Camille Canon

Founder, Apiary

Camille Canon is the Founder and CEO of Apiary, and applied research design company developing governance solutions for decentralized organizations. Apiary supports teams in designing systems to advance their objectives and builds technology to make governance easy and effective. Canon previously co-founded the US-based node of Purpose, a global networked organization working on new models of ownership, governance, and finance. Apiary is being launched in partnership with Kickstarter. 

Cézanne Charles

Co-Founder, rootoftwo

Cézanne Charles is a designer, curator, and researcher with 20 years of experience working at the executive and senior management level within the creative industries (USA/UK). Her work focuses on the intersection of art, design, technology, culture, economy, social justice, and public policy. Cézanne co-directs with John Marshall, rootoftwo. Their work uses participatory design methods to facilitate people to imagine and shape collective actions for more just, resilient, inclusive, and adaptive futures.  From 2008-2019, Cézanne served as director of creative industries at Creative Many, where she led the design and implementation of the company’s creative industries research. Here, Cézanne also designed and directed programs that empowered the practices of Michigan artists, designers, and makers, with a core focus on Detroit. 

Cézanne serves on the Stewardship Board for Design Core Detroit’s UNESCO City of Design initiative, the Allied Media Projects Board of Directors, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, the Americans for the Arts Inclusive Creative Economy Advisory, and the Michigan Central Curatorial Advisory Board. Charles has a MPA from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy University of Michigan and a BA in Theatre Studies from The Ohio State University.

Seumanu Pou Dimitrijevich

Design Manager and Global Co-Chair of the Asian and Pacific Islander Employee Resource Group at Box, Inc. / MBA Candidate UCLA Anderson

Pou is a senior creative professional, with over a decade of user-centered product development experience for consumer and enterprise organizations such as Headspace, Redfin, and Yelp. Currently, she is leading a team of designers across the Admin and Growth domains at Box. Originally from Salelologa, Western Samoa, Pou received the matai (chief) title Seumanu in 2018. Pou is an active volunteer with Tech and design centric organizations including Inneract Project, Out of Office Hours, and Guía Collective.

Randy Engstrom

Consultant, Third Way Creative

Randy Engstrom has been a passionate advocate and organizer of cultural and community development for over 15 years.  He is currently the owner and principal of Third Way Creative, a consulting practice focused on cultural policy, racial equity, and creative economy. He is also Adjunct Faculty at the Seattle University Arts Leadership Program where he teaches cultural policy, advocacy, and resource development. Most recently he served as Director of the Office of Arts and Culture for the City of Seattle where he expanded their investments in granting programs and Public Art, while establishing new programs and policies in arts education, cultural space affordability, and racial equity. He served as Chair of the Seattle Arts Commission in 2011 and was Chair of the Facilities and Economic Development Committee from 2006 to 2010. Previously he served as the Founding Director of the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, a multimedia/multidisciplinary community space that offers youth and community member’s access to arts, technology, and cultural resources. Prior to Youngstown, Randy spent 3 years as the Founding CEO of Static Factory Media, an artist development organization that owned and operated a record label, bar/performance venue, graphic design house, recording studio, and web development business. In 2009 Randy received the Emerging Leader Award from Americans for the Arts and was one of Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 Under 40. He is a graduate of the Evergreen State College in Olympia, and he received his Executive Master’s in Public Administration at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Governance and Public Policy.

Ebony Gustave

Founder, Cooperative Journal
 

Ebony is an organizer, community architect, and storyteller. They are the host of Cooperative Journal podcast, an archive of interviews highlighting international examples  of the solidarity economy. As a co-steward of its multimedia umbrella, they are bridging the gaps between political education, imagination, co-creation, and actualization.

