Hi! I'm Chris. I grew up in Austin, Texas' beautiful Barton Hills, land taken by force from the Tonkawa people by settler colonialists who believed themselves to be White. I graduated from the Liberal Arts and Science Academy, a public magnet high school on the Lyndon B. Johnson campus in Northeast Austin, where I first became involved in efforts to question and challenge segregation on the basis of race, encouraged by my teachers and by my family’s own experience as White Jews in the American South.
In 2012, I moved to New Orleans to attended Tulane University. As a student, I served as vice president of the Multicultural Arts and Architecture Collective and organized with Students Organizing Against Racism, Divest Tulane! and the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS-TU). I was also elected to leadership positions with the Tulane College Democrats and the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS). I graduated in 2017 with a master's of architecture and a major in political science.
Today I advocate, research and design collaboratively as facilitator of Collab., the Collaborative Design Workshop, where I aim to engage racialized cultural and political spaces through an antiracist, queer, feminist lens. In the past, I have coordinated programming, content and communications for the American Institute of Architects’ New Orleans chapter and the New Orleans Architecture Foundation and contributed to Colloqate Design’s efforts to design spaces for racial, social and cultural equity. I serve on the board of the National Organization of Minority Architects’ Louisiana chapter as well as the Architecture+Design Film Festival:New Orleans.