CityTech Voorhees Hall, 186 Jay St, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Mark your calendar for the second of two evening panel discussions, co-coordinated by AIA Brooklyn and CityTech’s Department of Architectural Technology.
Session 2 will be a discussion on the historical background for unions and the role of organized labor in a professional setting.
Panelists:
Valérie Lechêne – The New School Urban Systems Lab
Val cultivates strategic impact across the Urban Systems Lab as Assistant Director of Operations and Communications. A systems designer, researcher, and strategist, she leverages experience across the built environment, product and innovation design, geospatial data visualization, ecological regeneration, housing, land use, public policy, and grassroots organizing.
Dr Benjamin Shepard – City Tech Professor of Human Services
By day, Benjamin Shepard, PhD, LMSW, works as Professor of Human Services at City Tech/CUNY. By night, battles to keep New York from becoming a giant shopping mall. He is also the author/editor of ten other books including: On Friendship and Fighting (2025), Sustainable Urbanism (2019), and Illumenations on Mark Street (Ibidem, 2019).
Lee Kuhn– Member of Sage and Coombe Architects Union
Lee Kuhn, a native New Yorker, is an architectural worker at Sage and Coombe Architects. In 2023 he was a member of the bargaining committee when the firm recognized its workers to form just the second union at a private architectural practice in the United States. Currently, he is part of the bargaining committee at the firm working to negotiate the union’s first contract.
