DFA Spotlight with Michael Niamehr, DFA NYU

For our second installment of the DFA Spotlight, we reconnect with Michael Niamehr, NYU/ Tandon School of Engineering Class of 2019 and past DFA Studio Lead. After graduation, Michael has worked as an Engagement Project Manager at Broadridge, a global technology leader with the trusted expertise and transformative technology to help clients and the financial services industry operate, innovate, and grow. Outside of work, Michael has volunteered at a number of organizations, including Falling Fruit, a community and technology platform that maps and promotes urban foraging opportunities worldwide.

Note: this interview was edited for length and clarity.

Ward: Hi Michael, it’s great to reconnect. For those that don’t know you, share with us a little about your journey that led you to Design for America? As an Electrical Engineer major, what attracted you to DFA?

Michael: I was uncertain about my major after my first year. It was heavily academic and isolating in a way that didn’t seem like a fit for me at first. So, I came into sophomore year committed to building some outside skills and connections. I found a Design Thinking workshop hosted by DFA NYU in the club events list. It was incredibly hands-on and impactful in a way that no other class or lab was. 

Ward: In reading a little bit about your work at DFA NYU, I’d love to learn more about NYU FREEdge. Can you tell us a bit about that project?

Michael: After that first workshop, I immediately applied to join the studio. And I was onboarded to NYU FREEdge, formerly Project Avocado. It started on the premise that if you cut open an avocado and only choose to eat half, you can share the other half with your community to enjoy it before it browns. The project leads, Emma Hoffman and Rodney Lobo, set up a great, nurturing environment for me to really dig into the project and build on my still-early Human-Centered Design skills. It touched on a lot of concepts I was detached from previously: food insecurity, ‘free’ stigma, community building, and public-facing technology. I learned some tougher lessons the hard way, too. Without truly putting in the work to learn from your community members, you’re designing in a vacuum and severely limiting your impact; and there are situations in which a low-tech solution can create a much better experience for users than a high-tech one. 

The NYU FREEdge Team

Ward: Can you share a bit about your DFA studio lead experience? 

Michael: Being able to touch on multiple projects at the same time and help them run smoothly was really rewarding, as was building an engaged group of members (still universally, extremely challenging). As a studio lead and in parallel at my internships, I was finding that I had a knack for – what I would eventually discover to be – program management. It was during the planning of the first ever Northeast Meetup (NEMU), that this was really cemented. Working with fellow alumni Izzi Cain and Jillian Cai to juggle coordinating with their studios, securing partnerships, and building programming was a lot, in the best way. I had started leveraging my skills with DFA at my work and vice versa. And I was honing the skills at both that would lead me toward a career in program management. 

DFA NYU participants at the Design for America (DFA) national leadership conference in 2017.

Ward: Outside of work, you’ve been engaged in a number of volunteer activities, including Falling Fruit. Can you share more about this work?

Michael: In uncertain times, I’m looking for ways to foster community. I try to take part in a few local civic initiatives, like pedestrianizing my downtown area and expanding voter access. I still find myself really fascinated with community food sharing, specifically, like my time with FREEdge. So, in the summer of 2023, that led to my foray into urban foraging. Growing up in Iran, my parents had access to these big mulberry trees that they were able to pick fresh from nearby. They relayed the uniqueness of mulberry’s taste and they shared that joy with me whenever we came across them here in New York. When I found a few trees near where I’m living now, I was delighted. I thought that there might be a way to see on a map where there are other edible plants nearby, and there was – on a platform created by Ethan Welty and his colleagues back in 2013. I connected with Ethan and I’ve been helping how I can with the project since then.

The original haul that prompted Michael’s introduction to Falling Fruit

Ward: DFA will be partnering with Falling Fruit on a summer project. Can you talk a little bit about why you thought this would be a good match for current students and the broader DFA community?

Michael: Falling Fruit may as well have started as a DFA project! It was created to solve a real world challenge – it’s built by, for, & with the urban foraging community and it has a concrete, narrow focus with wide-reaching impact. As a student, my primary motivation for a project (and reason why I detested homework) was always feeling that my effort needed to have a decent chance of leading to real impact. And given that they internationally have around 200k active visitors year-over-year, 50k registered users, and it’s at the forefront of a space that’s more crucial than ever, it feels powerful just for me to take part in the conversation surrounding it. I would love to see a world where I can walk around the corner from my apartment to pick from a wide variety of public produce and Falling Fruit is building an awareness that can get us there. 

Ward: Thanks again for your time today. One last question before we go. If you were to offer a piece of advice to a current DFA studio member, what would it be?

Michael: DFA & Human-Centered Design have taught me a lot about how to build fulfilling projects. No one track is perfect for anyone, so you need to step outside the comfort zone of your major or speciality to find a balance of things that work for you. Generally, take inventory of what brings you personal contentment in your career and life – hold onto more that does and less that doesn’t.