Jen Shin

Jen Shin is an interdisciplinary practitioner and educator. Informed by her training in architecture and urban ecology, she works at the intersection of cities, people, and the environment from the scale of communities to the globe. Her work has straddled architecture practice, science communication, illustration, speculation, and imagination.

Jen is the Global Lead for WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities where she leads the Prize for Cities, a flagship global competition that recognizes trailblazing projects and initiatives for their contribution to inclusive and sustainable urban transformation.

Jen has previously contributed to numerous synthesis reports on urban climate adaptation and mitigation including the urban mitigation chapter for the IPCC (UN Climate Change) 6th Assessment Report. In 2022, she lead an all-timber pavilion project with LevenBetts for an exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art that focused on affordable housing. The project was completed with a fully sustainable timber chain-of-custody and received grant support from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

Jen earned her Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment, where she was a Hixon Urban Fellow and Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture, where she received the Janet Cain Seilaff Alumni Award. Her joint-graduate studies were supported by the prestigious Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Jen received her Bachelor of Architecture from Drexel University, where she was awarded the Michael Pearson Architecture Prize.

Jen is the Joint-Degree Program Coordinator between the Yale School of the Environment and Yale School of Architecture.