Joseph, a Northern Cheyenne Tribal Member, is the Executive Director of SNCC. A passionate community designer, planner, and educator, Joseph’s work has encompassed several schematic and built community housing projects, the research and publication of 22 case studies and best practices highlighting exemplary Native housing processes, and dozens of workshops and studios to build the design and technical capacity of students and practitioners in Indian Country. In addition to overseeing SNCC’s operations, he is developing curriculum and research to advance indigenous values within the Del E. Webb School of Construction at Arizona State University, as a Visiting Eminent Scholar. Joseph became engaged with SNCC during his Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship. He worked directly with SNCC and the Santo Domingo Tribal Housing Authority, leading the development of a 41-unit LIHTC, NEA, and ArtPlace-funded development. Since becoming SNCC’s Executive Director, Joseph has leveraged millions of private and public dollars to advance tribal housing and sustainable development throughout Indian Country.
Core Practices: Culturally appropriate design, community engagement, healthy housing design, design thinking, capacity building, urban mapping and way-finding design, native-to-place architecture, master and comprehensive planning.
Nathaniel Corum is an architect, planner and educator who has worked with Indigenous Community Enterprises, Red Feather, and Architecture for Humanity on community design initiatives. As a former Fulbright Scholar and Senior Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas Fellow, he has pursued research and practice in culturally-appropriate regenerative design. Nathaniel’s work with SNCC has included showcasing exemplary Native housing nationwide through case studies research and documentary production, and collaborating with communities on housing, planning and community facilities. Alongside these initiatives, he has educated over 400 students in real-world, hands-on workshops geared towards public-interest design. Nathaniel’s design work and process has been widely published and featured in several international exhibitions. He holds an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the recipient of a Rose Architectural Fellowship and author of “Building a Straw Bale House” from Princeton Architectural Press.
Core Practices: Environmentally regenerative architecture, community engagement, participatory architecture, community master planning, workshop facilitation, technical assistance training, documentary research, and green building systems technology.
Daniel Glenn, Senior Design Associate, is an architect and educator with thirty years of experience in the design and teaching of affordable, sustainable, and culturally responsivearchitecture in urban and rural environments across the United States. He is the Principal of 7 Directions Architects/Planners, PLLC, an Indian-owned design A/E firm based in Seattle, WA, and has taught architecture at Arizona State University, the University of Washington, and Montana State University. He has provided technical assistance and trainings for green housing to tribes throughout the country through the HUD Sustainable Construction in Indian Country Initiative, the Sustainable Native Communities Collaborative, and the Enterprise Community Partners Rural and Native American Initiative. Mr. Glenn, who is from the Crow Tribe of Montana, designed the Crow Nation’s Little Big Horn College Campus, featured in the documentary film, Aboriginal Architecture Living Architecture. He has designed several LEED projects, including the LEED for Homes Gold Guadalupe House, LEED for Homes Platinum Puyallup Place of Hidden Waters and the University of Montana’s Payne Family Native American Center in Missoula. Daniel has a B.Arch. from Montana State University and a Masters of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Four of his projects are featured in the book, New Architecture on Indigenous Lands.
Core Practices: Culturally responsive design, community engagement, participatory design process, affordable housing design, community master planning, campus design, community design facilitation, technical assistance training, and green building systems technology.
Mayrah Udvardi is fascinated with the way the built environment creates injustices in developing areas around the world. She grew up in Australia, Germany, and the US, a background which gave her insight into the ways in which place and identity coalesce. Mayrah has helped lead campaigns at the grassroots level ranging from an EPA-funded pilot program to generate energy independence in Corvallis, OR to campus sustainability to internal displacement in Bangalore, India. Her passion for addressing housing and livelihood insecurities through design emerged during her three years with Enterprise Design Initiatives. She has since conducted two rigorous studies of spatial injustice: her thesis work explored the ways in which urban design plays into environmental degradation and injustice in Bangalore. She also spent two years recording through drawing how indigenous peoples around the world struggle to sustain their homes, first through the Watson Traveling Fellowship and later for an Urban-Think Tank project called Empower Shack. At SNCC, Mayrah assists with the Summer Design workshop, creates written and graphic content, and supports design proposals. Mayrah holds a B.A. from Wellesley College and is an M. Arch candidate at Columbia University.
Core Practices: Community engagement, visual journaling, cultural and environmental impact assessment, culturally responsive design, resiliency modeling.
