, including the forthcoming Lincoln Institute book, Nature and Cities: The Ecological Imperative in Urban Planning and Design. Carbonell is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK), and Lifetime Honorary Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (UK). Image: [www.lincolninst.edu](https://www.lincolninst.edu/node/24801 "lincolninst.edu")

Jeannette has been with CPEX since 2010, focusing on developing and providing planning and implementation tools with and for Louisiana’s coastal communities. She has co-authored several of CPEX’s publications and worked with numerous coastal communities to identify opportunities for reducing flood risk and increasing overall resilience. Jeannette has a natural science background and earned a M. Sc. in Energy and Environmental Science from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands, and B.Sc. in Biological Science from LSU in Baton Rouge. Image:[www.cpex.org](https://www.cpex.org/staff-list/ "cpex")

German Lopez has written for Vox since it launched in 2014, with a focus on criminal justice, guns, and drugs. Previously, he worked at CityBeat, a local newspaper in Cincinnati, covering politics and policy at the local and state level.

Scheri Fultineer brings to teaching her knowledge of landscape planning and design at diverse scales, years of research into the ways that cultural practices influence the shaping of the landscape, and a lively interest in the contemporary challenge of incorporating sustainability into our design and cultural practices. She teaches graduate-level landscape architecture courses that range from core level studios to advanced seminars, and has served as department head of Landscape Architecture. She holds a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School.

Kara Elliott-Ortega is an urban planner in the arts focusing on the role of arts and creativity in the built environment and community development. Prior to becoming the Chief of Arts and Culture, she served as the Director of Policy and Planning, where she worked on implementing Boston Creates, Boston’s ten-year cultural plan. She also worked at the intersection of arts and planning around the City, including supporting cultural districts, creative placemaking, and the development of cultural spaces for artists. Originally from Providence, Rhode Island, Kara received her bachelor’s from the University of Chicago and her Master in City Planning from MIT. Prior to the City of Boston, she worked with MIT’s Community Innovators Lab in a community ownership plan for Project Row Houses in Houston, and served as the Media and Communications Editor for the Society of Architectural Historians. Some of her past research includes an analysis of the local impact of artists and art production in Detroit following the 2008 recession, and the role of urban designers in complex problem solving in the Rebuild by Design Hurricane Sandy Design Competition.

**Adam McNeil** is a graduating M.A in History student at Simmons College in Boston, MA. He graduated from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Fall 2015 with B.S. in History. Adam can be reached at @CulturedModesty. Follow him on Twitter at [@CulturedModesty](https://twitter.com/CulturedModesty "").

Max Alvarez is an essayist, academic, agitator and columnist as well as host of Working People podcast. Follow him on Twitter at [@maximillian\_alv](https://twitter.com/maximillian\_alv "")

Christina Tucker is a co-host of Unfriendly Black Hotties, a podcast devoted to examining the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality in higher ed, pop culture, and politics. Follow her on Twitter at [@C\_GraceT](https://twitter.com/C\_GraceT "")

**Kamille Washington** is a co-host of Unfriendly Black Hotties, a podcast devoted to examining the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality in higher ed, pop culture, and politics. Follow her on Twitter at [@thatblasiangirl](https://twitter.com/thatblasiangirl "")