About Us

Who We Are

The Broadway Linear Park— The BLiP—started as a volunteer-led campaign from the Transportation Alternatives Manhattan Activist Committee.  If you'd like to help, please let us know (see below for details on how to contact us).  We welcome all parties, whether they are interested in artwork, design, pedestrian experiences, biking, tourism or just making New York a more interesting place. Below is our current membership.

Katherine Nessel - Campaign Co-Lead

Katherine Nessel is a a devoted walking, cycling, and transit advocate; she has co-led The BLiP campaign since July 2020. As a native New Yorker and a recent graduate of Barnard College's Urban Studies program, her academic and professional concentrations lie in investigating New York's built environment; her thesis evalutaed the social role of CitiBike within the cityscape. She is currently an Urban Planning Fellow at the New York City Department of City Planning.

Andrew Hyatt - Campaign Co-Lead

Andrew Hyatt is a passionate advocate for fairer uses of our streets. A Nomad resident, he wants to transform the congested streets of his neighborhood into an oasis for himself, his family, his many car-free neighbors. While his career is built around software engineering, he has learned a lot about the public process to streetscape changes, organizing events, and design principles.

Damyanti Radheshwar - Architecture and Design Lead

Damyanti Radheshwar is an Architect + Urban Planner and Strategist. Investigations in architecture and urbanism and research into the physical, environmental, socio-economic, and cultural circumstances surrounding a project have been central to her process. Her work includes cultural and institutional projects, examinations in transport infrastructure, sustainable community solutions, housing governance related to economic considerations, and health impact. She explores opportunities to participate in meaningful public projects with the conviction that Planning is for Public Good.  With this conviction guiding her, Damyanti's role on the BLiP team is to work with co-leads focusing on the historical and contemporary attributes of Broadway, coming up with feasible, plausible, equitable, adaptable and sustainable ideas to present to stakeholders and city agencies for a broader consensus and future implementation

Andrew Martin - Architecture and Design Associate

Andrew Martin is a recent graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's School of Architecture. Before his involvement with The BLiP campaign, his thesis explored a green transformation of Broadway through living canopies. He supports Damyanti's work on the campaign, creating designs and making ideas come to life.

Jackson Kopitz - Ideation, Outreach, and Programming 

Jackson Kopitz, originally from Manhattan Baech, California, found his new home in Manhattan, New York as of September 2022. His move to the city was driven by a desire to live in a more walkable environment, and partly due to his job at Credit Karma, where he is a software engineer. He's enthusiastic about reducing the number of cars in urban areas because he believes it would not only make streets safer but also contribute to greater equity and an increase in quality of life. In his free time, you can find Jackson on a Citi Bike seeking out the latest and greatest vegan restaurants around town.