Ray Demers is a Senior Program Director with Enterprise Community Partners. He co-led the technical team updating the 2015 Green Communities Criteria – a national green building standard developed exclusively for affordable housing. Ray delivers technical trainings and works with policymakers to advocate for equitable development practices. He supports Enterprise Solutions work nationally by researching, incubating, and piloting emerging information technology systems to increase impact. Prior to joining Enterprise, He worked at Erdy McHenry Architecture in Philadelphia and as a project manager at Harvey Construction Corporation in Manchester, NH. Ray has a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Lehigh University.
Core Practices: Community engagement, participatory design process, architectural design and planning, regenerative research and site design, architectural and environmental education, community design facilitation, technical assistance training, and building systems technology.
Jamie Blosser, AIA, LEED AP, is the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Art Institute and the founder of the Sustainable Native Communities Collaborative (SNCC). Blosser recently completed a Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, focusing on equity, resilience, and effects of global urbanization on rural communities. After her Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship with the Ohkay Owingeh Housing Authority in New Mexico, Blosser practiced as an associate in the Santa Fe office of Atkin Olshin Schade Architects for ten years. She has lectured widely on the importance of cultural and environmental sustainability. Her work has been featured in Architectural Record, Indian Country Today, American Indian Report, Affordable Housing Finance, Progressive Planning, and in books including Growing Urban Habitats: Seeking a New Housing Development Model, The Public Interest Design Guidebook, and New Architecture on Indigenous Lands. Jamie served on the Enterprise Green Communities technical advisory group for the 2011 and 2015 Criteria, helping to develop a new tribal and rural pathway for compliance. Jamie graduated with a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ed Rosenthal has over 30 years experience developing affordable housing, master planning residential and mixed use developments, providing direct technical assistance on affordable housing development to community based organizations and tribal development groups and managing capacity building grant programs for community based organizations and tribes. Through 2014 he was the Director of the Enterprise National Rural and Native American Initiative of Enterprise Community Partners based in Santa Fe. In that capacity he managed programs and provided training under a HUD Section 4 Capacity Building Program in which over a 15-year period he supervised the award and monitoring of over $7 million dollars in capacity building grants to 53 rural development organizations and 27 tribal development entities across the country from Maine to Hawaii, and provided direct technical assistance trainings to rural development entities and tribes focusing on affordable housing development strategies. A member of the DC Bar, Ed received his law degree from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where he helped numerous tenant organizations convert their apartment buildings into affordable housing cooperative.
Tomasita Duran has been the Executive Director of the Ohkay Owingeh Housing Authority for 19 years and is an enrolled tribal member of Ohkay Owingeh Tribe. She has overseen the rehabilitation of over 300 dwellings on the Ohkay Owingeh reservation and manages a housing stock of 75 units. She works directly with the officials of the Ohkay Owingeh Tribal Council, as well as funding institutions and private, state and federal agencies to develop housing and preserve the cultural legacy of her Pueblo. Tomasita currently serves on the NDC Tax Credit Advisory Board, Tsay Corporation Board of Directors, Cha Piyeh, Inc. Board of Directors, and the Sustainable Native Collaborative Board of Directors.
Megan is the Director of the Honoring Nations program at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Honoring Nations is a national awards program that identifies, celebrates, and shares outstanding examples of tribal governance. Founded in 1998, the awards program spotlights tribal government initiatives that are especially effective in addressing critical concerns and challenges facing the more than 560 Indian nations and their citizens. She is also the Vice-Chair for the Board of Directors at the Rosa Minoka Hill Fund, which provides scholarship assistance to American Indian students and she recently served as the Treasurer on the Board of Native Americans in Philanthropy. Previously, she worked as the Director of Development at the University of New Mexico College of Arts and Sciences and Senior Program Officer at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Megan is also the Founder and President of Minoka Organics. Megan graduated from the University of Chicago with a Master of Arts in the Social Sciences and received a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs, with an emphasis on Latin America, and Economics from the University of Colorado- Boulder. She also earned an International Baccalaureate degree from the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West.
Rodger Boyd has worked in economic and community development, affordable housing and governmental relations for decades, emphasizing the establishment of sustainable reservation economies and communities. From 2002 through 2015 he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Native American Programs (ONAP), Department of Housing and Urban Development. While there he directed federal programs to foster safe, decent and affordable housing for Native Americans in the U.S. HUD ONAP recipients included 567 Federally recognized Indian tribes, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. Previously, he served as a Program Manager for the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI), U.S. Department of the Treasury. Rodger holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of New Mexico and a Master of City and Regional Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation.
