Dreaming of Circular Futures: A Maintainers Fellowship Event
Virtual Event
October 6, 2023 | 12-1:30 PM EDT | Zoom
Dreaming of Circular Futures explores the potential of urban mining and landfill mining as viable alternatives to material extraction. We will discuss the similarities and differences of these two approaches on the basis of accessibility, scalability, and environmental justice; and ponder what considerations will need to be made to embrace an economy that prioritizes repair and reuse, especially as climatic events pose a mounting threat to infrastructure and housing availability.
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Meet the event host
Maintainers Movement Fellow: Jennah Jones
Jennah Jones (she/her) is a New York-based designer pursuing a Masters in Architecture at Columbia GSAPP (‘24). Her approach to architecture is deeply informed by her background in product design, where her curriculum stressed human-centered design and community partnerships rooted in reciprocity. In her academic and professional work, Jennah investigates how we can change our relationship with waste and waste management through prioritizing environmental justice and the circular economy. She currently works as a waste consultant at the Center for Zero Waste Design. Previously, she has held design research positions at Julia Watson LLC, the Natural Materials Lab at Columbia GSAPP, BlocPower, and Tesla.
Meet the Speakers:
Jackie Kirouac-Fram
Jackie Kirouac-Fram has more than 15 years of experience helping nonprofits thrive through stakeholder engagement, strategic collaboration, and striving toward justice through equity and inclusion.
Since March 2019, she has served as Executive Director at the ReBuilding Center, a Portland, Oregon climate justice nonprofit that harnesses the power of reuse and repair of reclaimed building materials to reduce consumption and production of new materials, and to support home retention for low-income homeowners. Prior to this position, she was Vice President at FOCUS St. Louis, a nonprofit civic leadership organization, where she led efforts to increase community support and engagement around policy issues that impact the health and well-being of communities.
Jackie has a Ph.D. in American Studies from Saint Louis University, where she published at the intersection of urban policy and racial equity, specifically concerning racialized aspects of public transportation policy and funding. Her work has been published in the Journal of Urban History, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, and Radical History Review, and she is a proud recipient of an Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. She has spent her entire career in the nonprofit sector and believes in the power of communities to drive policy change toward justice.
Anne Schauer-Gimenez
Dr. Anne Schauer-Gimenez is the Chief Operations Officer and co-founder of Mango Materials, a San Francisco Bay Area-based scale-up company that manufactures a biobased and biodegradable polymer. Anne manages the Products team which is focusing on PHA formulations for injection molded goods, bio-polyester fibers, 3D printing for additive manufacturing, and thin films/sheets.
Anne fosters relationships with brands and their supply chain partners who are looking for sustainable cosmetic and food packaging, along with rigid products and biodegradable bio-polyesters for the fashion/textile industry.
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Samantha MacBride
Samantha MacBride teaches Urban Environmentalism and Public Management at the Marxe School of International and Public Affairs, Baruch College, CUNY and is a professional in public works management of garbage and sewage. She has a doctorate in sociology from NYU and studied biology as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins. Samantha’s interests center on discards measurement and characterization methods, biological materials flows, plastics pollution, composting and land access, corporate hegemony, and waste colonialism. Samantha has also recently begun research on the contemporary UFO phenomenon in the Western hemisphere, and its relation to questions of technology, religion, knowledge, and ecology.
Fatou Dieye
Fatou Dieye is a consultant specialized in the design of buildings, policy frameworks, and the corresponding supply chain mechanics necessary for building Sub-Saharan Africa’s next generation of green and inclusive cities. She was previously the Managing Director of Skat Consulting’s offices in Rwanda, Burundi, and DRC Congo, responsible for the implementation of the Swiss Cooperation’s construction industry transformation program for Africa’s Great Lakes Region. Prior to joining Skat, Fatou was team leader for the Affordable Housing and Neighborhood Development Unit for the City of Kigali and an urban designer for the New York City Department of City Planning.
Fatou holds degrees in architecture, urban planning, and sustainability management from Princeton and Columbia Universities and a certificate in International Housing Finance Systems from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
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The Maintainers is a global research network interested in the concepts of maintenance, infrastructure, repair, and the myriad forms of labor and expertise that sustain our human-built world. Our members come from a variety of backgrounds, including engineers, business leaders, academic historians, social scientists, government, non-profit agencies, artists, activists, coders, and more.
To review The Maintainers’ Code of Engagement and Practice, scroll to the bottom of the “about” page on our website. To stay up to date with The Maintainers, you can learn more about the Maintainers Movement Fellowship and follow along for other upcoming events.