Forrest Sparks

Project Manager

Forrest Sparks is  Program Lead for the CUNY Climate Assembly Project (CCAP) and  the Project Manager for the CUNY Climate Justice Hub. His work spans from designing democratic processes to co-create climate futures to managing the collaborative partnerships between CUNY and the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA).

Forrest is a participatory design practitioner with a focus on galvanizing our democratic systems for regenerative civic, economic, and ecological transitions. He was the Lead Process Designer for the NYC Civic Engagement Commission’s first city-wide Deliberative Participatory Budgeting Process. He is the Co-Founder of The Assembly Project, an advocacy and design collective upgrading our democratic systems via citizens’ assemblies and other democratic innovations. Forrest’s work in climate justice started by serving communities along the Texas-Mexico border at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. This included the inter-departmental co-design of a sustainable food system and solidarity economic infrastructure, facilitating a participatory curriculum design process with immigrant communities and university faculty, and managing a portfolio of sustainability research focused on UNSDGs. Other works have included developing a strategy for global community health worker programs with the International Rescue Committee, Co-organizing and curating TEDxMcAllen, conducting design research with The Brooklyn Public Library’s Justice Initiative, and serving as an educator from university to middle school students. In his free time, Forrest is a proud sourdough dad, overly enthusiastic about spike ball and urban cycling, and learning to play folk music on the guitar.

Forrest’s excitement for this work is fueled by the mission to redesign how we practice democracy in our civic institutions.

Email: [email protected]