Person Place Thing with Sreoshy Banerjea

Humorist and four-time Emmy Award-winner Randy Cohen joins us again to host his live podcast, an interview show based on the idea that people are most engaging when they speak not about themselves, but something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing that are important to them. The result? Surprising stories from great talkers. We are delighted to welcome Person Place Thing back to Van Alen Institute — our past guests have included David Adjaye, Majora Carter, Justin Davidson, Jan Gehl, Alicia Glen, and Michael Kimmelman.

This April, our featured guest is Sreoshy Banerjea, Executive Director of NYC’s Public Design Commission. Van Alen’s own Executive Director, Deborah Marton, also serves on the Public Design Commission, which advocates for innovative, sustainable, and equitable design of NYC’s public spaces and civic structures.

Live music by fiddle player Henrique Prince!

This event will be recorded for broadcast on Northeast Public Radio. For more information and to hear past episodes, visit PersonPlaceThing.org.

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About Sreoshy Banerjea

Sreoshy Banerjea is a former Vice-President of Urban Design for the NYC Economic Development Corporation, where she was responsible for establishing and leading the Urban Design Unit housed within the Planning Division. She has helped shape consultants visions for renovation of EDC assets and large-scale master plans. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Banerjea founded Design Corps, and formulated partnerships with AIA and NYCxDesign to create a network of 100 volunteer architects that assisted over 70 restaurants in design related to needs that had arisen during COVID-19. She is a former forefront fellow of the Urban Design Forum, as well as the 2021 winner of the AIANY chapter’s Service to the City award, formerly George S. Lewis award, which recognizes those who have made tangible design contributions, or participated in impactful collaborations with designers, to make New York City a better place to live. Prior to her public sector experience, Banerjea worked as an architectural associate with Rafael Viñoly and Dattner Architects on multiple award-winning civic and institutional projects. Sreoshy received a Bachelor of Architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master’s degree in urban design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

About Randy Cohen

Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, the Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for "Late Night With David Letterman" for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s "TV Nation." He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote "The Ethicist," a weekly column for the New York Times Magazine. In 2010, his first play, “The Punishing Blow,” ran at New York’s Clurman Theater. His most recent book, Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything, was published by Chronicle. He is currently the creator and host of Person Place Thing, a public radio program.