A San Francisco native and Principal of Y.A. studio since 2004, Yakuh askew earned his Bachelor of Architecture degree from California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo, California in 1998, which included an academic year in Florence, Italy. Mr. Askew is a licensed architect in the states of California and Nevada. at Y.A. studio, Mr. Askew has built a design team that has proven itself designing restaurants, single-family residences, multi-family residences, offices, warehouses and medical facilities.

Board Experience:

2020-2022           San Francisco Arts Commission / Civic Design Review Committee

2023-present      AIA San Francisco Board of Directors, Asst. Treasurer

2023-present      Center for Architecture + Design, San Francisco, Board of Directors, Treasurer

2021-2022           AIA San Francisco Board of Directors, Director at Large

2019-present      University of San Francisco Architecture Advisory Board, Member

2019-present      Lick-Wilmerding Board of Trustees, Member

2016-2019           Citizens Bond Oversight Committee, SFUSD, Member

Design Jury Experience:

2023                     AIAOC Design Awards Jury

2023                     SARA California Design Awards Jury

2023                     James R Brice Affordable Housing Competition Studio Symposium Jury / UCB

2022                     James R Brice Affordable Housing Competition Studio Symposium Jury / UCB

2018                     JCDecaux Public Toilets and Kiosks Design Competition / SFDPW

2015                     AIA Albuquerque Design Awards Jury

Professional Organizations:

American Institute of Architects (AIA), San Francisco Chapter (AIASF)

National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), San Francisco Chapter (NOMASF)

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED AP)

Land Economic Society, Golden Gate Chapter, San Francisco (LAI)

Paul brings a wide breadth of experience and knowledge to Y.A studio with over 20 years of proven design and project management experience. Mr. Wang is familiar with various project types including corporate interiors, wineries, restaurants, and both custom residential and multifamily housing. He has an understanding of all phases of a project from Programming and Master Planning through Construction Administration.

Karin is a native of the Chicago area and has lived and worked in New York and Paris.  She has experience in a variety of large-scale projects, including YA studio joint collaborations on Transbay Block 8 (the Avery) and Mission Rock Development Building G.  In addition to architecture duties, Karin provides Revit training and management for the office.  She holds a B.S. in Architectural Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.Arch from Columbia University.  One of Karin’s interests is material research, and she’s worked as a product designer and received a Kinne Fellowship from Columbia on ingenuity in adaptive reuse.  In her spare time, she enjoys attending concerts, reading, traveling, and cooking.

Natalie graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2015. During her education, she won second place in a national competition with a group of friends designing a zero net energy apartment building. Her experience preparing for this competition broadened her knowledge of sustainable building strategies. In her final year of school, her thesis class created a full-scale, interactive, tensile structure that was published on the Creators Project.

Sherry was born and raised in Shanghai, China. She has a Masters of Architecture from University of Houston and a Bachelors of Architecture degree from Shanghai University in China. Sherry has lived and worked in Shanghai, Houston, Seattle, and moved to Bay Area. Her experience on projects range from health care, education and commercial to mix-use projects. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, reading and cooking.

Katherine enjoys learning the ins and outs of architecture and construction. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where she worked at the architecture department’s fabrication shop. Since joining Y.A. studio, Katherine has worked on various projects that include interior remodels, single-family residential, and multi-family residential. She is passionate about details, materials, and sustainable buildings. Most recently she completed Jackson Street 2, an interior remodel project nestled in Pacific Heights. In her free time, she experiments with various art media, bakes macarons, and hikes around the Bay Area.

Maria recently relocated to the Bay Area from the East Coast. She holds a Master in Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and a B.A. in Architecture and Art History from the University of Pennsylvania. Maria’s passion for local design has been shaped by the places she has lived and worked, including New Haven, Philadelphia, Boston, Mexico City, New York, and Samothrace, Greece. Maria loves exploring new places, listening to podcasts, and learning something new every day.

Mona holds an MFA in Interior Design from the New York School of Interior Design. She also has a BFA in Film Production from Loyola Marymount University and an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA. Prior to changing her career, she worked as a production designer for independent films. However, she made the leap to change her career because she wanted to design diverse and inclusive spaces that could directly impact communities and respond to our current economic and environmental pressures.

