2025 Charter Awards Jury

Rico Quirindongo, Jury Chair

Director of the City of Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development 

Rico Quirindongo, AIA, has been working for 28 years to revitalize and reimagine Seattle historic landmarks and neighborhoods. He is the Director of the City of Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development. Rico believes that through proactive design, vision, and multi-agency collaboration, opportunities for social change can be realized through community-invested civic projects.

Rico was a mayoral appointee to the Historic Seattle Council for six years, was a founding member of the National Organization of Minority Architects Northwest Chapter and Rico sat on the AIA+2030 national steering committee, a committee born out of AIA Seattle that has seen to it that 24 cities nationally provided curriculum to help design teams and owners meet the 2030 Challenge. Rico works with organizations to positively influence communities through design and is committed to the betterment of his hometown, Seattle, through public engagement, design, and civic service. Rico is a recognized expert on civic projects and city-convened taskforces to create and execute processes for inclusive and authentic engagement. Rico was chair of the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority Council, was a Downtown Seattle Association board member, and was AIA Seattle President in 2012-13. In 2020, Rico completed his first Ted talk, called Transforming Communities Through Architecture. That same year, he was recognized by AIA as a Citizen Architect. He was given a Commercial Real Estate Leadership Award as a Neighborhood Champion by the Puget Sound Business Journal in 2021.

Rico was a Northwest and Pacific Regional Representative on the AIA Strategic Council, a national think tank of the member organization and was awarded the Jennie Sue Brown Lifetime Achievement Award by the AIA Washington Council in 2022.

Jake Day

Maryland Secretary of Housing and Community Development 

Jake Day is Maryland's Secretary of Housing and Community Development under Governor Wes Moore. In that role he leads the housing and place-based economic development agency, investing more than $2.5B annually to revitalize Maryland communities and address Maryland's housing shortage. Since his arrival, Secretary Day has enshrined the Administration's values into the Department through the establishment of the Division of Just Communities, Division of Homeless Solutions, and the state's housing policy powerhouse - the Division of Policy, Strategy & Research. He oversaw the successful passage of the Moore-Miller Administration's groundbreaking Housing Package in 2024, expanding housing production around transit and other core communities, increasing financing tools for housing development, and protecting vulnerable renters.

Prior to his nomination to lead the Department, Secretary Day served as the 28th Mayor of Salisbury, Maryland. Born and raised in Salisbury, he previously served as City Council President. His tenure as Mayor was marked by a resurgent downtown, thousands of new homes, two youth community centers, new parks and public spaces, historic drops in crime, hosting the National Folk Festival, and a permanent supportive housing program to address chronic homelessness.

Secretary Day's career has included leading community development practices using design, planning, and development to establish vibrant cities and towns. He served as national president of the American Institute of Architecture Students and as president of the Maryland Municipal League.

A U.S. Army Major, Secretary Day has served as a Cavalry Officer, and an Information Operations and Special Technical Operations Officer. He is currently assigned to Special Operations Detachment-NATO and is a veteran of the Global War on Terrorism, having deployed to Somalia, Kenya, and Djibouti.

Secretary Day earned a Master of Science in Nature, Society & Environmental Policy from Oxford University. He also earned a Master of Urban Design from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Maryland. He is the proud father of two beautiful daughters, Lilly and Olivia.

Majora Carter

Real Estate Developer, Majora Carter Group 

Majora Carter is a real estate developer, urban revitalization strategy consultant, MacArthur Fellow, Peabody Award winning broadcaster. and teaches at Princeton University. She's responsible for the creation of numerous economic developments, technology inclusion projects, green-infrastructure developments & policies, and job training & placement systems.

Carter applies corporate talent-retention consulting practice to reduce Brain Drain in American low-status communities. She has firsthand experience pioneering sustainable economic development in one of America's most storied low-status communities: the South Bronx, as well as cities across North America and abroad.

She and her teams develop vision, strategies and the type of development that transforms low-status communities into thriving mixed-use local economies. Her approach harnesses capital flows resulting from American re-urbanization to help increase wealth building opportunities across demographics left out of all historic financial tide changes. Majora's work produces long term fiscal benefits for governments, residents, and real estate developments.

She currently serves on the board of directors for STREB and Solar One, and has served on the boards of the US Green Building Council, Ceres, The Wilderness Society, and the Andrew Goodman Foundation. Majora was born, raised and continues to live in the South Bronx. She is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science (1984), Wesleyan University (1988 BA, Distinguished Alum) and New York University (MFA).

Joe Nickol, LEED AP

Co-Founder & Principal, Development Team Lead, YARD & CO 

Joe has 20 years of experience in urban design, architecture, and real estate development. He has led projects for public and private clients globally, ranging from pop-up initiatives to billion-dollar developments.

A product of the 80s and 90s in a small, Pacific Northwest resort town, Joe’s journey has since brought him to South Bend, Indiana, Rome, Italy, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before settling in Cincinnati. At each step of the way, he has become ever more engrossed in the power of walkable neighborhoods and his tireless curiosity for the way people live drives his work with clients to build great places.

Joe graduated summa cum laude from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture. His twenty years of professional experience includes studio director at Urban Design Associates and Director of Development Strategy for MKSK. He has led the master planning for some of the nation’s most successful district development and revitalization projects with work in over twenty-five states and seven countries. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, 99% Invisible, and has won several Congress for New Urbanism design awards. He wrote the Neighborhood Playbook in 2016 and founded YARD & Co. with Kevin Wright in 2018.

Joe is a former Main Street Board Member, a co-founder of CNU-Midwest, and a frequent contributor to Public Square, Planetizen, and Strong Towns. He is a frequent lecturer on the interrelationship of cities, mental health, tech, human-scaled design, and economics. He lives with his wife, Erica, and three boys in an old house he cannot stop working on in Bellevue, Kentucky.

Eric Kronberg

Founder, Kronberg Urbanists + Architects 

Eric Kronberg is a zoning whisperer. He specializes in balancing and blending the often competing needs of urban design, architecture, and development in a potent cocktail for better places. He specializes in breaking down and demystifying regulations to find ways to make great projects possible while helping others navigate the redevelopment maze. He uses his skills for the force of good as a principal at Kronberg Urbanists + Architects (KUA), leading the firm’s skilled practitioners to help our development partners create better places for all. His seven years teaching for the Incremental Development Alliance motivated him to co-found Inc Codes, an incremental code reform company helping mid-sized cities take the next step towards legalizing better places.  All this work is directed towards making healthy neighborhoods -- places that are vibrant, lasting, AND inclusive. He recently joined the board of the Seaside Institute to help the leading think tank for the New Urbanism strategically focus on how to integrate attainable housing into our great, walkable places.