Urban Habitat Staff
EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT
 Venesia Thompson, Senior Director, Finance and Administration, has been with the organization since 2007 and has a Masters of Arts degree in Political Science with a minor in Public Administration. She has nearly 10 years of financial and administrative experience and oversees the organization’s operations (including HR) and finances, which includes supervising the organization’s staff accountant. She also prepares and monitors the organization’s operating budget, prepares financial statements for funders and the Board, manages cash, and oversees the annual audit. Prior to joining Urban Habitat, she worked for 7 years as the Assistant Director of the Center for Urban Redevelopment and Education (CURE), an applied research and community outreach center based at Florida Atlantic University. As part of CURE, she provided direct oversight/served as Principal Investigator for the Center’s community development and outreach projects to include neighborhood planning, community revitalization and capacity-building, affordable housing, and civic engagement. She also served as the Center’s grants/contracts administrator for federal and state awards and is versed in OMB Circulars A-21, A-110, and A-133. She also is knowledgeable about GAAP, FAS 117, and FAS 116. Finally, Venesia is a member of CompassPoint’s Financial Professional Network (FPN). Connie Galambos Malloy, Senior Director of Programs, leads the organization's climate, transportation, land use and affordable housing work and advances UH's agenda on key partner coalitions including the Great Communities Collaborative and ClimatePlan. Connie previously led the Social Equity Caucus through a 10 year Evaluation and Strategic Plan, resulting in UH's launch of the annual State of the Region convening and the Boards & Commissions Leadership Institute. Connie currently serves on the first-ever California Citizens Redistricting Commission, and as Membership Inclusion Director California Chapter of the American Planning Association. On behalf of UH Connie has completed the Women's Foundation of California's Women's Policy Institute, the University of Southern California's Ross Program in Real Estate, and the National Development Council's Real Estate Finance Certification. Prior to her years at Urban Habitat, Connie coordinated the Regional Sustainability Initiative at Redefining Progress. Through a fellowship from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Connie has worked with a variety of California organizations on urban planning issues, including the Earned Asset Resource Network (EARN), Unity Council, and Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE). She started her career in Resource Distribution and Planning for United Way of the Inland Valleys in Riverside, CA and as a Peace Corps volunteer leading sustainable tourism development projects in Bolivia’s Amazon Basin. Connie previously served on the board of the California Planning Foundation and was a founding board member of AFAAD: Adopted & Fostered Adults of the African Diaspora. Connie’s hobbies include having directed the Children & Teen Programs at Pact—training families adopting and fostering children of different races—and participating in the Niroga Institute’s Certified Yoga Teacher Training Fellowship Program for People of Color. She earned her M.C.P. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelors Degree in Communications & Spanish from La Sierra University. Laurie Jones Neighbors, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives, manages
and develops Urban Habitat’s program-wide Leadership Institutes. Under
her direction, the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute was
developed and launched in 2009, and she continues to lead the Institute,
ensuring that low-income people and people of color are positioned to
advance equity in the Bay Area region and beyond through boards and
commissions service. Laurie brings to her position twenty years of
experience as an educator, having worked in both traditional academic
settings and grant-funded community education programs. She has worked
as a university instructor, community mediator, academic program
administrator, curriculum designer, poetry editor, and project manager,
and has built a reputation for developing and managing complex,
meaningful projects in collaboration with an array of stakeholders. She
has taught at California State University and the University of Oregon,
as well as in the California community college system, including classes
in communication, writing, argumentation, research, teacher training,
and political sociology, and has designed and facilitated curriculum on a
variety of anti-racist, anti-oppression topics for undergraduates,
graduate students, faculty, and community members. She has won numerous
teaching awards, and has been recognized multiple times for service
through International Women’s Day Awards. Laurie has Master of Arts
degrees in both Rhetoric (Texas Tech University) and Sociology
(University of California, Irvine), and has most recently completed
research on race and class dimensions of hazardous waste facility
siting, the global waste trade, and international environmental treaty
making.Bay Area Social Equity Caucus & Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute
Frank López, Social Equity Caucus Coordinator, leads the Bay Area Social Equity Caucus--a multi-issue, multi-sector forum that addresses pressing environmental, transportation, housing, and employment issues affecting low-income communities and communities of color throughout the nine-county Bay Area region. Prior to working at Urban Habitat, Frank worked on economic, environmental, and energy policy in the Los Angeles Mayor's Office of Economic and Business Policy. Frank received an MPP from UCLA and a BA in Economics from UC Santa Barbara.
