YANA Podcasts

“Designing for Freedom” Panel Discussion

April 13, 2021 Yale Alumni Nonprofit Alliance
YANA Podcasts
“Designing for Freedom” Panel Discussion
Show Notes

YANA Panel Discussion: Designing for Freedom
Yale was the first university to create a sustained initiative on modern slavery and trafficking through the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery and Abolition. Today, Yale is taking a lead with the Grace Farms Foundation to raise awareness of the chronically overlooked crisis of systemic slave labor in the supply chain for the $11.4 trillion construction industry. 

Join us for a look back – with an update on the Yale Slavery and Research Project – and a look forward to ways that architects, developers, and investors can build ethically sourced, slave-free, and sustainably sourced buildings. 

There is no better time to do this. The United Nations has named 2021 as “International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.” Worldwide turmoil has led to increased risk for enslaved child labor through poverty, reduced work opportunities for adults and adolescents, and refugee migration. And the construction industry is poised for growth as issues raised by the pandemic have led to new construction and infrastructure building projects.

SPEAKERS

Ambassador (ret.) Luis C.deBaca is a Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. He coordinated U.S. government activities in the global fight against contemporary forms of slavery as head of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons during the Obama Administration. As one of the United States’ most decorated federal prosecutors, Ambassador C.deBaca updated the post-Civil War statutes and the 13th Amendment to develop the “victim-centered approach” to modern slavery, which has become the global standard for combating human trafficking.

Sharon Prince is the CEO and Founder of Grace Farms Foundation. Its stake in the ground is to end modern slavery and gender-based violence, and to create more grace and peace in our local and global communities. Prince commissioned the Pritzker Prize-winning firm SANAA to design the River building at Grace Farms, which has garnered numerous awards for contributions to architecture, environmental sustainability, and social good. In 2020, Prince launched Design for Freedom, a ground-breaking movement with 60 industry leaders to create a radical paradigm shift to remove slavery from the built environment.

Phillip Bernstein is the Associate Dean at the Yale School of Architecture. Phil is an architect, technologist, and educator who has taught at the School of Architecture since 1988 and where he received his B.A (honors) and M.Arch. He was formerly a Vice President at Autodesk where he was responsible for setting the company’s future vision and strategy for BIM technology as well as cultivating and sustaining the firm’s relationships with strategic industry leaders and associations. Prior to Autodesk Phil was a principal at Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects where he managed many of the firm’s most complex commissions.

MODERATOR
David Blight, is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He has won several awards, including the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Douglass Prize for Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American, and the Pulitzer Prize and Lincoln Prize for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. He is also chair of the Yale Slavery and Research Project. 
 

Join us for compelling discussions about best practices, trends, and careers in the social impact space.

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