A Spaniard who lives in San Francisco with his wonderful wife and sons, Rafael is a fan of the San Francisco Giants as well as an enthusiast of good soccer. Besides sports, Rafael is a serious devotee of both architecture and education. In addition to working as an architect, Rafael has been a Studio review juror for Architecture at USF, and a Guest lecturer at the University of Seville.

Rafael is a native Spanish-speaker, with experience working with students from diverse ages and backgrounds. He is very interested in supporting students in using art and design skills to enhance their lives and very enthusiastic about guiding students in developing their abilities in alignment with expected program outcomes for success.

Rafael holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Southern California, and a Degree in Architecture from the School of Architecture of the University of Seville in Spain, and is pursuing a Master's degree in Education from the University of San Francisco.

Laura Echegaray is an architect, avid paper crafter, puppeteer, journalist, poet, Spanish teacher and translator. Her parents, a Sociologist-Poet-Artist and Chemistry Professor, instilled in her the love of science and art at an early age. Laura combined these by earning a Masters degree in Architecture from University of Puerto Rico. She has worked in the field for more than 10 years.

Laura started volunteering at schools in 1992 and since then, uses discarded materials to provide hands on art making opportunities for children of ethnically and economically diverse backgrounds including Spanish monolingual. She has taught Spanish and Art since 2006; and is on her third year working with 2 and 3 year olds, all while pursuing her Art Integration Specialist certificate from the Alameda Office of Education.

Fatimah, a native New Yorker, grew up in love with the city as a place and an ideal. Architecture came natrually to her as a profession; she has worked at M2 Studio in St. Helena, California, and at BCCI Construction in San Francisco. Leap has given Fatimah the opportunity to share her passion with Bay Area youth. Her residency focuses on true-scale, green-design challenges, such as lamp shades (2010) and birdhouses (2009).

Reaz was born in Bangladesh and spent his first 30 years there. He lived in Massachusetts for 21 years until he moved to California in December 2005. Reaz completed a 5-year professional degree in Architecture in Bangladesh, completed a master's degree at Iowa State University and then received a master's degree in Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in Urban Design. Reaz has been teaching and coaching college level students since his undergraduate years in Bangladesh and continued doing so during his years as professional Architect. He has taught free-hand drawing at Iowa State, architectural drawings at Wentworth Institute (Boston, MA) and architectural design studios at the Boston Architectural Center. Currently he is a resident architect for LEAP and has taught 4th and 5th graders at White Oaks, Brittan Acres and Arundel schools in San Carlos. He has also taught for LEAP at Ocean Shore School in Pacifica and instructed the sand castle building course for the Sunset District Recreation School.

Reaz is also an avid photographer, gardener, and is deeply committed to the study of Art and Architecture. He has worked on a large variety of projects, including, residences, schools, hotels, hospitals, research lab buildings and urban design of public spaces. Some of the projects he has worked on are Children's Hospital Research Building (Boston, MA), The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas and the "Big-Dig" project in Boston, MA. He has worked in several notable architectural companies in the U.S. such as The Stubbins Associates, Sasaki Associates and the Ritchie Organization. He currently works for SmithGroup in San Francisco.

Catherine currently works as an Architectural Intern at BRW Architects in San Francisco's Marina District, and has been with Leap since 2008 when she moved here from Colorado. Originally from Chicago, Catherine grew up learning about cities and was drawn to architecture at an early age. Attending school at The University of Colorado at Boulder, she focused her education on the social factors the built environment has on its occupants. While there she began her time teaching arts and crafts classes in the community and developed a strong understand of the importance of art in education.

With BRW, Catherine has had the opportunity work on a wide variety of civic projects including a number of Fire Stations throughout the Bay Area and several postal facilities. Keeping her career focused around government buildings, she hopes to broaden her experience and work specifically on educational facilities in the near future. With graduate school and the ARE on the horizon, there is always time to spend with the wonderful Leap family she has grown to know and love.

