Kwesi Johnson

a fashion designer and graphic designer raised in Brownsville. Kwesi is the CEO/Founder of SCTR7 and is also a teaching artist at Youth Design Center

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Universe City

Universe City is an Aquaponic Farm and Food Port located in the industrial zone of East New York. It’s an incubation space for BIPOC and women. All four co-founders have personal and ancestral connections to the land and are working to build a food sovereign city in East Brooklyn. 

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co-founder Franklin Alejandro Mena is an Afro Taino and East New York and Brownsville native. They have been community organizing for the last ten years and have a background in social and emotional intelligence, marketing, business management and logistics. 

co-founder Alexis Mena is also native to East New York and Brownsville. They are an afro-Taino, Curandere, farmer, chef, and organizer. Their background is in placemaking and community organizing. The founders met during Alexis’s project called Civ Labs, about civic engagement.

co-founder Jill Bellovin is a musician, environmentalist, and writer. Her family has owned and operated Legion Lighting, a commercial lighting business in East New York since the 1940s. She proposed utilizing unused lighting factory space for what has become Universe City.  

co-founder Brittany Markowitz is a futurist and Brooklyn Colleague Graduate. She is also the owner of Industrial Recycling Metals Ecology which her father’s family started after settling in ENY in the 1930s from Germany. Her mother is a Brownsville native and author of “Brownsville Bred”