 Kimi Hanauer

Founding Collective Member, Press Press

Kimi Hanauer (they/them) is a cultural- and media-based organizer, facilitator, artist, and a founding collective member of Press Press. In their practice, Kimi co-builds pragmatic-poetic initiatives and resources that aim to foster collective autonomy. In recent years, Kimi has co-organized projects such as Press Press’ ‘Poetry for Persistence’ with Printed Matter and ‘Toolkit for Cooperative, Collective, & Collaborative Cultural Work’ with Institute for Expanded Research. Currently, Kimi is stewarding a slow process of emergence for the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry. Kimi earned an master's from the University of California, Los Angeles and a bachelor's from Maryland Institute College of Art.

Karen Helmerson

Art & Technology Cultural Investments Advisor

Karen Helmerson is an Art & Technology Cultural Investments advisor with over 35 years of expertise in media production, policy, and grantmaking.  Recently NY State Council on the Arts Program Director, 2000-2022, she funded organizations across all electronic media, film and visual art genres. Major Initiatives: Transitioning Online - Models for Many, and Immersive Technology: Deepen Diversify Engender focusing on traditionally underserved populations, https://nymediaartsmap.org/convenings. Issues of Identity 2005-2008 produced the NYSCA Memory Archive and The NY Media Arts MAP launched 2009. The MAP is a vital resource for cultural organizations, artists, and general public identifying art and technology projects throughout New York State, https://nymediaartsmap.org/

David Holland

Deputy Director, WESTAF

David Holland is the director of impact and public policy at WESTAF. He joined WESTAF in 2019 to lead its advocacy and public policy programs and services and serve as the primary liaison with federal, state, and local agencies. His role has evolved to also drive the impact of WESTAF’s field building programs and services.

He has authored the Creative Economies and Economic Recovery report in partnership with the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies; co-led the redesign of the Performing Arts Discovery program in partnership with regional and national partners; established the Western Arts Advocacy Network (WAAN); collaborated on developing new equity-focused relief and resilience grantmaking programs in the West and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands; spearheaded WESTAF’s Arts and the Rural West and Arts Leadership and Advocacy Seminars; and secured private and public investment for WESTAF's programs.

His prior roles include leadership positions at the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston, the VCU da Vinci Center for Innovation, VCU School of the Arts, ART 180, Arts & Business, the UK innovation foundation Nesta, and BOP Consulting. He is a Salzburg Global Fellow, Evan Carroll Commager Fellow, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Abdiel López

Capital Strategies Manager, Roanhorse Consulting

Abdiel J. López is a financial activist, systems change consultant, and cultural theorist. abdiel is the Capital Strategies Manager at Roanhorse Consulting (RCLLC), an Indigenous- and women-led think tank that co-designs wealth and power-building efforts that directly invest in our leaders, support meaningful data collection informed by Indigenous research approaches, and helps build thoughtful community-led projects. López is a thought partner to the CEO and oversees all projects related to Indigenous wealth-building, community economic development, and investor relationships.  Before joining RCLLC, López was a program officer at the Center for Cultural Innovation, where they managed the national investment portfolio, AmbitioUS. López also has extensive experience working with cultural institutions and artists in Mexico City and Los Angeles as a curator, gallery manager, exhibition catalogue writer, and production manager, and is an alumnus of the premier Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internship program. abdiel earned a BA in sociology and studied art history at Grinnell College, where they were a Posse Foundation Scholar and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. abdiel is Kitsé Chat’nio from the coastal region of Oaxaca and lives in Tongva/Chumash territory (Los Angeles) with their pomeranian dog-child, Horchata.

 Ariel Luckey

Development Director, Sogorea Te' Land Trust

Born and raised in Huchiun/Oakland, California on Lisjan Ohlone land, Ariel Luckey is an interdisciplinary artist and activist who works at the intersection of community advocacy, culture change and resource redistribution. Ariel is Development Director at the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led land trust, and was part of the team that created the Shuumi Land Tax, an innovative grassroots funding strategy for Rematriation and LandBack initiatives. He is also a co-founder of Jews On Ohlone Land, a multigenerational Jewish community that is learning together how to be good guests on Lisjan land.  Ariel’s artistic work blurs the lines between performance, ritual and political action. His plays Free Land and Amnesia illustrate stories from his life and family history as a cartography of race, class, land and intergenerational healing. He has performed at hundreds of theaters, universities, conferences and community centers across the country. Ariel earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College and has been an Artist in Residence at La Peña Cultural Center, the White Privilege Conference and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at U.C. Berkeley.

