People

Jasmineb@mit.edu
617.253.3216

Jasmine joined CoLab in January 2011. Her primary responsibilities include coordinating scheduling and travel for the executive director and staff, and overseeing the overall management of the lab space. Prior to joining MIT Jasmine worked for Cambridge Health Alliance for four years as an Administrative Assistant in the Community Affairs Department. Jasmine has extensive experience in travel coordination and accounting having also worked for TNT Vacations as a Booking Agent and as an Accounts Receivable Assistant.

a_bryson@mit.edu
617-253-7673

Alyssa is the Program Director of the Puerto Rico/Caribbean Development Initiative. In this capacity, Alyssa works with community and NGO partners in Puerto Rico to strengthen the involvement of local residents in the formulation of development priorities and the management of natural resources. She also works with faculty and students at MIT and universities in Puerto Rico to co-design strategies for equitable development with local partners.

Before coming to MIT, she worked with the United Nations Development Fund for Women in Ecuador and Colombia on projects dedicated to promoting economic and civic participation in the Andean Region. Ms. Bryson holds a Masters in City Planning from MIT and a BA in Political Science from Northwestern University. Her Masters thesis used participatory mapping to examine how residents use their physical, sociopolitical, and economic mobility to adapt to situations of severe violence in peripheral neighborhoods of Bogotá, Colombia.

dayna@mit.edu
617-252-1380

Dayna is Executive Director of CoLab. An attorney by training, Dayna has worked throughout her professional career on promoting democratic participation and addressing social marginality. Through the ELIAS Project, an MIT-based collaboration between business, NGOs and government, she worked with leaders using profound innovation processes to create multi-sector initiatives for economic, social and environmental sustainability. Prior to that, Dayna was an Associate Director at the Rockefeller Foundation supporting efforts to explore changing racial dynamics and new conceptions of race in the U.S., as well as civil rights legal innovation. Prior to the Rockefeller Foundation, Dayna worked as a voting rights lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, litigating cases in Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi and elsewhere in the South, and briefly as an officer for the New York City Program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Dayna is a 2004 graduate of the Sloan Fellows MBA program of the MIT Sloan School of Management. She has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges and a juris doctor degree from New York University School of Law. She currently serves as a board member for the Emerald Cities Collaborative, Beloved Community Center, Restaurant Opportunities Council (ROC) United, Presencing Institute, and Access Strategies Fund.

iuviene@mit.edu

Nick Iuviene is the Program Director of Just Urban Economies at CoLab. His work focusses on urban economic democracy projects including the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative and the Emerald Cities Collaborative. Previously Nick worked as a community organizer in the Bronx and was co-founder of BlackLeaf Studios, a technology development firm in Brooklyn, NY. Nick has a Masters degree in City Planning from MIT. His graduate thesis, "Building a Platform for Economic Democracy: A Cooperative Development Strategy for the Bronx", looked at how to develop cooperative networks in communities as the organizational infrastructure for socially equitable and environmentally sustainable economic development.

libmac@mit.edu
617-899-1360

As the Program Director of Global Sustainability Partnerships, Libby develops and implements integrated waste management strategies in low-income communities to promote social and economic change. Currently, in Latin American and the Caribbean, she applies innovative waste technologies and business models in urban centers and remote municipalities that simultaneously reduce greenhouse gases and create jobs for impoverished populations. Her most recent work includes: 1.) partnering with Rede CataSampa, the Sao Paulo chapter of Brazil’s national union of waste pickers, the University of Sao Paulo, and MIT students from multiple disciplines to implement a waste vegetable oil collection and filtration business in waste picking cooperatives; and 2.) in partnership with five municipalities and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), she works on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, creating technology and business models for small recycling and waste-to-energy businesses that provide income opportunities for some of the region’s most marginalized people. In her fall 2011 MIT course, D-Lab Waste, Libby will offer students the opportunity to explore and create solutions for waste management in low-and–middle-income countries. A writer and a documentary filmmaker, Libby’s film and written work explore issues of race, equality, and the environment. In 2007 she published the book The Toxic Sandbox: The Truth About Environmental Toxins and Our Children's Health (Penguin, 2007) and was featured on more than 60 radio shows, talking about how environmental pollutants impact the social, cognitive, and physical development of our children. Libby has written, directed, and produced film and television for two decades.

Brendan manages CoLab’s Green Economic Development Initiative (GEDI). In this capacity, he coordinates research with MIT faculty, students, and economic development practitioners from across the country, developing strategies for particular localities and disseminating innovative economic development practices to a broader audience. His work with GEDI focuses on how economic development organizations can stimulate green sectors of our economy, and how the green economy can realize opportunities for marginalized peoples.

Brendan holds a Masters in City Planning from MIT, which focused on energy policy. Prior to coming to MIT, Brendan worked in Vancouver, Canada, consulting local governments on their sustainable energy initiatives, and in Mumbai, India, with a social enterprise producing green building materials. He joined CoLab in May 2012.

alexam@mit.edu
617-324-0208

Alexa is the Media Projects Program Director and Executive Editor of CoLab Radio, where she has combined her passion for stories with her passion for bottom-up urban planning. Alexa works directly with communities to develop media that expresses their perspective on various issues. Alexa founded CoLab Radio, a blog site where people who are committed to improving their communities can share their projects and express their ideas. The site publishes work by a mix of practitioners, academics, and individual residents. Alexa curates and edits the content on CoLab Radio.

Alexa earned her BA in English, with a concentration in Medieval Literature, from Cornell University in 2003. She earned her Master's in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008. Before attending MIT, Alexa directed the SAFE Victim Advocacy Program in the Domestic Violence Unit of the Washington D.C. city courthouse.

ruhfel@mit.edu
617.715.4307

Christina is the Communications and Operations Manager for CoLab. She joined CoLab in October 2008 and is responsible for overseeing many of the administrative functions of the Lab related to finance, communications, fund-raising, and human resources. Prior to CoLab, she worked in MIT's Resource Development Department assisting with fund-raising activities for energy and environmental initiatives.

Christina grew up in southeast Michigan where she spent four years as Associate Coordinator of a school-based water quality monitoring program on the Rouge River. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Health from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan; and a Master of Liberal Arts in Sustainability and Environmental Management from the Harvard University Extension School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.