Catherine loves teaching children, especially about architecture. Believing that it is critical to know your surroundings, she incorporates architectural history, programming and design into her lessons and hopes to get children engaged in their environments, asking questions about why things are built a certain way, if it functions the way it should and most importantly, how can we improve it.  In addition to teaching with Leap, she also takes part in the planning process for the Sandcastle Contest, Leap's biggest fund raising event of the year, October 8 2011 on Ocean Beach.

Jane Lin is a Bay Area native that loves to share her appreciation for the regional environment through exploration of the urban landscape. For her, architecture is a broad subject that can be discovered through many inlets.

Jane grew up in Santa Cruz and Palo Alto, then moved to the East Bay to attend UC Berkeley for a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, a Masters of Science in Architecture, and a Masters in City Planning. She taught seven semesters as a graduate student at UC Berkeley where she earned a Graduate Student Instructor Award and lead training seminars about pedagogy in architecture studios. The three courses she taught were known as the introductory course for architecture majors, an upper division course on energy and environmental design, and a graduate course that investigated the life of buildings through behind-the-scene stories. Jane also works regularly with high school students through the Urban Land Institute on a lesson called Urban Plan where students work in teams to present a mock-development proposal.

Jane is a licensed architect that has over ten years experience in Bay Area architecture firms. Her past work experience includes training professionals in green building practices through the Pacific Energy Center in San Francisco and working in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Jane has spent the last five years working at Field Paoli Architects in San Francisco designing streetscapes, transit villages, shopping centers, libraries, and community centers. She is now an architectural consultant.

Jane continues to seek out creative ways to experience and learn about architecture through different lenses as a mother (of two young children), teacher, graphic designer, photographer, entrepreneur, and cook. For her, learning about architecture begins with personal knowledge of culture, family, and the neighborhood and encompasses every scale of exploration from building details to city plans.

Blog: "No Ordinary City" http://gojanelin.blogspot.com

Louise Mackie was trained as an architect in the UK. Since coming to the Bay Area she has been building commissioned installations.. She is very enthusiastic about architecture and thinks architectural education can be wonderfully imaginative and exciting. She relishes the prospect of creatively communicating design principles and challenges with children as she has repeatedly seen first hand how inspiring and excitable they can be.

Educated with an MA from Edinburgh University and a MArch from the Bartlett school of Architecture, University College London, she believes that history of architecture and principles of sustainability are crucial in understanding the built environment. She has varied experience working with both corporate architects in London on commercial towers and small residential projects, as well as more recently creating sculptures and large-scale temporary installations and exhibitions. She is a founding member of the design cooperative, Warmbaby (http://www.warmbaby.org)

Continuing to educate is very important to Louise. She has juried at UCL, Westminster University and Bournemouth University. For two years running she has visited Romania as part of a clown troupe bringing some light relief in the form of performance, music and arts projects to the most deprived areas in the country. She also worked in Santa Marta, Colombia running Art and English classes with young children in the slums. This summer she ran a kid-oriented family day in her most recent 2000 sqft installation in Benicia, Ca, based on historic maps of the area. She created a treasure hunt and encouraged the children to mark out their routes on the ground, allowing them to run free and make a large impact on a pristine gallery, totally transforming the space.

Joyce brings her joy for design and her many facets of learning and experience into her classroom.

Creativity is a major focus. She believes that every child has the capacity for design and creativity, and hopes to help unlock those abilities through her project-based classes.

Joyce spent almost 10 years as an architect of custom residences at Treacy Eagleburger Architects, and an urban designer at EEK, a Perkins Eastman Company in Washington D.C., where she lived prior to moving to the Bay Area.

She continues to design for select clients and is also pursuing her second Masters degree- this one in Creativity, Innovation and Change Leadership from the ICCS (International Center for Creative Studies).

Together, with her degree in Environmental Sciences from UC Berkeley and Masters in Architecture from the University of Maryland, College Park, Joyce's extensive and diverse skill set lays the foundation for the development of new curricula that target the 4 C's of the 21st Century Learning skills: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Collaboration, Communication, and Creativity and Innovation.