Christina Cho Yoo
Christina Cho Yoo, AIA, PE, LEED AP BD+C is co-founder of Atelier Cho Thompson. She received a BS & MS in civil & structural engineering and construction management at Stanford University and received a masters in architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She was a structural engineer at the international engineering company Arup, where she was the Structural Sustainability Champion for the Americas & worked on projects such as the LEED-Double Platinum California Academy of Sciences, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Kaiser hospitals, Schroder Overcrossing, and various other projects. She went onto work at architecture firms internationally including Kao Design Group on Richard Branson's Eco-Island, SHoP Architects on the Google HQ, Neri & Hu in Shanghai, Mass Studies in Seoul, and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson on Apple stores, the Apple iAd office, and the Square HQ. Christina is a licensed architect (CA, TX) and professional engineer (CA) and has been LEED accredited since 2003.
Her work has spanned typologies from residences, hospitals, libraries, schools, labs, museums, innovative workplaces, hospitality and food service, to retail, exhibits, furniture, and graphics for various organizations. Before architecture school, she staged at Tartine Bakery while taking courses at the California Culinary Academy. She has lectured on Green R&D at Harvard and served as a critic at Parsons, Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, & the California College of the Arts (CCA). She is a Lecturer at UC-Berkeley and an Adjunct Professor at the CCA, having taught studios on Ruinophilia & the Off-Modern Ruin with Neri&Hu, the Post-Retail City with Chris Roach of Studio Vara, and Integrated Building Systems.
Ming Thompson
Ming Thompson, AIA, IIDA, NOMA, is co-founder of Atelier Cho Thompson. As a practicing architect, Ming is focused on bettering human experience through design; she insists that good design must occur at all scales, from the building to the furniture to the logo, and everything in between. Ming is a licensed architect in California, Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut and was a winner of the 2020 AIA Young Architect Award.
Ming studied architecture at Yale University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Before founding ACT, she spent time working for large and small firms around the globe. Deeply interested in bringing the arts to the public, Ming has worked in museums and galleries throughout her career, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the National Gallery of Art, and has created and managed exhibitions as an independent curator. Outside of architecture, Ming is a First-Year Advisor at Yale and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Yale-China Association, the Board of Directors of the New Haven Preservation Trust, and Harvard Graduate School of Design Alumni Council. She currently teaches at the Yale School of Architecture.
Emilia Baker, AIA
Emilia seeks to impact people and enliven communities through design at any scale. Emilia graduated with a BArch from Virginia Tech and brings a diverse professional background, including hospitality, multi-family, commercial, K-12 and higher education projects. An organizational unicorn, Emilia enjoys a hands-on approach to beautifully resolving the most complex design problems. One of Emilia's most meaningful contributions early in her career was being on the design team for the new Sandy Hook School, where she learned the power of community in the design process. These experiences have helped Emilia become a natural collaborator and a passionate maker, seeking holistic design solutions and championing a concept-based approach to design. Emilia attributes her passion for food, art and culture to her early childhood growing up in Central America. In her free time, you can find Emilia creating elaborate crafts, hosting backyard barbecues, and planning adventures with her partner and their cat, Klaus.
Celia Poirier
Celia is a graphic designer living and working in New Haven, CT. She believes in the power of design to better people’s lives and stir social change. Her senior thesis at the University of Connecticut explored the role of design in shifting a town’s perceptions of its syringe-exchange program, a service long condemned by town leaders and residents. She worked to develop a new identity focused on the program’s vital, positive role in community health. Funding from a national grant allowed the project to fully materialize.
Celia’s desire for simplicity and purpose guide her as a designer and a human. When not at work, she can be found in a public library, on a yoga mat, in the woods, or on a run. One day she hopes to design a mobile cabin and live off the grid.
Hüma Sahin
Hüma is a designer interested in exploring the dialectic surrounding home and transience. Home, because she believes it is the crystallized reflection of society, transience because she believes human agency lies in change.
She received her Master in Architecture Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she was awarded the Department of Architecture Faculty Design Award. Before that, she received dual Bachelor’s Degrees in Architecture and in Urban and Regional Planning at Istanbul Technical University. For both degrees she received the Faculty Prize for two separate theses. Prior to moving to San Francisco she worked in a diverse set of design and architecture offices in Istanbul, Boston and New York.
