Our Co-Founders:

Gita Nandan: Ms. Nandan is an architect, designer, educator, and leader in community resilience planning and design. She is a co-founder and principal of the award winning design firm thread collective, founder and board chair of the RETI Center, and adjunct associate professor at Pratt Institute’s GCPE and the School for Visual Arts. Ms. Nandan believes in resiliency and sustainable design as an elastic and supple approach, integrating social, cultural, and economic issues with high design principles to create net-positive urban environments. Working in the field for over 20 years, Ms. Nandan has overseen design and construction on a wide range of project-types that span across many disciplines and scales. Her work is at the nexus of where design meets the ecology of place, and future proofing the city. Sustainable architecture and urban planning is not just a smart and necessary practice but economically advantageous. In addition to her current work, Ms. Nandan has been involved in sustainable design policy and code creation in NYC serving as a member of the Homes Committee for Urban Green Codes Task Force; and the Building Resiliency Task Force. Ms. Nandan received her M.Arch from UC Berkeley and is a licensed practitioner in NY and NJ.

Melissa Chow: Ms. Chow is an environmental planner and project manager. Her interest and expertise is in helping communities to adapt and mitigate for climate hazards, and to build resiliency and engage the public and private sectors in managing sustainable growth. She is an advocate for healthy waterways and is passionate about maritime and waterfront issues, particularly marine debris. She has had over a decade of project manager experience from working in advertising and commercial film production. She is a graduate of Pratt Institute's Sustainable Environmental Systems program, and is a certified WEDG Associate.