Yu is a Bay Area native with a Bachelor of Architecture degree from California College of the Arts and a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University. A licensed architect in the state of California, Yu has experience on a wide range of projects in locations including New York City, Detroit, Vancouver, Sydney, and Ho Chi Minh City, in addition to San Francisco and Los Angeles. A devout consumer of caffeine, he always travels with a Hario V60.

Helena Renee Cardona is a designer broadly interested in the intersection of architecture, territory and aesthetics; her work explores the transgression of existing boundaries as a way to lay the seeds for new forms of civic architecture. Cardona grew up in the borderlands of Presidio, Texas, and Ojinaga, CHIH, Mexico and is fluent in Spanish. Cardona holds a Master of Architecture from the California College of the Arts (’20). Her master’s thesis research focuses on Architecture as a political tool for advocacy. At CCA she was a CONNECTS Fellow for Galeria de la Raza and granted the Leadership in Art and Social Impact Award. Cardona was also a 2019 Commencement Exhibition Large-Scale Nave Installation Grant recipient. Cardona holds a Bachelor of Art in Architecture from the University of New Mexico with a minor in Sustainability Studies (’17), and an Associate of Science in Architecture from El Paso Community College (’14).

Gina Bugiada is from New York, holds a Bachelor degree in political science from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, and a Master degree in architecture from California College of the Arts (CCA). She is a few exams away from licensure, and is interested in the technology and art of architecture. Outside of work, she is co-founder of the Equity Research Team (ERT) where she collaborates with the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP) to explore adding methodologies of environmental and social justice to land development, after being connected through the Pathways to Equity fellowship in 2018. This collaboration was recognized in 2020 as one the recipients of the NAACP NOMA SEED Justice Equity Diversity Inclusion (JEDI) award. This work has also led to a 2021 advanced studio collaboration with the Urban Works Agency at CCA. Growing up in the rural edges of the NY Metro region, she now uses any free time she has to hike, camp, kayak, and stargaze.

Shoshana was born and raised in the Bay Area, and pursued architecture from a young age. She received a Bachelors of Architecture from California Polytechnic University, where she spent one year living abroad in Switzerland and Florence, Italy. During her time at Cal Poly Shoshana found a passion for design that focuses on environmental and social responsibility. She is currently working toward her architectural license and enjoys spending her free time hiking or dancing.

Alexa grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and is excited about the opportunity to design beautiful spaces in the city she loves. She believes that thoughtful design can improve upon existing conditions and positively impact the built environment to create better ways of living. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture and a Minor in Geography from Syracuse University. In her free time, Alexa enjoys reading, spending time outdoors, and wandering around San Francisco’s historic neighborhoods.

Bradley has a background of over 25 years of experience in multi-family housing, mixed-use, and hospitality projects. He believes that good design results from the successful interaction
of how individual buildings interface with and influence the urban fabric at the macroscale and carries through to the design intent of the material choices, building details and functional solutions. He also believes in the power of architecture to positively impact social justice, having worked on many successful multifamily housing projects and has a deep interest in environmentally sustainable design.

Bradley started off in Boston in the 1990s and quickly moved to San Francisco. He began his career in the Bay Area with Jane Cee and Peter Pfau in the late 1990s, after which he worked on many award winning hospitality and residential projects throughout his 15 years at David Baker Architects. He then transitioned to Senior Associate at BAR Architects leading design teams through all phases on successful projects ranging from affordable senior residential to hospitality and mixed-use urban infill

Joyce Chang

Joyce is an architect with 20+ years of experience in design and construction. Her diverse portfolio includes projects of varying scales and typologies, which have carried her around the world. Originally from Taiwan, Joyce studied architecture at UC Berkeley and received her M.Arch degree at Yale University. Prior to relocating back to San Francisco in 2013, Joyce has lived and worked in New York and Beijing, as well as traveling frequently to southeast Asia to oversee project developments. In recent years, Joyce has found her passion in the development of affordable housing and working with non-profit organizations to bring their collective vision into reality.