Careers in Urban Policy and Design Conference

Anika Singh Lemar

Clinical Professor of Law

Yale Law School

Anika Singh Lemar is a clinical professor of law at Yale Law School where she teaches clinics that represent affordable housing developers, tenants, homeowners, small businesses, community development financial institutions, fair housing advocates, and cooperatives. Lemar writes about land use, zoning, and housing. She is a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institute’s Metropolitan Policy Project and member of the Academic Advisory Committee at the Metropolitan Abundance Project. Lemar received her B.A., cum laude, from Yale University and her J.D., cum laude, from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar. While in law school, she received the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and co-founded Next City.

Maria Ortiz

Senior Urban Planner

Bloomberg Associates

María Ortiz is a Senior Urban Planner at Bloomberg Associates, where she has been part of the Urban Planning team since August 2021. With a deep commitment to helping cities become more livable, resilient, and equitable, María advises municipal governments on strategies to enhance urban service delivery and improve quality of life for residents. Before joining Bloomberg Associates, María was a City Strategy Advisor with the Bloomberg Philanthropies American Cities Climate Challenge at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), where she worked with the cities of Atlanta, St. Petersburg (FL), and Washington, D.C. to advance decarbonization in transportation and building energy use. María also served as a Program Manager at the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities initiative. In that role, she supported cities in Latin America in developing and implementing urban resilience strategies and later provided technical assistance through the Strategy Delivery Unit to cities including Atlanta, Panama City, and Washington, D.C., as well as to the Battery Park City Authority in New York. Her public sector experience also includes three years at the NYC Department of Sanitation, where she managed citywide recycling programs for electronics, textiles, and organic material. A native of Mexico City, María holds a B.A. in Economics from Universidad Iberoamericana, a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment, and a Master of Science in Urban Informatics from NYU’s Center for Urban Science & Progress.

Ally Soong

Manhattan Borough Planner

New York City Department of Urban Planning

Ally Soong is a Manhattan Borough Planner at the New York City Department of City Planning. She manages zoning applications from private and public applicants in Manhattan, working on everything from design review of privately owned public spaces (POPS) to the complex zoning of large-scale development projects. She has also worked on citywide policy initiatives, including a housing-focused zoning text amendment and an industrial policy study. Ally holds a BA in Urban Studies from Yale.

Mansavi Menon

Co-Founder and Principal

UrbanSense

Manasvi Menon is Co-Founder and Principal at UrbanSense, a NYC-based consulting firm that works with real estate developers, city governments, and non-profits to plan, pilot, implement, and scale technology in the public realm. She partners with clients of all sizes - from small non-profits like the Rail Park in Philadelphia to international real estate developers like Mitsui Fudosan in Tokyo - and helps them maximize their impact and improve the quality of life at the neighborhood scale. Manasvi has a BA in Sociology from Yale (MC) and an M.Sc. in City Design from the London School of Economics & Political Science.

Andrei Harwell

Director

Yale Urban Design Workshop

Andrei Harwell, AIA is an architect, urban designer, and planner whose practice and teaching emphasize the strategic value of architecture in responding to contemporary challenges facing American and world cities, towns, and regions. Andrei has contributed to award-winning projects ranging from the design of individual buildings and public spaces to neighborhood, downtown, and regional plans. He is a Senior Critic at the Yale School of Architecture, where he directs the Yale Urban Design Workshop, the School of Architecture’s community design center, and teaches design studios and clinical courses on urban design, development, and affordable housing.