CRP/LA Students

Erich is originally from North Carolina and earned his B.A. in Political Science at the University of North Carolina - Asheville. After graduating, Erich joined the Peace Corps and served in rural El Salvador as a Youth Development Volunteer. After completing his service, he worked for a non-profit in Mexico City on economic solidarity initiatives; returned to join the Peace Corps in Barranquilla, Colombia teaching English and has worked for the North Carolina Farmworkers Health Program as an Outreach Worker. At UT, Erich hopes to gain more technical skills and tools that will increase his impact on international and domestic projects that focus on social equity and community development issues.

Shavone Otero is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she was actively involved in her community as an Arts Columnist with Local iQ, T.V. correspondent on The Morning Brew, co-founder/Traditonal Zone Leader of the Albuquerque Rail Yards Market, and flamenco dancer with Dance España. She is an advocate for cultural preservation and community resilience and seeks to perform academia in non-traditional, more accessible mediums of knowledge-sharing, such as performative arts, hip-hop culture, and “old-school” cultural/spiritual practices.

In undergrad, she interned at El Centro de la Raza and UNM Service Corps.  Shavone studied abroad in London for a theater class at the University of Westminster in the summer of 2007, studied poetry at the University of Sheffield in the fall of 2008, and studied cultural identity in Granada, Nicaragua in the summer of 2010 as a Ronald E. McNair/Research Opportunity Program scholar. Her research project was titled “Deconstructing post-colonial cultural identity and hybridity: Documenting the fiestas of Santiago Apóstol in Nicaragua.”

Shavone is currently obtaining two Masters in Community & Regional Planning + Latin American Studies at UT Austin with a Graduate Portfolio in Sustainability.  Her thesis is titled “The Informal Canvas: Murals and Community-based Agency in Informal Settlements in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic — The Geography & Politics of Muralism.” Her thesis focuses on using the arts, specifically community-based muralism in public spaces, as a transformative planning practice for working with neglected, marginalized communities in informal settlements. She is interested in how social movements are connecting globally in solidarity through digital media and arts-based practice.

Shavone is the Graduate Research Assistant for City Forum in the Community & Regional Planning Program and is the Social Chair of ILASSA, the Graduate Student Association of Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at UT Austin.  Shavone occasionally writes about live music in Austin for Austin Songwriter and enjoys international adventures, social butterflying, running half-marathons, representing “Burque”, New Mexico, and DJing with the Chulita Vinyl Club (an all vinyl, all female Latina DJ collective based in Austin/San Antonio & Bay Area).  ¡Órale!

Originally from Mexico City, Ariadna is a Ph.D. Candidate for the Doctoral Program in Community and Regional Planning. Civil engineer and Fulbright and CONACYT fellow. She holds an MSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in Mexico City where she graduated with honors. The Mexican Environmental Ministry recognized her master’s degree thesis because she developed the first inventory of greenhouse gasses in university facilities in Mexico which had been used as a  reference for other colleges.

Ariadna gave speeches and presentations on strategies to tackle climate change in the built environment for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CCE) of North America. From 2009 to 2013, she worked at the Mario Molina Center as a specialist in sustainable housing and vulnerability to climate change. The Mario Molina Center is a Mexican think tank on climate change and energy which is directly managed by the Mexican Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1995), Dr. Mario Molina. At the Mario Molina Center, she led the environmental assessment of the  "Evaluation of the Sustainability of Mexican Social Housing," which federal institutions and private sector have used to design housing policies and strategies. 

Ariadna presented her doctoral research at the Urban Affairs Association Conference in 2013 and 2016; at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Conference in 2014, 2015, and 2016; at the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST) in 2015; and at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in 2016.

In her dissertation, Ariadna seeks to unpack sustainability in forms of housing development in Mexico City's Metropolitan Area, particularly in consolidated informal settlements, known as colonias populares.  A sustainable form of housing development enables the urban poor to exercise their right to live in a resilient, compact, and climate just city (Adger, 2006; Agyeman, 2005; Davoudi, 2009; Shrestha, Ojha, McManus, Rubbo, and Dhote, 2014; Steele et al., 2012). 

Ariadna's research interests include climate justice and just sustainability, radical and insurgent planning theory, and environmental life cycle assessment. 

Ariadna serves as Teacher Assistant of the Quantitative Methods class, which is taught by Dr. Jake Wegmann, for the MSc Program in Community and Regional Planning.

From Kansas City originally, Sam received his BA in Latin American Studies and Spanish Language from Tulane University. Since graduation he has worked in project management positions in Latin America with a variety of NGOs focusing on community development programming and light infrastructure initiatives. More broadly, Sam is interested in issues of third sector regulation, institutional coordination, and good governance concerns as they relate to Latin American development initiatives. At UT, Sam is pursuing a dual degree program in conjunction with CRP and the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.