Adriel Luis

Curator of Digital and Emerging Media, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

Adriel Luis is a community organizer, artist, writer, and curator who believes that collective liberation can happen in poetic ways. His life’s work is focused on the mutual thriving of artistic integrity and social vigilance. He is a part of the iLL-Literacy arts collective, which creates music and media to strengthen Black and Asian coalitions, and is creative director of Bombshelltoe, a collaborative of artists and leaders from frontline communities responding to nuclear histories. Adriel is the Curator of Digital and Emerging Practice at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, where he advocates for equitable practices in museums and institutions. His ancestors are rooted in Toisan, China, and migrated through Hong Kong, Mexico, and the United States. Adriel was born on Ohlone land.
 
Adriel has curated projects in a range of venues including several museums across the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.; MoMA and Pearl River Mart in New York City; Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia; Silo Park in Auckland, Aotearoa; Atom Bar in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and an abandoned Foodland in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. His writing has appeared in Poetry Magazine, the Asian American Literary Review, and Smithsonian Magazine. He has spoken at the Tate Modern, Yale University, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the China Academy of Fine Arts. His performance venues include the Brooklyn Academy of Music, SXSW, the John F. Kennedy Center, and the American University of Paris. He has a degree in human ecologies from UC Davis in Community and Regional Development and a minor in Asian American Studies.

Alberto Mejia

Deputy Director, NALAC (The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures)

Alberto Mejia is the Deputy Director at NALAC.  He holds a master's in Public Administration from the University of Washington and a bachelor's in American Cultural Studies and Political Science from Fairhaven College. Prior to joining NALAC in 2020, he served as manager of Cultural Funding & Investments with the City of Austin, a senior director of Community Programs at Creative Action, Manager of the Dougherty Arts Center, Executive Director of Youngstown Cultural Arts Center in Seattle, Washington and Community Engagement Manager at MoPOP in Seattle, WA.  Alberto is an alumnus of NALAC’s Advocacy Leadership Institute (ALI) and has served as panelist for local to national grant making programs including ARTPLACE and NEA Our Town.  Alberto is active in cultural policy issues & dialogue. Mejia is an artist in the hip-hop genre and devotes time to the practice of indigenous cultural tradition, community building & dance.

Michael Orlove

Director of State, Regional & Local Partnerships,  and International Activities, NEA (National Endowment for the Arts)

Michael Orlove currently serves as the Director of State, Regional & Local Partnerships. In that capacity, Orlove provides direction concerning the National Endowment for the Arts funding and other assistance to the 56 state and jurisdictional arts agencies, the six regional arts agencies, and local arts agencies across the country. Additionally, Orlove manages the agency's international activities. He was the Agency’s director of Artist Communities and Presenting & Multidisciplinary Works from 2012 to 2019.

Orlove has been an invited guest speaker and panelist at numerous national and international conferences and convenings. Honors include being named one of the 'Chicagoans of the Year' in music by the Chicago Tribune in both 1999 and 2009, as well as one of Chicago's 'Global Visionaries' by Chicago Public Radio WBEZ and the Chicago Matters: Beyond Burnham series. As a testament to his international expertise, Orlove was named one of the 'Seven Samurai’ at the prestigious WOMEX (World Music Expo) 2009 Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark and, in 2018, was given the inaugural GlobalFEST ‘Impact Award’ for outstanding commitment to the world music field. He was recently selected for the DeVos Global Arts Management Fellowship (2018-2020).