 Nia King, Program Assistant for the Social Equity Caucus (SEC) and the Boards and Commission Leadership Institute (BCLI) at Urban Habitat. Nia is responsible for maintaining the program’s calendar, coordinating event logistics, updating web pages, and managing other administrative tasks for the SEC and BCLI. Nia recently graduated from Mills College with a B.A. in Ethnic Studies. She has presented her undergraduate thesis, which explores relationships between performance art and community health, at Stanford University and UC Riverside. At Mills, Nia worked for two years as a student organizer and event planner with Student Diversity Programs. Previously she served as a Victim Advocate and Grassroots Fundraising Coordinator for the Colorado Anti-Violence Program, after completing an internship with the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training. Most recently, Nia completed a Research and Policy Internship with the Data Center and participated in a 16-week intensive filmmaker training program.
Land Use and Housing Program
Vu-Bang Nguyen, Land Use Program Coordinator, began his journey into the world of land use planning after studying Architecture at the University of California (UC) - Berkeley with an emphasis on City and Regional Planning and Design in the Third World while also working for the City Planning Departments of San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley, CA. He continued his studies at UC - Berkeley and completed a Masters in City and Regional Planning with an emphasis on Community Development and Land Use Planning. His research included working with the San Jose Redevelopment Agency on increasing community engagement in the City’s Strong Neighborhoods Initiative, especially among San Jose’s Vietnamese American population. After City Planning positions for the City of Berkeley and Town of Los Gatos, Vu-Bang switched to the private development side as a Project Manager for a real estate development company in San Jose, CA. He is Urban Habitat's site coordinator for the Great Communities Collaborative, working in several planning efforts throughout the Bay Area including Sunnyvale and East Palo Alto. Vu-Bang is a member of the American Planning Association (APA) and the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP).
Christine Joy Ferrer, Web and Publishing Assistant, for Urban Habitat works as an assistant to the editor of Race Poverty, & the Environment journal. She is also the founder and creative director of www.eyesopenedblog.com. Ferrer is a Filipino American journalist and dancer based in the San Francisco Bay Area who graduated from SF State with a Bachelor of Arts dual degree in Journalism and Dance. She is also curator of the Oscar Grant Memorial Arts Project. When she is not writing or dancing you can also find her teaching gymnastics to her Tiny Tots, Tootsie Rollers, & Tumblers at Acro Sports. Some of her personal interests and pursuits include: dance, progressive religion, photography, the arts and urban culture, race & ethnicity, sociology, acrobatics, poverty, youth, mental illness, environmental and social justice, and Chai tea. She has written for Hyphen Magazine, Pacific News (New America Media), InDance, Cityvoices.org, InColor.net, Filipinas Magazine, Golden Gate [X]press and [X]press Magazine.
Transportation Justice
Lisa Denenmark, Communications and Media Manager, creates, implements and manages Urban Habitat’s internal and external communications strategies, including print and digital media, marketing and public relations. She comes to Urban Habitat with more than 15 years' experience working in online news organizations, digital marketing, academia and nonprofit organizations in the capacities of deputy bureau chief, managing editor, copy chief, senior copywriter, journalist and Web communications manager. Lisa holds a Master of Arts degree in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation, from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, where she integrated emancipatory scholarship with social action, particularly as it relates to self-determination for communities under-represented by mainstream media. Her areas of research included media literacy and policy analysis, the disaggregation of news, refugee and asylum seekers, music of the African Diaspora, queer/lesbian iconography and women's sports, oral history in Florida's aging Jewish community, queer kinship structures and the political economy of communication. A former question writer for Trivial Pursuit, where she wrote stealth anti-colonization, multicultural, feminist, and LGBTQI questions, Lisa is adept at staging public resistance through the production of counter memory and multi-textual knowledges that intervene on dominant systems of truth.
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