ADU Design Challenge Jurors

An independent jury panel of industry professionals reviewed all eligible submissions using the scoring criteria in the ADU Design Challenge Submission Guidelines. Jurors were selected for expertise in ADU design, housing, accessibility, sustainability, and construction.

Jonathan Berk

Jonathan is the Founder of re:MAIN, a planning and development advisory practice focused on unlocking housing production. With a background spanning land use law, community development, and real estate feasibility, he works at the intersection of policy and implementation, helping communities move from stated housing goals to permitted projects, and helping builders navigate the systems that too often impede housing progress. His research, writing, and advisory work have been featured in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, NPR, GBH, Axios, Bisnow, Banker & Tradesman, NBC Boston and Boston Magazine, reaching audiences far beyond the planning and policy worlds. Jonathan serves as Board Chair of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, the state's leading pro-housing advocacy organization, working to change the policies, politics, and public narrative around housing production across the Commonwealth. As a co-founder and chair, Jonathan has helped build the organization into a statewide force pushing for zoning reform, by-right permitting, and the kind of structural change that makes it possible to build more homes in more places. Jonathan has also served as a member of the City of Salem Planning Board for the past four years and holds a law degree from New England Law | Boston. 

Michael Chavez

Michael is the Principal & Co-Founder of Social Impact Collective, Inc. (SIC). His work includes the design and oversight of a wide range of projects including adaptive re-use projects (residential, commercial, and mixed-use), affordable and mixed-income residential rehabs and new construction, Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU’s), commercial tenant fit-outs, green infrastructure and urban farm design, and workforce development consulting in the building trades. SIC is a registered MBE, SBE (Boston), and Benefit Corporation. Prior to founding SIC, Michael worked for YouthBuild Boston, a nonprofit workforce development program in the building trades. Michael oversaw the design and development of the organization’s affordable housing projects which were used as training sites for program participants and later sold to first-time homebuyers through the City of Boston’s lottery program. Michael was also an Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow where he worked with the Fairmount/Indigo Line CDC Collaborative to spearhead a sustainable, transit-oriented development (TOD) smart growth agenda along the 9-mile Fairmount commuter rail line in Boston, MA. Michael received his undergraduate degree in Environmental Design with an emphasis in Landscape Architecture from the University of New Mexico and a Master of Architecture degree from the Boston Architectural College. He is also a Advisory Trust Member of the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain in Minneapolis, MN and an architect member of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Designer Selection Board. Michael is a registered architect in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Mexico.

Sarah Dunbar

Sarah is a principal and co-founder at Neighbor Architects in Cambridge, MA. She is a practicing architect, urban designer, and educator with over eighteen years of experience. Her work focuses on the intersection of the built environment and public space, typological innovation, and community engagement. She operates from the position that design can be a tool to connect people and a positive, transformative force in any context. She is currently working on several affordable and missing middle housing projects in Roxbury and Dorchester, civic and housing projects in Somerville and Cambridge, a church renovation in Mattapan, and recently led Neighbor’s award-winning work on the Zahrat Al Yasmeen Play Yard in Palestine, as well as leading the design for Boston’s ADU Guidebook. Her work at the urban scale looks at how adaptive reuse and strategic intervention can create a more equitable, beautiful, and provocative built environment. Sarah has a BFA from Oberlin College and an MArch from MIT, where she was a recipient of the Alpha Rho Chi medal, Laya and Jerome Weisner Art Award, Department Merit scholarship and the Schlossman Research Award. In addition to her work at Neighbor, Sarah is also a lecturer at Northeastern University, where she teaches Urban Design and Architecture studios.

Jennifer Hale

After 22 years in the landscape and architectural design fields Jen Hale switched tracks to affordable housing development three years ago, and now works with Rural Development, Inc., in Franklin County. Jen holds a Master of Arts in Landscape Design from the Conway School of Landscape Design, and studied under Don Walker, who instilled a strong sense of designs first needing to make sense in order to be beautiful and worth building, or function before form. Working primarily with Kraus-Fitch Architects in Amherst and Walter Cudnohufsky Landscape Architects in Ashfield, Jen spent time developing the form to fit the function while working with cohousing communities and balancing tight building envelope details with nature-based solutions. More recently, Jen brought an interior main street design concept from a cohousing site in Alaska to a Massachusetts affordable housing development, using the natural contours of the site to direct circulation. Jen lives with her family in Shelburne, MA; she is an enthusiastic native plant gardener and digs drainage ditches around her yard in her spare time. 

Kent Hicks

Kent is the principal of East Branch Studio (EBS), the parent company for East Branch Homes (EBH), a builder of high performance homes in Western Massachusetts. He is also co-founder of the UMass Design Build Program. Kent’s commitment to mitigating climate change and passion to learn the best practices in building science have made him an innovative leader in the construction of high-performance buildings. From the Energy Crafted houses of the 1990’s to today’s Deep Energy Retrofits and Zero Net Energy buildings, Kent has garnered decades of technical expertise and a thorough understanding of emerging challenges, such as moisture management, superior indoor air quality, material toxicity and life cycle assessment of product and process. Kent’s search for the most responsible way to build led him to Passivhaus design, a standard that combines rigorous energy efficiency specifications with comfort and precision engineering quality.

Penn Ruderman

Penn is the founder of OPRCH, an award-winning Worcester-based architecture and public space design studio dedicated to creating meaningful places in Central Massachusetts. Through partnerships with cities, state agencies, non-profits, and mission driven organizations, OPRCH creates designs that reveal and celebrate distinct identities, ensuring each project reflects the needs of the client and the community they serve. Ruderman is an architect with 30 years of experience designing spaces of community engagement and social activity. From intimate private spaces and gardens, to large scale public infrastructure, his work has been recognized locally and internationally for design quality and attention to detail. He has served on the Worcester Housing Production Plan Steering Committee, the Downtown Worcester BID Placemaking Steering Committee, the Worcester Public Art Working Group, and other advisory roles. Along with his design practice Ruderman teaches Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. 

Alicia Songer

Alicia is a registered architect in Massachusetts with a focus on sustainable design. Previously working as a sustainability consultant, she developed a strong passion for the reuse of buildings and research related to healthy and low-embodied carbon interior materials in the education and residential markets. Alicia has worked on a wide variety of green building certification projects and values a highly collaborative project team to achieve sustainability goals. She also brings a broad range of architectural experience in higher education, laboratory, K-12, and municipal public and private work throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She currently serves as a board member of AIA Massachusetts and AIA Central Massachusetts, where she chairs the Emerging Professionals Committee. She also enjoys attending Built Environment Plus events in Boston and various Women's working groups in the area.

Jim Stockard

Jim is a planning and policy professional with nearly 60 years of experience in Massachusetts housing policy and practice. His extensive public service includes 40 years of service as the Governor’s appointee to the Cambridge Housing Authority board, 20 years on HLC’s Housing Appeals Committee, and his long-time role as a Founding Trustee of the Cambridge Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Professionally, he is currently the Interim Curator of the Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) where he is also a Lecturer in Housing Studies, an Academic Career Liaison, and an alumnus of the Master of City Planning class of 1968. The Loeb Fellowship is a “mid-career ‘sabbatical’ for practitioners whose work involves the built and natural environment.” Stockard also spent 30 years as a “partner in the small consulting firm of Stockard, Engler and Brigham for nearly 30 years, working with community organizations, cities, states and the Federal government to develop new affordable housing, conduct research and create policy.”