Urban Action 2017

Editorial Team Biographies Ben Baczkowski is a graduating Urban Studies and Planning student hailing from the heart of the Rustbelt: Detroit, Michigan. Having experienced first hand the challenges of living in a disinvested, poverty stricken city, Ben brings a deep commitment to social justice in his work as a planner and community activist.

Cole Brennan is an aspiring policy wonk who is determined to graduate in December 2017. She grew up in Pennsylvania on the opposite end of Interstate 80, but she left coal country behind and came here on a Greyhound bus in 2002. Now Cole is an avid wanderer, reader, and pigeon-spotter living in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood. She is also a worker-owner at Rainbow Grocery Cooperative in the Mission. She never walks past a hopscotch grid.

As an urban planning professional Cole hopes to create and enact policies that encourage more meaningful civic engagement and better use of public space.

Annamarie Cunningham grew up in Stockton, California, where the harsh urban environment served as an early inspiration for her interest in Urban Studies and Planning. She hopes to pursue a career in public policy, specifically homelessness and poverty policy. When not doing academic things, Annamarie spends her time learning about space, getting tattoos, and listening to 2Pac. Nick Fish, a Northern California native, originally from the Sacramento region, is a new resident to the Bay Area who is passionate about community building and housing policy. At San Francisco State, his focus has been housing issues in California, specifically in several research projects for the City of San Francisco’s Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development. A hobbyist of several photographic mediums, grassroots arts influence his desire to keep cities affordable for everyone without submitting to a deregulating an already fragile housing crisis.

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