OUR STORY
Our name is our thesis. GROUND3D cultivates knowledge from the ground up—rooted in the lived experience of neighborhoods and the people closest to a place. The 3D speaks to spatiality: our belief that data and decisions only become meaningful in the physical, dimensional spaces where life actually happens.
To us, grounding also means situating our work in the histories and cultures of places by understanding how neighborhoods came to be as the foundation for imagining what they can become. We think about the future from that same place of richness and possibility, drawing on it to advance new models for community ownership, stewardship, and self-determination.
Our practice is rooted in New York City and actively growing.
FOUNDERS
Zoe Voss Lee
A born and raised New Yorker, Zoe Voss Lee has spent her career building the tools and strategies that put neighborhoods at the center of decisions about their own future—from architecting NYC's first Environmental Justice Data Portal, to advancing new models of community-owned energy in the South Bronx. She holds a Master's in City Planning from MIT, and her work asks how data, politics, and the climate crisis intersect to reproduce inequality—and how these same systems can be organized to advance racial, gender, and economic justice instead.
Wil Jones
Wil Jones is an urban planner, technologist, and designer from Queens, NYC. An alumni of MIT's Master in City Planning and Hunter University's Master of Urban Planning programs, Wil brings experience from The Rockefeller Foundation and 100 Resilient Cities, where he advanced place-based investment and resilience strategies in frontline communities across the US. His work builds on research in civic technology, spatial justice, and cultural preservation, including People Powered AI: A Generative AI Playbook for Civic Engagement and Daufuskie 3D: Immersive Preservation through 3D Documentation.
COLLABORATORS
GROUND3D works through a growing network of collaborators—planners, designers, researchers, technologists, and organizers who join our project teams. Our collaborator network gives us the ability to adapt to community and project team priorities, and pull in subject matter expertise and specialized skillsets in analytics, research, and design where needed. Drag to move.
Oussama Ouadani
Strategist, GIS, and Design Specialist
Oussama is a city planner whose work bridges GIS, urban design, and system architecture to advance evidence-based insights that strengthen urban systems. At the City of Cambridge Arts Council, Oussama designed digital tools including the Public Art Map and real-time dashboards that enhance community access to 280+ cultural assets. At MENTOR National, he coordinated cross-organizational strategy and designed performance tracking systems for 97 strategic metrics. Through GROUND3D, he focuses on the creative analytics side of things, blending design with technical standards and data to effectively communicate complexity and ethos to a broad audience. He has a Master of City Planning degree from MIT.
Isbah Premjee
Climate, Gender & Engagement Specialist
Isbah Premjee is a planner, participatory researcher, and organizer who works with communities preparing for and recovering from disasters and extreme climate events. A recent Master of City Planning graduate from MIT, she brings feminist principles of care into her practice, drawing on desire, imagination, and cultural practices to support communities in building toward their futures. She designs processes that center community knowledge and governance structures, so that the people most affected by environmental injustice hold ownership of the plans shaping their neighborhoods. She brings an interdisciplinary lens to her work, shaped by years of public health, gender equity, and community development research in Pakistan and other parts of the Global South.
Deena Darby
Architect and Community Engagement Specialist
Deena Darby is an architect, educator, and community advocate whose work explores the intersection of race, place, and justice in the built environment. She has a Master in City Planning degree from MIT, and focuses on how urban policy and design can be reimagined to create more equitable and inclusive cities. She earned her Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University, has worked with practices including Studio Cooke John, Creative Urban Alchemy, and Studio Fōr, and has taught architecture at New York City College of Technology. A co-organizer of Dark Matter U and active in Design As Protest, NOMA, and the AIA, Deena's work centers storytelling, spatial equity, and community collaboration.
Talisha Ward
Historic Preservationist and Urban Placemaker
Talisha Ward is a Black placemaker and preservationist from Brooklyn working to explore and highlight the impact of culture on the built environment, using material culture to leverage identity as a tool for community perseverance. Her path led from monuments conservation at the Central Park Conservancy to Pratt Institute's Master of Urban Placemaking and Management program with an advanced certificate in Historic Preservation. She is a Bronze Specialist at Woodlawn Cemetery and Conservancy, where she also teaches preservation skills, and the 2025–26 History Fellow at Green-Wood Cemetery, conducting archival research on the Freedom Lots.
Simone Delaney
Landscape Architect, Cultural Planning and Ecology Specialist
Simone Delaney is a landscape architectural designer, herbalist, and permaculturalist trained in Black and Indigenous land stewardship techniques, with deep knowledge of Black Traditional Ecological Knowledge (BTEK) systems through both professional design experience and inherited practices. Their projects span the Launch School's campus on Jamaica Bay, a linear parkway in Brussels, and interpretive sites commemorating former Maroon settlements in the Louisiana Central Wetlands. They are an urban and regional planner for Halifax Regional Municipality's African Nova Scotian Community Action Program, helping lead reparative actions for descendants of emancipated and enslaved people, and a writer, gardener, and design justice organizer active within Design as Protest.