In 2002, Anne Frederick and architecture firm Leroy Street Studio (LSS) co-founded Hester Street Collaborative (HSC) as a design/build community-based non-profit organization working with underserved NYC communities to improve their physical environment. Hester Street’s mission has its roots in Anne’s prior work as a built environment educator for Parsons School of Design and the New York Foundation for Architecture, and as an architect at LSS in 1998, when the firm first partnered with East New York Youth Corps on a participatory project to design an affordable housing development and community center in East New York, Brooklyn.
While working for Leroy Street Studio, Anne initiated and taught the design-build education program “Ground Up” at Chinatown’s M.S. 131, forming a mentoring relationship with thirty-two 6th and 7th grade students. As Hester Street’s founding director, she worked to develop a community design-build practice responsive to the needs of HSC’s local neighborhood, Chinatown/The Lower East Side, as well as the needs of under-resourced communities across New York City through integrated education and youth development programming using participatory art, architecture, and planning strategies. She directed Hester Street until 2014.
Since 2015, Anne has served as the Executive Director of the Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action (HAPA). She graduated from Parsons School of Design and The New School For Social Research in 1998.