Rodolfo Peraza

Founder, MUD Foundation

Rodolfo Peraza is a Cuban-born multimedia artist who works between Cuba and the US. His work focuses on public spaces, both virtual and physical, as well as DataVis of matters related to the Internet culture and the footprint it leaves in society. Peraza is the founder of Fanguito Estudio in Havana (2009). In 20013, he launched the VRLab for the development of browser-based VR technology. The VRLab is devoted to both explore and promote the intersections between data, art, and the internet. Peraza also created MUD Foundation (Miami, 2016) to advance the intersections between art and digital technologies by implementing artistic and educational programs.

 
Rad Pereira

Artist and Director of Engagement and Impact, New York Stage & Film

Currently the Director of Engagement and Impact with New York Stage & Film, while shifting between cultural work in performance, education, social sculpture and community organizing. Pereira's book on socially engaged performance and social justice with Jan Cohen-Cruz came out in June 2022 by New Village Press. Pereira is a multi-spirit mixed Black, Indigenous Brazilian, Jewish (im)migrant artist currently based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn). Their creative practices range from social sculpture, to popular theatrical and TV/film performance, to participatory liberatory artmaking and healing that weaves together an Afro-futurist longing for transformative justice and queer (re)Indigenization of culture.

With their community, Pereira created The (Im)Migrant Hustle and produced Bang Bang Gun Amok I + II at Abrons Art Center. With their artner at You Are Here, LILLETH, they created Media Tools for Liberation at JackNY, Decolonization Rave and Cosmic Commons. In 2017 I was NYC Public Artist in Residence with my collaborators (Keelay Gipson, Britton Smith, Josh Adam Ramos), at the Department of Cultural Affairs and Children’s Services working with LGBQTIA foster youth;

As a cultural organizer and facilitator, Pereira has collaborated with the Disney Theatrical Group, United Nations, Queens Museum, Rio de Janeiro Museum, Instituto Republica, MOCA, SITI Company Thought Center, A Blade of Grass, SUPERBLUE, Broadway Advocacy Coalition, The 8th Floor, Working Woman of Color Conference, Dance/NYC Symposium, and Culture/Shift, and taught performance classes and workshops at Pace University, Interlochen Arts Academy, NET, Americans for the Arts and The Door.

Lillyanne Pham

Cultural Organizer

Lillyanne (b. 1997; LP/they/bạn/she/em/chị) is a cultural organizer and artist facilitator living and working in East Portland. Pham grounds their creative process in place-based justice and participatory decision-making processes. Their creative research relies on their relational work, and vice versa. Pham approaches art as an intimate, expansive, and ancestral means for wayfinding, nesting, and communicating. They use art and the art world to facilitate culturally and politically meaningful webs of care and connection. Currently, Pham asks, “What is a neighborhood?” because it can open doors to talking about covert and overt power structures, online and offline, and how those most impacted by systems of oppression make and keep home. Pham's work has been supported by Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, Mural Arts Institute, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the City Arts Program - Portland, and the Dorothy Piacentini Endowed Art Scholarship.

Austin Robey

Founder, Ampled

Austin Robey is a Co-Founder of Ampled, a cooperatively-owned web platform that allows musicians to be directly supported by their community. He is interested in the development of alternative economies and building a more democratic, equitable and inclusive online economy. Robey is a member of NEW INC, the New Museum incubator, as part of the Equitable Platforms track and is also on the project council of the Internet of Ownership.

 
Salvador Ruiz-Esquivel

Executive Director and Co-Founder, Moving Arts Española

Salvador Ruiz-Esquivel was born the eighth child in a family of nine siblings in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico in 1966. He began dancing Mexican Folklorico in elementary school and continued training through high school. He danced with a number of companies from 1985-89 in Guadalajara. Ruiz became a business owner of a Mexican furniture imports and interior design firm in Mexico in 1987. He became the co-owner of a business firm in Los Angeles in 1989 and relocated to Santa Fe in 1992.

