Quardean Lewis-Allen will explore how urban inhabitants can ground their narrative in the places they are connected to and advocate for the changes they seek to enact them. He will also share what this looks like for his community design center practice, both spatially and as a dialogue with stakeholders, to design for an inclusive future.
About the Speaker:
Quardean Lewis-Allen is the Founder and CEO of the nonprofit youth creative agency and innovation hub, Youth Design Center, which provides a gateway for young people in his native Brownsville community to access education, technology, and mentorship to tackle underrepresentation in STEAM professions and cyclical poverty, as well as to address the need for place-based community revitalization. He has over a decade of interdisciplinary design experience working across public and private sectors at the intersection of tactical urbanism and social activism through community-led design. Youth Design Center has been featured in the NYTimes, Fast Company, Buzzfeed, Forbes, amongst others.
Lewis-Allen was an Adjunct at City College of New York and NYU Tisch Interactive Telecommunications Program where he was also a Human-In-Residence Fellow researching practices of Spatial Justice. He serves on the Board of Brownsville Community Development Corporation. He is a Crain’s 40 Under 40, Forbes 30 Under 30, and an Echoing Green Black Male Achievement Fellow, amongst other accolades. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from SUNY Buffalo and a Masters in Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design.