Team

Kate Altmann

Founder & Organizer

Kate works at the London Architecture office, Mikhail Riches. After graduating from Cambridge UK, she worked at the Architecture firm Hall Mcknight, then becoming the Bass Fellow in Architecture at Yale. Whilst working in London, she became particularly interested in the challenge of building affordable and equitable social housing. Kate’s research focuses on the possibility of fostering community inclusion for individuals with mental illness through housing-based interventions. Her work strives to understand how innovations in approaches to design and health can address concerns of social isolation, loneliness and economic and infrastructural barriers to housing.

Mariana Riobom

Founder & Organizer

Mariana is an architect based in New York. Her work has examined the organization of labor, the use of technology within architectural contexts and migration. She was a teaching fellow at Yale University and served as an instructor at the Cooper Union. Riobom held positions for firms in Paris, Tokyo, and Rome, where she worked on a range of building projects and was part of a team that was awarded for its ideas for refugee housing. A native of Portugal, she earned a bachelors degree from Universidade Lusiada in Porto and a masters degree from the Yale School of Architecture in 2019. Riobom is a founding member of the Yale Mental Health Symposium.

Gus Steyer

Founder & Organizer

Gus has recently completed a dual degree at the Yale School of Architecture and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. During college, Gus studied psychology and economics with an eye towards therapy. He first got into architecture from the perspective of mental health during his time working in wilderness therapy. While on these extended backpacking trips, he noticed what a profound effect the natural environment had on his students well-being and decided that this was something to pursue further. Therefore, he became interested and involved in the ways in which space can improve our mental experiences. He is excited to learn from the breadth of speakers on this topic at the inaugural YMHS.

Jen Shin

Organizer

Jen has recently completed a dual master's at the Yale School of Architecture and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Since college, Jen has been interested in environmental psychology and the ability for architecture to heal. She currently works at the intersection of urban design, urban ecology, and climate change adaptation at local and regional scales. She is committed to public projects that increase access to natural areas and promote social equality and well being. Jen is excited to learn from and witness the conversations created by the range of speakers at the inaugural YMHS this March.

Jackson Lindsay

Organizer

Jackson has recently completed a master's degree at the Yale School of Architecture where his studio and research work focused on issues of urban inequality in the context of housing. Specifically focusing on public and affordable housing projects, his work has studied the social and political mechanisms which underlie them. Through working as part of the YMHS team, he has been further studying housing's effect on mental health. Jackson is eager to be a part of the inaugural YMHS and learn from the engaging panels and conversations.

Araceli Lopez

Engagement Coordinator & Organizer

Araceli is pursuing an M.Arch I at the Yale School of Architecture. She completed her undergraduate at the University of Washington with a dual-degree in Architectural Design (B.A) and Construction Management (B.S). Prior to Yale, she worked and lived in Copenhagen where her interest in designing for people and community-oriented architecture was developed. Araceli is committed to projects that engage in equity and inclusion and is currently the president of the Yale National Organization of Minority Architecture Students. Araceli is excited to learn and understand the topic of mental health and its relation to architectural spaces at the YMHS.

Elihu Rubin

Advisor

Elihu Rubin is Associate Professor of Urbanism at the Yale School of Architecture with a secondary appointment in American Studies. His work bridges the urban disciplines, focusing on the built environments of nineteenth and twentieth-century cities, the history and theory of city planning, urban geography and the cultural landscape, transportation and mobility, architectural preservation and heritage planning, and the social life of urban space. He has a PhD in History of Architecture and Urbanism and a Master of City Planning degree with a focus on transportation, both from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale.

Joel Sanders

Advisor

Joel Sanders FAIA is Principal of JSA, his LGBTBE-certified, award-winning architecture firm based in New York, as well as MIXdesign, a think tank and design consultancy dedicated to creating inclusive design solutions that meet the needs of people of different ages, genders, religions and abilities. Sanders is Professor-in-Practice and the Director of Post-Professional Studies at Yale School of Architecture and the author of three books -- STUD: Architectures of Masculinity, Joel Sanders Writings and Projects and Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture. JSA projects have been featured in international exhibitions and the permanent collections of MoMA, SF MoMA, Art Institute of Chicago and the Carnegie Museum of Art. The firm has received six New York Chapter AIA Design Awards, three New York State AIA Design Awards, three Interior Design Best of Year Awards, two ALA/IIDA Library Interior Design Awards, and Design Citations from Progressive Architecture.

Sheril Holbrook

Communications & Strategy Advisor

Sheril Holbrook is a co-Founder of the Yale Mental Health Colloquium, 2019 and is the Communications & Strategy Advisor for the Yale Mental Health Symposium, 2020. Her day job includes handling internal communications, Dean’s Office Speaker Series publicity, and is part of the Digital team for the Yale School of Management. Hailing from the United Kingdom, she now calls the New Haven and the US, her home. Sheril is an advocate for those who struggle in the workplace, and is committed to learning how we can remove the stigma around mental health issues, and for developing the kind of environment that allows us all to talk about it without fear or shame.

Jessica Helfand

Advisor

Jessica Helfand received her BA and MFA from Yale University, where she taught for more than two decades. She is a co-founder of Design Observer, and co-host of two podcasts: The Observatory, and The Design of Business | The Business of Design.  She is the author of numerous books on design and visual culture, including Design: The Invention of Desire (Yale, 2016); Face: A Visual Odyssey (MITPress: 2019) and the forthcoming Self-Reliance: Thoughts for a New World (Thames & Hudson, 2021). Named the first Henry Wolf Resident in Design at the American Academy in Rome in 2010, Jessica is a Life Fellow of the American Antiquarian Society, a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale, and a 2013 recipient of the AIGA Medal. A former member of The U.S. Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, she has held fellowships at Civitella Ranieri, The Bogliasco Foundation, and Caltech.

Dr. Yoko Kawai, PhD

Lecturer

Yale School of Architecture

Joel Sanders, FAIA

Professor Adjunct and Director, Post Professional Program

Yale School of Architecture

Yeju Choi

Designer, Artist, Critic

Yale School of Art

Alison Cunningham

Director of Professional Formation

Yale Divinity School

Colleen Murphy-Dunning

Director, Hixon Center for Urban Ecology, and the Urban Resources Initiative

Yale School of the Environment

Yair Listokin

Shibley Family Fund Professor of Law

Yale Law School

Sheril Holbrook

Assistant Director for Internal Communications

Yale School of Management

Dr. Philip Corlett, PhD

Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Yale School of Medicine

Dr. Michael Rowe, PhD

Professor of Psychiatry; Co-Director, Program for Recovery and Community Health; Director, Citizens Community Collaborative

Yale School of Medicine

Dr. Vinod Srihari, MD

Professor of Psychiatry and Director, STEP Program

Yale School of Medicine

Dr. Lindsay Powell, DNP, PMH NP-BC, APRN

Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, Internal Medicine - Yale AIDS Program

Yale School of Nursing

Dr. Megan Smith, DrPH, MPH

Associate Professor of Psychiatry and in the Child Study Center and in Public Health; Director, MOMS Partnership; Director, Yale Child Study Center Parent and Family Development Program,

Yale School of Public Health

Sandra Luckow

Filmmaker, Fellow

Timothy Dwight College