Team

Eve Picker’s  is the founder and past president of cityLAB. Her expertise in inner city redevelopment and regeneration has earned her broad recognition both in the Pittsburgh community at large and nationally. She has even been called a local ‘folk hero’. Committed to good design, her work consistently aims to make a positive contribution to the public realm with every project. 

Eve has a background as an architect, city planner, urban designer, real estate developer, economic development strategist, publisher (founding publisher of Pop City), and co-founder of a provocative public forum for urban issues. All of these have provided her with a rich understanding of how cities work, how urban neighborhoods can be revitalized, what policies are needed to do so, and the unique marketing that creates the buzz necessary for regeneration. With cityLAB, her first non-profit venture, Eve is turning her passion for cities to broader, city-wide revitalization issues. Read more about Eve at evepicker.com, or say hello at eve@smallchange.com.

Sara Blumenstein managed cityLAB's experiments and designed cityLAB's programs, graphics, and web projects from 2011 to 2014. She loved working on cityLAB's projects, especially the Garfield Night Market and Tiny Houses. Read more about Sara on her website.

Kevin Altomari is the Associate Dean of Enrollment and Student Services at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also president of the Neighborhood Business Inc., a company that helps small entrepreneurs grow their ideas into business plans.

Nina Marie Barbuto lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. She completed the Mediascapes Master of Architecture Program at Southern California and has a Bachelors of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University. Her media includes architecture, film, sound, and art installation often with the idea of recycling noise into the system or elevating the vernacular spectacular. Over the past seven years, her works have been featured in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Seoul, Korea. In 2007, she co-founded the I Made It! Market, a nomadic indie crafts marketplace that provides opportunities for artists to sell their wares. An idea based on urban acupuncture, the I Made It!Market partners with community, arts and non-profit organizations to raise funds and awareness to assist in improving their communities. Currently, Nina's entrepreneur ventures include awesome studio, focusing on social media and architecture, and awesome gallery, an experimental space where one can learn through the process of making.

Christine Bethea is on the board of Friendship Development Associates. She is the founder and Director of GA/GI Festival, Pittsburgh's eco, art and technology event which programs the April "Unblurred" gallery crawl each year in the Penn Avenue Arts District. Ms. Bethea also runs an antique, art and collectibles shop, ARTica, and is an award-winning fiber artist and quilt historian, archived with the Senator John Heinz History Center, a Smithsonian affiliate.

Bill Cornell is a psychotherapist in private practice with offices in Lawrenceville. He is a widely-published author in his field and a consultant to psychotherapy training programs around the world. After raising his family in an 1825 farmhouse north of Pittsburgh, Bill decided to move into the city, purchasing a house on Penn Avenue so as to participate in the revival of the Penn Avenue/Garfield corridor. He has served on the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation's Board of Directors since 2006 and was elected President of the BGC board in 2010.

Freddie Croce, RA is the Principal and Co-Founder of inter*ARCHITECTURE. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, as chair of the Land Use and Housing Committee, is overseeing the crafting of the Garfield Neighborhood Plan and Strategic Implementation Plan and sits on the Planning and Design committee of Friendship Development Associates. He is also currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Architecture department at Carnegie Mellon University.

DeAnna Davis is a Pittsburgh realtor and community activist.

Ryan England is a graduate from Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied Civil and Environmental engineering.  He currently works for Earthen Vessels Outreach as Director of Operations.  In his work with Earthen Vessels Outreach, he hopes to enhance and transform the lives of the people in the communities of Bloomfield, Garfield, and Friendship.

Jarmele Fairclaugh is a Finance Specialist with The Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh.

Mark Fairclaugh is a life-long Garfield resident. His favorite color is Payne’s grey.

John Folan is the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Professor of Architecture, Director of the Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS), track Chair of the Masters of Urban Design (MUD) Program, and member of the Urban Laboratory faculty at Carnegie Mellon University.  He is a graduate of the University of Illinois (Bachelor of Science in Architecture, High Honors) and the University of Pennsylvania (Masters of Architecture) where he was a Kahn Fellow and recipient of the Henry Adams Medal. Registered as an Architect since 1995, John has focused his research on the methodologies employed in the translation from drawing to building.

Zach Restelli attended Allegheny College and currently lives in Pittsburgh.  He is fascinated by urban development and building efficiency retrofits and now works with Bona Fide Homes LLC, where he hopes to maximize public utility through private venture while minimizing environmental impact.  He strives to share his values and develop strong relationships in Pittsburgh's changing neighborhoods so the community as a whole can work to build better, more efficient places.

Eric Shiner is the director of the Andy Warhol Museum.  He attended the University of Pittsburgh where he studied the history of art and architecture and Japanese.  He attended graduate school at Osaka University in Japan, where he earned his Masters in the History of Art. Eric's love for Pittsburgh brought him back to his home town after his years in Japan.  He looks to Pittsburgh as a base of innovation and industry, a canvas on which to study the melding of science and art.

Rick Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield Garfield Corporation, has dedicated decades to the improvement of the neighborhood he lives and works in. In his role, he seeks to better the social, economic and physical fabric of the Bloomfield, Garfield and Friendship neighborhoods by engaging and inspiring members of the community.

Gill Wildman is a co-founder of Plot, an innovation agency that develops creative business strategy. Gill believes organizations need to realize the value of both end-user participation and interdisciplinary collaboration to succeed with their innovation strategies and design initiatives. Plot were consultants for the 6% Place. Wildman was a leader of the Design Council’s Humanising Technology initiative, Assistant Director of the Design, Strategy and Innovation MA at Brunel University, and has been active in shaping the definition of Service Design for the British Standards Institute. She is now an Industry board member for Innovative Product Design and Interactive Media Design and External Examiner for the MDesign at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee. Together with her partner Nick Durrant, Gill is currently Nierenberg Chair of Design at Carnegie Mellon University.

Jim Russell, co-founder and chief strategist of the Pittsburgh Expatriate Network (PEN) is a talent migration analyst tracing how Rust Belt refugees are responsible for economic development around the world. He archives his journey at his blog, Burgh Diaspora. Jim’s interest in the move to improve stems from a nomadic lost decade spent hitchhiking around the United States and Canada. Among his itinerant jobs was a position as a set dresser on the film “Ethan Frome”, starring Liam Neeson and Patricia Arquette. With the proceeds from that experience, he bought a one-way ticket to Athens, Greece. How he managed to return to the States is another story for another time.

Nick Durrant is co-founder of  Plot, who were consultants for the 6% Place. He has worked in interaction design for over a decade. After several years in Silicon Valley, via Taligent, IBM, and 280 Inc. developing group, collaboration environment, and social software such as 'Places for project teams' and 'Meeting Centre' he returned to the UK to bring interaction design strategy to Metadesign, Icon MediaLab and Futurebrand Digital. Client work at from this time includes research, strategy and design for Bristol Legible City, which won an environmental design effectiveness award and is widely held up as a best-practice example in urban design. More recently Nick has been a Visiting Professor to Innocence/Interbrand, an 'Agent Provocateur' for Orange, and an ongoing Advisor to, and Mentor for, the Design Council's Humanising Technology project. He graduated from the Computer Related Design program at the Royal College of Art in 1994. Together with his partner Gill Wildman, Nick is currently Nierenberg Chair of Design at Carnegie Mellon University.