Sadra is a participatory community planner, geographic information systems (GIS) specialist, and educator. He deeply believes in peoples’ power, self-determination at all levels, and democratizing access to data and urban planning and capacity building at the community level by creating tools and spaces for citizens’ greater participation in planning and political processes to decide for and build their own communities and futures; especially for the benefit of historically marginalized, colonized, and racialized communities.
Sadra has extensive experience assisting community-based organizations (CBOs) in the majority Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) low and moderate-income communities in all 5 boroughs of NYC with various urban policy, planning, and advocacy endeavors including land use planning, economic development, transportation planning, environmental planning and protection, historic preservation, and affordable housing planning and fights against gentrification and displacement of residents and small businesses, making sure the residents knowledge and insight is at the forefront of decision making.
Sadra is the creator of Neighborhood Data Portal (NDP), a city-wide free and publicly accessible mapping and GIS analysis tool which provides the public with key demographic, socioeconomic, housing, and other vital neighborhood information. Simultaneously, Sadra has designed many curricula and trained hundreds of CBOs, organizers, advocates, small and large government agencies, promoting greater public data literacy. Sadra is also an adjunct professor at Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, where he teaches GIS and advanced Urban Planning and Historic Preservation studios.
Before joining Hester Street, Sadra worked as a senior GIS specialist and planner at Pratt Center for Community Development, served as a project manager establishing Spatial Analysis and Visualization Initiative (SAVI) at Pratt Institute, worked as a GIS and data visualization consultant to the UN and WHO, NYC SBS, NYC OEM, and NYC DOT and worked for Tehran and Isfahan municipalities as a planner preservationist. Sadra is a resident of East Flatbush, Brooklyn and a proud member of the CB17 land use committee. Sadra holds an M.S. in City and Regional Planning from Pratt Institute’s GCPE, and a B.S. in Urban Planning and Design from Sheikh Bahae’i University of his hometown, Isfahan.