Nina is the founding principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture & Design, a multidisciplinary design studio that values placemaking as a way to transform relationships between people and the built environment. Nina’s work explores the continuum between art and architecture.  Studio Cooke John’s Shadow of A Face, the new Harriet Tubman Monument in Newark, NJ, was unveiled in March 2023.  The studio was awarded a 2021 AIA Merit Award for the public art installation, Point of Action, commissioned for the Flatiron public plazas in 2020 and currently on view at the Wassaic Project.  Nina was named the AIANY New Perspectives honoree in 2024 and a 2022 United States Artists Fellow.  She is a 2024 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize recipient for Exhibit Columbus.  Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Nina earned her Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University and MSAAD from Columbia University.  She has been a design educator for 20 years, teaching at NYIT, Syracuse University, Parsons School of Design and currently at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.