Keith Appleby, RA
Keith is a passionate designer of spaces, objects, and graphics. A summer spent traveling through Scandinavia introduced him to the threads that link regional architecture, landscapes, and everything in between. This experience led Keith to become a student of his environment; he strives to ensure that design is informed by past approaches as much as it is rooted in the present. He believes that the best results stem from a strong collaborative ethic, and loves working closely with our clients to distill their aspirations into nuanced architecture.
Keith graduated from the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University and returned to his Connecticut roots in 2012, where he has designed laboratories, classrooms, offices, and artist studios for public and private clients. In his spare time, he designs product packaging and recipes for his cocktail bitters business.
Keith is a licensed architect in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Fallon James, RA
Fallon is an architectural designer with over 15 years experience and a love for process-driven exploration, problem solving, and shaping experiences. She specializes in spaces that adhere to light-filled, modern, simple ideas for high-end residential, retail, and hospitality projects. She also brings, with a confident presence and collaborative nature, exceptional skills in construction management and consultant coordination to any project.
Fallon has a Master of Architecture from UCLA and a BS in Architecture from the University of Michigan. In her free time, Fallon loves hiking with her two young sons, cooking new healthy cuisines, and visiting national parks for some time away from the city.
Mary Kate Graeff
Mary Kate is a designer driven by the power of architecture to shape community interactions. She has designed for contexts as varied as metropolitan New York City and rural India through the Yamuna River Project in Jaipur. Prior to her time in New Haven, she worked on multi-family style projects in Washington DC, including a project that brought 125 units of affordable housing to one of DC’s busiest neighborhoods.
Before that, she graduated from the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture, where her thesis focused on the architectural typology of the church and its role in the growing urban/rural divide in the Shenandoah Valley. Her work is anchored in community, sustainability, and culture, and she is inspired by both her roots in Virginia's Blue Ridge and her extensive experience abroad.
When not at work, Mary Kate can be found at the nearest museum or coffee shop, or tracking down the best food in the city and sneaking bites to her dog under the table.
Joy Hu, RA
Joy approaches design through a lens of curiosity, attempting to find the unique opportunities in each project. As a lifelong student of landscape and architecture, Joy enjoys connecting the threads of past and present sites and landscapes within all scales of design: whether a product, garden or building.
A licensed architect in New York, Joy received a Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia. Before joining ACT, Joy worked in various firms across the world, most notably in Tokyo at Toyo Ito and Associates, where she worked on the largest mass timber building in Asia: NTU Business School Gaia. This project sparked her interest in delving further into mass timber building solutions and integrated sustainability practices.
In her spare time Joy enjoys getting out on the tennis court and creating homemade dishes from scratch for others.
Marie Corriveau
As a graphic designer, Marie is inspired by the power of visual storytelling. She believes design has the ability to connect with our individuality, emotions, and understandings. Driven by the challenge of portraying authenticity and intention, Marie seeks to integrate aesthetic connections into honest experiences. As a former service worker and lover of food, Marie has a particular passion for the intimate nature of hospitality branding and its ability to inspire joy and connectedness.
Marie has a Master’s in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice from Queen’s University Belfast and began her career working at a sexual violence prevention nonprofit. Through study and practice, Marie focused heavily on the conflict resolution side of human rights violations and worked on all scales, both locally and internationally. Her professional experience in that field inspires her current career as a designer. Marie thrives in all things creativity-based. When she’s not designing, she’s a photographer, illustrator, and instrument dabbler. You can find her at any local brewery, at the beach, or walking her dog in New Haven.
Past Staff
Daniel Hui
Marcus Busby
Ken Yip
Sue Lee
Mikaela Leo
Liz Lessig
Huy Troung
Caitlin Yu
Fany Kuzmova
Anjiang Xu
Julie Yen
Claudia Carle
Alex Mingda Zhang
Serena Ching
Michelle Badr
Emily Cass
Tianyu Guan
Xiaohui Wen
Layla Ni
Baolin Shen
Minji Seol
Jen Tai
Shikha Thakali