Lisa is a Karuk/Yurok traditional basketweaver, with a focus on making ceremonial caps. Along with her husband Leaf, a Karuk ceremonial leader and cultural practitioner, she harvests, processes, prepares, and stores all her own materials. With the exception of porcupine quills, these materials come from plants stewarded in her aboriginal territories and include hazel, spruce, pine, redwood, willow, grape, cottonwood, alder, beargrass, and maidenhair and woodwardia ferns. As a trained educator, Lisa has been able to impart the importance of fire and traditional land/resource management to basketweaving materials.

She also takes the responsibility of being gifted with basketweaving skills very seriously and teaches weekly classes in her community under the guidance of her own teacher, Wilverna Reece. Recognizing that the demand for her ceremonial basket caps is higher than she can meet, Lisa has plans to establish a layered apprenticeship program working closely with weavers based in the tribal communities within Yurok, Hupa, and Karuk ancestral territories.

Dark Matter U (DMU) is a collective that works through communal knowledge and organizing to create antiracist forms of knowledge production, institutions, collective practice, community, and design.

Shalini Agrawal brings over two decades of experience in community engagement to spatial design. She is founder and director of Public Design for Equity, and co-director of Open Architecture Collaborative. Agrawal is a core organizer for Dark Matter U, and associate professor in Critical Ethnic Studies and Individualized at California College of the Arts. She served as the 2023-2024 Spatial Justice Fellow at UO.

DMU’s Lisa C. Henry is an artist, associate professor, and associate dean of the College of Architecture + Planning at the University of Utah (SoA). Her research is focused on how critical gender, race, queer, and disability theory intersect with architectural education, pedagogy, design, and production. Henry is a past recipient of NEA and Graham Foundation grants, a current editorial board member of the Journal of Architectural Education, and holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Zhang is an architect, artist, and organizer based in Tovaangar (what is currently called Los Angeles). They organize with the Design As Protest Collective, Dark Matter U, and Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust. Bz is a 2025 Visiting Critic at Carleton University, 2022 Journal of Architectural Education Fellow, 2021 USC Citizen Architect Fellow, and a licensed architect in California, with degrees from UC Berkeley and Brown University.

Shamichael Hallman is the Director of Civic Health and Economic Opportunity at Urban Libraries Council, championing public libraries as vital civic infrastructure. From 2017–2022, he managed the historic Cossitt Library’s multi-million-dollar renovation, redefining its role in the community. During his tenure, Memphis Public Libraries earned the 2021 National Medal for Museum and Library Science and recognition as the Nation’s Most Innovative Public Library by Smithsonian Magazine. His 2020 TEDx talk, “Reimagining the Public Library to Reconnect the Community,” gained international acclaim. Shamichael holds an MS in Nonprofit Leadership from Penn and was a ’23 Loeb Fellow at Harvard.

Bailey Morgan Brown Mitchell is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, a researcher, designer, and educator. Bailey is an Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University. Previously, Bailey was a designer at Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects in New Haven, CT as well as a public high school English teacher. She holds a Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design as well as a Master of Design Studies where she completed a thesis concerned with tribal law, property, and housing. Her research examines topics related to Native American sovereignty, housing, and beginning design education while her current research is concerned with supporting tribal sovereignty in beginning design education.

Jaime López is an Architect from Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ, Ecuador). He holds a Master’s degree from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft, Netherlands) and a Ph.D. from the Program of Architectural Projects at Polytechnic University of Catalunya (UPC, Spain). He serves as the Director of the International Workshop of Galápagos, Director and founder of the Institute of Architecture and Urban Form (AFORU), and Coordinator of Community Engagement at the College of Architecture and Interior Design, all at USFQ. Additionally, he is a full-time professor and researcher at the institution. Jaime’s studies focus on the relationship between territory, city, and building. He has been a lecturer and invited jury member in architecture and planning workshops at universities in Latin America, the United States, Europe, and Australia. With over twenty years of experience as an architect and consultant, Jaime specializes in design, construction, and urban and regional planning for public and private enterprises.

Welcome to local fashion designer Cheri Moritz who will be leading DIY workshops all HOPES weekend. Make fashion out of trash or model at our trashion show on Saturday afternoon. All skill levels welcome. Have fun!