Staff Spotlight: Sarafina’s Journey from Analyst to Urban Visionary

Sarafina Fabris-Green, an Analyst on the Client Services team, joined Public Works Partners in 2021 after searching for an opportunity that combined her interests in research, community engagement, and urban planning. Since then, Sarafina has worked on diverse projects that have spanned the spectrum of transportation planning to capture workers’ perspectives across the United States. Her experiences working with nonprofits, city agencies, foundations, community members, political leaders, and other planning and engineering firms have honed her ability to tackle challenges as they come. These skills will continue to serve her in her academic career as she heads to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this fall to pursue a Master of Urban Planning. We recently sat down with Sarafina to capture her reflections on what it was like to work at Public Works Partners and how her time at the firm prepared her for graduate studies.

1. What is your current role at Public Works Partners?

I am an Analyst on the Client Services team and focus on our Community Health projects. As an Analyst, I conduct research, engage with community members, and develop clear visual and written materials to support meaningful projects. Through this role, I collaborate closely with my project team and support our clients to move a project forward. Over the course of my time at Public Works, the firm has continued to grow and I got to help with our rebranding effort. It has also been fun to work alongside a growing number of Analysts as we tackle similar challenges on distinct projects.

2. Why and when did you join Public Works Partners? 

I joined Public Works in April 2021. The Analyst role seemed to combine all my favorite parts of previous academic and work experiences into one role–I saw I would get to write, conduct quantitative and qualitative research, facilitate conversations with community members, contribute to a team, and explore the city.

My arrival to the firm also occurred just as we began our work on the NYC Streets Plan, NYCDOT’s five-year transportation plan to improve the safety, accessibility, and quality of the City’s streets for all New Yorkers. This new project aligned exceptionally well with my undergraduate thesis that examined the community engagement process surrounding Project Connect, Austin’s 2020 campaign to expand its high frequency transit system and construct light rail.

Above all else, however, I was committed to joining a firm whose work aligned with my own values and that I genuinely believed was positively impacting the communities affected by its projects. My knowledge of history, past jobs, and my own lived experience growing up in Austin, Texas, as it has undergone massive population growth have underscored to me the often negative impacts of infrastructure and zoning projects on local communities.

3. What are some of the projects that you have worked on at Public Works? 

The Federal Reserve System’s Worker Voice Project remains one of my favorite projects to date. I recall that we collaborated exceptionally well as a team, both on the Public Works side and with our partners at the Federal Reserve. The larger project aims to elevate the perspective of workers and jobseekers to better understand their experiences navigating the labor market during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team planned, facilitated, and synthesized a series of 20 focus groups with 175 workers from across the country over a four month period to explore worker perspectives and contextualize labor market dynamics. The potential impact of our work felt apparent from day one of the project and it was meaningful to hear firsthand how different communities tackled the hardships associated with the pandemic.

4. Are there any specific project(s) that you have worked on which benefited your community or areas of interest? If so, can you tell us about that?

Last winter, I worked on a strategic plan for Rebuilding Together NYC, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of affordable housing and the cultivation of a skilled workforce. As part of the project, the organization hoped to better understand where to target its free home repairs for low-income homeowners in a market increasingly inaccessible for low-income families. Building from homeownership reports and city and census data, we developed a Low-Income Homeownership Analysis to assess the quantity of low-income homeowners citywide and where they live. After weighing limitations such as the organization’s location, capacity, and board and community relationships, my team recommended potential neighborhoods of focus for maximum impact. I saw a tangible application of my research and better understood the real constraints that organizations must grapple with in the administration of programs.

5. Tell us the highlight of your Public Works experience.

We often get to see spaces in the city that one wouldn’t encounter otherwise. These sorts of visits have been a highlight of my time at Public Works, particularly in the context of the pandemic recovery. For a project with Hot Bread Kitchen, we visited their offices at Chelsea Market in what was previously the Food Network studios. More recently, following our work with Powerhouse Arts, we attended their opening festivities in their new building that was once a power station and has since been transformed into a stunning arts fabrication space. It’s exciting to see how spaces in the city continue to be transformed for new needs and users under shifting policy frameworks.

At Public Works, I have collaborated with nonprofits, city agencies, foundations, community members, political leaders, and other planning and engineering firms, among others. Through my projects, I have become more attuned to the way these various agents advocate for their interests and collectively push forward infrastructure and community development projects in New York City. At the same time, I now better understand how a current political moment can influence the way a project will unfold.

6. What can you say about Public Works’ culture? How has your Public Works experience shaped your graduate school interests?

Here at Public Works, I am surrounded by a team of incredibly smart, friendly, and down-to-earth colleagues. A conversation can quickly transition from a debate around a new policy measure to a discussion of the unexpected elimination on the most recent episode of The Bachelor. We also each conduct our work with a high level of agency bolstered by a sense of trust that transcends levels of seniority among staff. I am not afraid to ask questions because I feel confident that my colleagues know that my goal is for the team to put forward our best work.

7. What skills did you learn and hone while working at Public Works Partners? How will these skills help you in your graduate studies and future careers?

The grad school application process compelled me to reflect a lot on the past two years and see how much I’ve grown! In our line of work, every project comes with new challenges–we consistently encounter new tasks and stakeholders who may have different visions for a project’s outcome or an organization’s growth. Despite our best project management efforts, project timelines frequently evolve. I’ve learned to become comfortable with the unpredictability, better manage competing project needs, and communicate effectively across my project teams. I see that these skills will serve me both in the classroom and in future professional roles.