DESIGN
As a child, I spent long hours after school sketching architectural and urban fantasies; as I got older, they became full-fledged buildings and proposed transit systems. Now, I'm hoping to use my passion for design to change the way our human environments relate to the natural world through a framework I call Ecoempathy.
I currently work as a Senior Architect Sustainability Coordinator at Centerbrook Architects and Planners, where I optimize workflows, advise teams on sustainability, and lead research and education initiatives. I have experience with a broad range of institutional projects and lead the firm's efforts toward carbon neutral buildings and optimized materials selection.
I also design small projects through SpiraLworks, a design practice I founded in 2018 with Kas Semenov-Leiva
I teach courses on architectural ornament at Yale and University of Hartford.
+ NATURE
Though always rooted in my home city of San Francisco, I gained a love and appreciation for nature at a young age, as I traveled around California's beautiful parks with my Biologist parents, who imparted to me a Russian love for "priroda" (nature). I believe solving the world's pressing environmental crises must involve an experience of awe and wonder with nature. During High School, I worked with the Student Conservation Association, the Earthwatch Institute, the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, and Naturebridge to make a difference in the San Francisco Bay Area.
At Princeton, I served as co-President of Greening Princeton, a key member of the Greening Dining Committee, and an active member of the GreenLeaders group and advisor to the Office of Sustainability. Read more here about the new recycling system we implemented at Princeton.
As an architect, I work toward the integration of buildings with nature--see my Ecoempathy page
+ LANGUAGES
I love learning and studying languages, and I find translation to be a tough but rewarding challenge. Through my work with the late CK Williams and contemporary poet Dmitry Kuzmin, I've translated quite a few 20th century and contemporary Russian poets. Check out my Translations page for my latest work. My translations have been published in the St. Petersburg Review, the Big Bridge Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry, the Atlanta Review, Spolia, and Talisman Magazine. I also won honorable mention in the 2014 Compass Award Tarkovsky translation contest.
I've also recorded poetry for film soundtracks and am available for hire to recite poetry in Russian and English.
Many of my undergraduate courses focused on linguistics and translation theory, culminating in several articles on the translation of address terms, which can be found on my Research Writing page.
