In 2010, I took Lara McCormick‘s Citizen Designer course at SVA. We pitched and won a Sappi grant for our work with BigNYC.

This class was a huge impetus in my journey into teaching. At a time when I was struggling with my identity as a creative person, Lara showed me how to bring my ethics back into the mix with full force. I was then able to reconnect with my overarching mission, move from full-time ad agency work, and launch my teaching career.

Here are the signs I designed for the campaign:

We were even written up in Graphic Design USA’s Sustainable Design Issue!

I also developed my own project, an app called Only Chumps Dump, for reporting people who dump illegally.