Team Members

John Maximuk was the Planning and Development Director with the City of Chamblee, Georgia. For over 25 years, John has been a city planner and design champion working in sustainable development, planning management, strategic community development, education, and facilitation. John has served on the board of the Architecture and Design Center since 2014. He holds an undergraduate degree in environmental geography from Ohio University and a master's degree in regional planning from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He lives in Atlanta with his family.

Brian Dempsey is an Atlanta-based architect with more than 25 years of experience. As owner of Freespace Architecture, he focuses on designing for the education, recreation, dining, and theatrical industries. He also serves as adjunct professor for 5th-year focus studio students at Kennesaw State University.

David Hamilton is an Atlanta architect who has devoted a substantial part of his career to advancing the quality of design and urbanism in a rapidly evolving City. As a principal at Praxis3 architecture, he has been responsible for the design of significant local and regional buildings. David has been involved in a number of arts and civic organizations, including Central Atlanta Progress- The Downtown Arts and Entertainment District, the Freedom Park Conservancy, and serves on the Atlanta Beltline Design Review Committee.

Ed Akins is an educator and architect in Atlanta, GA. He is dedicated to the exploration and integration of practice within academia and community engagement. Ed views design as the ideal quality-focused mediator between human occupation and site at variable scales. His design inquiry prioritizes human and ecological characteristics in an effort to reinforce systemic clarity of the built environment.

As a young design professional, Nghi is a pragmatic designer whose design philosophy aims to enrich the people’s experience of the built environment. She believes that architecture is not limited to aesthetic qualities but is also a psychological provocation. The human experience of architecture is more than just the language of geometries. It includes the synergy of textures, colors, sounds, spatial scales, qualities of lighting whether natural or artificial, and context to regionalism. These combined visual and cerebral qualities forge an enduring connection between user and space that is beyond a mere memory; it becomes a sensation of architecture.

Nghi is a transplant from the city of Savannah, GA and have since been a long-time resident of Atlanta. She is an active volunteer for Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, serving as Volunteer Skill Supervisor. In years past, she has volunteered with AIA Young Architect Forum and assisted in community outreach and various YAF sponsored design competitions. She has successfully completed projects with Atlanta Beltline in their annual Art on the Beltline exhibition. Professionally, she has founded studio nd llc, a design venture with roots in architecture and pursuits of creative challenges . She has a passion for design and seeks opportunities to enhance the interplay between human condition and creative constructs.

Clementine is an Atlanta-based artist, designer, strategist, and creative leader whose career has been shaped by a longstanding interest in how design, storytelling, and community can change the way people understand and participate in the places around them. A graduate of Georgia State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics and a minor in Sculpture, she developed her creative practice within Atlanta’s independent arts community, exhibiting throughout the city and building relationships across its network of artists, designers, galleries, and cultural organizations.

Entrepreneurship and project-building have been consistent threads throughout Clementine’s career. She has launched independent ventures, developed creative programs, consulted with artists and organizations, and worked across disciplines to turn ideas into tangible experiences and resources. At the University of Michigan, she coordinated multidisciplinary projects involving budgets, grants, reporting, logistics, and complex team deliverables, strengthening her ability to connect big-picture goals with the systems needed to achieve them. Her design experience includes working with hundreds of authors and clients and designing more than 40 book interiors, while her independent ventures—from founding the Atlanta concierge service Errand Tiger to developing ClemStarz Art—have given her firsthand experience building ideas, audiences, partnerships, and projects from the ground up.

At the Architecture & Design Center of Atlanta, Clementine brings these experiences together to help expand the organization’s reach, strengthen partnerships, develop public programming, and build greater awareness of design as a civic and cultural resource. Her work is grounded in the belief that leadership is not simply about managing what already exists, but about recognizing possibilities, bringing the right people together, and creating the structure necessary to move good ideas forward.