2023 Promotions, geographic expansion and our growing team!

With the start of 2023 we are excited to the announce the well earned promotions of Sarita Govani and Hannah Chako. Yufeng Xu has returned after a one year hiatus, expanding Mantle’s geographic footprint to Shenzen, China, and we welcome Abby Cole as our new Office Assistant!

Sarita Govani

Studio Director | Associate Principal

Joining Mantle shortly after its founding in 2018, Sarita has played a critical role in the development of the studio. Everyday she shows her versatile talents from spearheading the implementation of Revit, leading multiple design projects, driving marketing pursuits, and always making herself available — providing guidance, mentorship and friendship — to everyone on the team. In her new dual role as Studio Director | Associate Principal, Sarita will lead the studio in the implementation of our strategic goals, continue to innovate our design process, and strengthen and build our internal and larger community. Yet she will still be a familiar face on the projects she leads bringing continued vision and diligence to the execution of her work. Congrats Sarita!

Hannah Chako

Associate

We are excited announce the expansion of the leadership team at Mantle with the promotion of Hannah Chako to Associate. As a newly graduating MLA student from Harvard’s GSD, Hannah joined Mantle in the fall of 2020 and didn’t waste a second putting her talent, commitment, and passion to work. She took her first project, Gateway Commons Phase 1, by the bullhorns shepherding parametric design for an art feature, innovating planting design, and developing new paving documentation standards for us. She played a key part during Construction Administration, bringing the project to completion as we closed out 2022, and is now taking a larger leadership role for Phases 2 and 3.

In her new role, Hannah will be spearheading internal initiatives to track sustainability metrics, oversee Mantle’s internship program and take on management of her projects. Congrats Hannah!

Setting up shop in Shenzen China!

In October 2018 Yufeng Xu joined the Berkeley studio after completing her MLA at RISD. Her creative mind, technical acumen and joyful disposition were a perfect fit. In her first year she exhibited a fearless curiosity, and a passion to question that status quo that made everyone’s head turn. It was hard to say goodbye in the fall of 2020, when she had to make the difficult decision to return to her family and friends in China during the height of the pandemic. In 2022, we engineered a way for Yufeng to return by setting up shop in her home town of Shenzen, China. This has been a tremendous success, broadening our reach, our 24/7 capabilities, and building our capacity to work as a globally integrated team. Welcome back to Mantle Yufeng!

Welcome Abby Cole

We are very excited to welcome Abby Cole as our new Office Assistant. Abby has a degree in Psychology from University of Puget Sound with a minor in Education Studies. She has been entertaining us with stories of her adventures in Belize volunteering as a surrogate mother to an infant spider monkey. Capable of tackling anything that comes her way, Abby in an important asset to our practice and we are looking forward to sharing with her the ‘adventures’ of office life.