Team
Founders, head of legal, and senior advisors. We hire carefully and bring partners in for the right moment in the right project.
Leadership
Co-founder & CEO
Erik is a systems thinker focused on aligning capital, design, and operations into development that is financially viable, operationally sound, and grounded in care. He brings 30 years of property operations and 20 years in technology, business development, and startup leadership.
Co-founder & COO
Ritchie leads design, development, and operations. B.Architecture from Carnegie Mellon, MS in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia, MBA candidate at Johns Hopkins. Previously a mobility planner at Lyft in New York, where he led bike-share expansion.
Head of Legal & Business Relations
Brianna is a securities and real-estate attorney. Managing Partner of Keiretsu Law. Her practice spans equity and debt securities offerings, fund formation, and innovative financing structures. Her background in public finance is a particular advantage for navigating public-private partnerships and municipal finance.
Advisors
We work with senior advisors whose expertise is directly load-bearing for the work.
Local economies
Michael is an economist, attorney, and one of the architects of the 2012 JOBS Act. Adjunct Professor at Bard Business School. Author of Put Your Money Where Your Life Is, The Local Economy Solution, and others. He advises Now City on community-rooted ownership, local capital formation, and finance models that keep wealth in place.
Urban planning & design
Neal, FAIA, FCNU, directs the western U.S. urban and architectural design practice at Torti Gallas. His work focuses on master plans, form-based codes, and the public realm, especially the revitalization of declining urban centers, brownfields, and aging suburbs. He advises Now City on urbanism, master planning, and entitlement strategy.
How we show up
Our values drive our design process and our decisions. They help us find the people who want to build this with us.
Beliefs divide us. Values unite us.
We ask big questions. Where are the healthiest, happiest people and places in the world, and what can we learn from them? How do we build and live better, everywhere? How do we move faster on climate, equity, and resilience? We chase the answers.
Creativity is imagination in action. It is how we learn, grow, and solve problems. We need it running at full strength to design better places and figure out what nobody else has figured out yet.
Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Face the hard internal and external challenges. Choose to act for the good of the whole. Build and live in new ways that are better for people and planet.
Because it is the right thing, and because it works. Diverse communities of people, species, and ideas are healthier, more resilient, more alive. We design for it, hire for it, build for it.
Trust is how a team, a neighborhood, and a partnership stay coordinated. Transparency builds it, even when transparency feels uncomfortable. We choose it anyway.
Sustainable holds the line. Regenerative makes things better than we found them. We are not interested in defending the status quo. We are interested in repair, renewal, and growth.
Join us
We are designers, developers, and operators who care deeply about people and ecosystems. We are building toward a future where humanity has figured out how to live well without breaking the home world. We could use your help.
We hire carefully across development, urban design, capital, operations, and engineering. Strong candidates with experience in walkable urbanism, district-scale infrastructure, public-private partnerships, or institutional capital are welcome to introduce themselves. Interns and project-based collaborators are welcome too.
Drop us a line at team@nowcitylabs.com or via the Contact page.