Emily Pilloton, Co-Founder, Instructor (2010-2015)
Emily is the founder of the organization Project H, a designer, builder, and educator. She is the author of two books about social impact design and speaks around the world (though the highlight of her appearances was The Colbert Report in 2010). She is a skilled builder and is particularly interested in creating gender parity within the fields of architecture, design, and building trades. She is now the Founder and Executive Director of Girls Garage.

Klea Bajala, Instructor (2018-2019)
Klea graduated with a BFA in the Individualized Program from California College of the Arts and Crafts. She has worked in various college shop spaces teaching and orienting non-experienced and experienced students with shop equipment. She has taught with the pre-college design and build program at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. In her own design practice she has designed and built ceramic seabird nests with Oikonos, tiles with Levi’s byproduct waste, and a communication device for an individual with cerebral palsy. In her art practice she spends her time making science exhibits and instruments.

Valerie Iosso, Instructor (2018-2019)
Valerie is an East Coast raised, Bay Area based artist, designer and educator. Her interests include creating sculpture and furniture from reclaimed material as well as a continuing investigation on the way people interact with architecture and how that reflects the way we dwell beyond a particular domain. She studied architecture at the Pratt Institute and received a BFA from the Individualized program at the California College of the Arts and Crafts.

Alejandra Utrera, Instructor (2015-2017)
Ale joined Project H in the Summer of 2015, with the goal of challenging her students to be problem solvers, and encouraging them to explore material use, design processes, and fabrication. Ale left her native Spain to pursue a BFA in Furniture Design and Fabrication at the Rhode Island School of Design. After RISD, she developed products for individuals with autism, and started a furniture design youth program and business at the United Teen Equality Center in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Thomas Gardner, Instructor (2013-2016)
Thomas is an architect and former faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design. Thomas’ teaching and research explore design methodologies and tactical technologies, with a particular focus on fabrication, construction and emerging practices. Thomas studied at the University of Texas and Cranbrook Academy, has worked for renown studios, and designed and built the first single-family dwelling in a downtown Detroit neighborhood in over 80 years.

Hallie Chen, Instructor (2013-2015)
Hallie attended the University of California Berkeley where she began unpacking the complex relationship between human beings and the environment. Areas of extended exploration included sustainable agriculture, urban planning, critical urban theory and the visual arts. She graduated from the Masters in Architecture program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design before working on various community/design build projects and launching the Studio H middle school program in 2013.

Rebecca Seward Beamer, Project Manager (2014-2015)
Rebecca is a maker who believes in the power of design to transform communities. She loves being part of a design-build team where she can contribute to the full process of taking a project from idea into reality.  She has over seven years of Construction Management experience, including working for Marmol Radziner in Los Angeles and Kudos Construction in New York.  Rebecca has a degree in Urban Design from New York University and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Oregon.  While at the UO, Rebecca helped lead a team of student designers in an ongoing Passive House Retrofit with the Center for the Advancement of Sustainable Living. 

Matthew Miller, Co-Founder, Instructor (2010-2013)
West Virginia-born and bred, Matt is an accomplished fabricator, metalworker, and design/build architect. He has completed varied projects, including designing and constructing a school in Uganda with Architecture for Humanity and public housing projects in Detroit with his own firm, HousingOperative. After teaching Studio H for 3 years, Matt relocated to Colorado and then the University of Idaho, where he teaches in the architecture department.