Lauren Ashley Week

co-editor-in-chief

Lauren Ashley Week is currently pursuing a dual Juris Doctor and Master of Urban and Regional Planning. Her research focuses on land use and zoning, affordable housing, environmental resiliency, small business development and neighborhood commercial corridor planning, and spatial justice. While in graduate school, Lauren has interned with legal aid nonprofits and local and federal government predominantly working in housing and community development law. Prior to attending the University of Michigan, she worked in both Silicon Valley and New York City as a paralegal and conducted research with the Indian School of Business on the planning of incubators and "knowledge corridors" in India as a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar. Lauren graduated with a B.A. in Legal Studies and Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley. She enjoys running, boxing, and competing in Moth StorySlams.

Harrison Clark

co-editor-in-chief

Harrison is a second year student in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Master of Engineering in Applied Climate programs. His academic work has focused on advancing policy through data analysis, especially in the transportation and land use space. He is currently on staff with the US Department of Transportation and is the returning lead graduate student instructor for a course in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences. He attended St. Olaf College for degrees in political science and French, and he toured domestically and internationally with the award-winning St. Olaf College orchestra, serving as principal double bassist for two years. Harrison is chronically online, makes a perfectly yellow French omelet, and knows every word to Smash Mouth’s eponymous album – Smash Mouth.

Marisol Mendez

co-deputy editor

Marisol Mendez-Vasquez is a first year Master of Urban and Regional Planning Student. She is passionate about sustainable development in the US and Latin America. She has conducted research on how to address the racial disparities that arise in urbanization with a focus on providing sustainable housing for the homeless populations in Georgia. In her free time, Marisol enjoys trying new experiences and activities, whether it's trying a new restaurant or taking a dance class. She is also an avid traveler and enjoys visiting different cities to learn about their unique cultures and ways of life. She believes that every new experience is an opportunity for personal growth and enrichment.

Revati Thatte

co-deputy editor

Revati is a first-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning student intending to concentrate on transportation and land use planning. She grew up in sunny San Diego, California and lived in the Bay Area for several years, which sparked her interest in public transportation and highway finance. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a minor in public policy. When she isn’t working on Agora, you can find her planning the MURP program’s annual Expanded Horizons trip or working as a technical writer on Google Maps. Revati loves running through Argo Park along the Huron River, exploring new restaurants in Ann Arbor, and playing endless rounds of Jeopardy! whenever the opportunity arises.

Upasana Roy

deputy creative director

Upasana Roy is a first-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning. Before coming to grad school, they have worked for 2 years in India as an architect for a firm that specializes in designing assisted living facilities. Their interests lie in the intersection of contemporary informal urbanism and big-data informatics. Apart from working as the deputy creative director in Agora, they are the Social Co-Chair in the Urban Planning Student Association at Taubman. In their free time they like to paint, cook for their friends, listen to playlists on YouTube (their favorite channel is 'My Analogue Journal' ) and spend an unholy amount of time on Pinterest.

Tara Grebe

co-creative director

Tara Grebe is currently pursuing a dual Master of Urban and Regional Planning and 2G-Master of Architecture at Taubman. During her time at Taubman she has focused her studies on the intersection of public-interest design, sustainable food systems, and real estate. In 2022 she was a Dow Sustainability Fellow with the UM Graham Institute where she participated in a team focused on coalition building in the realm of energy equity. A former dancer who traded in her tap shoes, she now enjoys bopping around her kitchen to some good music.  She’s passionate about her hometown of Kansas City, but loves to travel around meeting new people and exploring new cities.

Manvi Nigam

co-creative director

Manvi is a second-year student in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program, and is also completing a Graduate Certificate in Urban Informatics. Her focus is on transportation planning, with a special emphasis on data analysis in advancing goals of transportation equity. Coming from an architecture background, she loves designing all things visual – maps, infographics, presentations, and obviously, this journal! In her free time, she likes cooking, online window shopping, and going on angry rants about the state of public transit in the United States.

Vaidehi Shah

deputy-symposium director

Vaidehi is a first year Master of Urban and Regional Planning student interested in equitable and sustainable development of public infrastructure in cities. Using this as a lens, I’m keen to explore planning methods that use technology, community-insight and on-ground implementation strategies. I graduated from CEPT University with a Bachelor in Architecture. I did a research fellowship from Indian Institute for Human Settlements focusing on  urgent environmental and economic challenges faced by Indian cities. I work at the MAP library (Now Clark Library)  at University of Michigan and recommend visiting it if you haven’t! I love biking, exploring unpopular travel places and dancing is my biggest mood lifter.

Kathryn Economou

co-symposium director

Kathryn Economou is a second year Master of Urban and Regional Planning student, her interests lie at the intersection of community-based planning and sustainable development practice. At the University of Michigan, Kathryn works as a research associate and local government consultant at the Graham Sustainability Institute. Kathryn the co-developer of the radical planning course at Taubman College. The course seeks to challenge the status quo of planning practices that have enforced the material construction of inequities in cities by spotlighting alternative approaches to address lasting disparities. Kathryn enjoys listening to garage house music and podcasts that chronicle the failures of US foreign interventions.

Luke Ranker

co-symposium director

Luke is a second-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning student interested in the intersection between health and urban planning. To that end, he has focused on environmental and land use planning. He helps advance the  Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority’s mission to expand people-friendly streets as a planning intern. He earned a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Kansas and spent nearly a decade battling typos as a local government reporter in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. Outside of planning, Luke would like to be building LEGO sets, but they’re too expensive. So he spends most of his time making soup, drinking craft beer,  and hoping Harrison will shut up about Smash Mouth.

Maria Garcia Reyna

finance & fundraising Director

Maria is a second-year in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program and received her B.S. in Architecture from the University of Michigan in 2021. During her time in the Urban Planning Program she has had the opportunity to work with various projects and organizations. This past summer she was the Brademas Fellow at Community Development Advocates of Detroit as well as a supervisor for the Detroit Census Recount Challenge for the City of Detroit. In addition to this, this is her second year working with Agora, is a Peer Mentor for undergraduate Taubman students, and spent the past year as a social chair for the Urban Planning Student Association.

Srishti Jaipuria

social Media & Outreach Director

Srishti is a second-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning student with a focus on transportation planning. She is not only studying transportation planning, but also gaining hands-on experience as a transport planning  intern at AECOM. She's also a graduate student instructor for Digital Studies. Srishti is incredibly passionate about finding the right balance between social, economic, and environmental development. As a planning enthusiast, you can always find her nerding out over maps. When she's not knee-deep in urban planning, you can find her traveling, reading, and listening to podcasts. She is always down for a good time and loves to socialize.

Diana anda

blog & website manager

Diana is a first year Master of Urban Design student. She was born and raised between Texas and Turkey, with family roots in Ecuador. Diana attended Oklahoma State University where she received a Bachelor of Architecture. She approaches urban design from multiple angles, centering matters of equity and inclusion at the center of her design process. In her free time she enjoys anything related to plants, spending time with family and traveling.