Forrest is a ‘relationships-first’ democratic design practitioner for civic, economic, and ecological systems. He leverages participatory and systems-based methodologies to synthesize complexity, co-create strategy, and galvanize cooperative and liberatory futures.
He is the founder and Executive Director of The Assembly Project (TAP), which works to create more expansive and collaborative democratic systems.TAP’s past work includes designing and implementing NYC's first city-wide deliberative participatory budgeting process, leading the CUNY Climate Assembly Project (the first university-convened climate assembly in the US) with the City University of New York, creating the course Design for Democracy at The New School, delivering capacity-building workshops with political actors in Washington State and NYC, and developing the Civic Assembly Collaborative Civic Ecosystem Model to scale the impact of participatory policy-making.
Other past initiatives include developing strategy for global community health worker programs with the International Rescue Committee, conducting service-design research for carceral-exiting patrons with The Brooklyn Public Library’s Justice Initiative, facilitating community-university decision-making processes and co-designing sustainable food systems for local solidarity economies with the University of Texas RGV, and Co-organizing and curating TEDxMcAllen.
In his free time, Forrest is a proud sourdough dad, overly enthusiastic about volleyball and commuting around NYC on his bike, and loves hiking and getting lost in the beauty of moss on an aging tree.