0ur team
Elgin Cleckley
Elgin Cleckley, Assoc. AIA, NOMA, is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at UVA with an appointment in the Curry School of Education and the School of Nursing. He is a designer and principal of _mpathic design – a Design Thinking pedagogy, initiative, and professional practice focusing on identity, culture, history, memory, and place. After studying architecture at the University of Virginia (’93) and Princeton University (’95), he collaborated with DLR Group (Seattle), MRSA Architects (Chicago), and Baird Sampson Neuert Architects (Toronto) on award-winning civic projects. He was a Muschenheim Fellow at the University of Michigan (1998), teaching undergraduate studios at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Before joining UVA’s Design Thinking program in 2016, he was the 3D Group Leader and Design Coordinator at the Ontario Science Centre (Toronto), Science Content and Design Department, and Agents of Change Initiative, since 2001. This work produced the world’s first museum/design thinking architecture space (the Weston Family Innovation Centre), featuring award-winning exhibitions, educational facilities, and public art with international artists David Rokeby, Michael Awad, and Steve Mann, and Stacy Levy.
Elgin is the recent winner of several notable honors - the Armstead Robinson Faculty Award, the 2020 ACSA Diversity Achievement Award, and the 2021 Dumbarton Oaks Mellon Fellowship in Urban Landscape Studies, in supporting the development of his forthcoming 2021 book with Island Press, _mpathic design, which details his empathic design thinking methodologies. Recent writings include Next City, Medium, MANIFEST: A Journal of the Americas, the Journal for Interprofessional Education and Practice, AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, and Society), and Bridging the Gap: Emergent Ideas on Architectural Pedagogy and Practice Design (Routledge / Manchester School of Architecture). _mpathic design has been widely presented at national and international conferences in architecture, design, educational, and health arenas, with a presentation at the World Congress of Architects in 2021.
_mpathic design’s practice includes collaborations with The Trace (NYC), Farmers Footprint, Albemarle County Public Schools, City of Lynchburg, and the Albemarle County Office of Equity and Diversity, providing site planning of the Charlottesville Memorial for Peace and Justice (with the Equal Justice Initiative). Elgin is also the Design Director at the UVa Equity Center, and the NOMA Project Pipeline: Architecture Mentorship Program with several Charlottesville youth.
Dan Katz
Dan Katz is managing director of CIMA Consulting, which provides business development and organizational design services for a diverse range of clients. He began his career as a college advisor to low-income high school students with One Voice, a small nonprofit organization in Los Angeles, and was also Capacity Building Chair of the Southern California College Access Network. Dan has lived in Charlottesville since 2011 after moving here with his wife, Veronica, who completed her Ph.D and now works on the faculty at UVA's Curry School of Education. In addition to his work with CIMA, Dan has volunteered with the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, the Music Resource Center, and is the board chair of Creciendo Juntos, a nonprofit supporting Charlottesville's Latino community members. Dan has a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and an MBA from the Darden School of Business at UVA.