Since moving to New Mexico, Ruiz has worked as a teaching artist in the Española Public Schools, teaching dance and visual arts to hundreds of K-6 children. In 2008, he and partner Roger Montoya co-founded Moving Arts Española. In 2011, he served as part of the founding team for La Tierra Montessori School of the Arts and Sciences, a state public charter school.

Ruiz believes that education through arts is essential in the growth and development of a healthy child, and utilizes his extensive business background to bring arts education to children.
 

Jessica Stern

Senior Manager, Americans for the Arts

Jessica Stern joined Americans for the Arts in January 2018 and serves as Senior Manager, Local Arts and Business Partnerships. Jessica works to expand the knowledge of local arts leaders on the broad conditions that need to exist for arts and business partnerships to thrive and be leaders in the creation of those conditions, namely through the pARTnership Movement. Stern develops and leads the organization’s local inclusive creative economy initiatives and drives strategies that assist local arts and community leaders to identify the full cultural and artistic assets in their community in order to create more equitable pathways to community resources.

Prior to joining Americans for the Arts, Stern worked as the Membership and Resources Manager for the Nonprofit Association of Oregon (NAO), providing oversight of NAO’s statewide membership program while curating and reinventing its online platform of nonprofit management best practice resources. Previously, Jessica spent nearly five years working with Portland’s local business committee for the arts, Business for Culture & the Arts (BCA), delivering programs that engaged employees from BCA’s 200+ business members, managing all marketing and communications strategies, and retaining and cultivating corporate and community partnerships. Jessica has also served in development roles at Metropolitan Youth Symphony and Literary Arts; and has freelanced as an independent web designer and developer.

Marquise Stillwell

Founder, Openbox

Marquise Stillwell is a designer and a catalyst for building communities and products across design, art, and culture. His career spans across two decades, and his curiosity for people and spaces developed into a passion for designing systems to make environments better for all people. In 2009, Marquise founded Openbox – a design research and planning studio based in New York City that works at the intersection of people, cities, and planet. Making products and services work better for the people who use them, Openbox applies innovative approaches to research and implementation into the built environment, with people and community needs considered every step along the way. Within Openbox, he later co-founded Opendox, a film company that tells lesser-known narratives around art, science, nature, and politics. Marquise has executive produced films such as Shield and Spear, The Limestone Conflict, Marfa, and most recently The New Bauhaus. He has also co-founded Deem Journal, a biannual print journal and online platform focused on design as social practice, and Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities. Most recently, he acquired Stae, a go-to open-source data hub that allows people to visualize and leverage open city data in a meaningful way. Additionally, Marquise serves as a board member for the Center for Architecture and on advisory boards for Creative Capital and Riverkeeper. He is also a member of the High Line Advisory Committee, a fellow at Urban Design Forum, and was a Founding Board Member and Co-Chair at The Lowline, the first underground park.

 
Sruti Suryanarayanan

Co-Organizer, Art.Coop

Sruti Suryanarayanan is a Tamizh American craftsperson and writer, also co-organizing with Art.coop. They study systems of racial, economic, and migration inequity and use this focus to design, implement, and facilitate creative learning and advocacy to encourage transformative healing and justice in intergenerational communities, particularly with people of color, away from state, interpersonal, and historically traumatic violence and towards self-determination. Suryanarayanan develops tools to encourage collective questioning while centering critical and compassionate care, relying on the deep traditions of material and movement craft in their families. In addition to their work with Art.coop, Sruti is a researcher with AAPI Women Lead and a volunteer with Interference Archive; they previously worked with South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT).

Or Zubalsky

Artist

Or Zubalsky is an artist and educator based in a part of Lenapehoking also known as Brooklyn. Working with software, they intervene in patterns of erasure along the physical — digital axis. Zubalsky’s projects manifest as digital systems that mediate relationships to physical places, their histories, and their digital representation. Their interest in code stems from the potential that’s generated when a system of language collides with complex functional structures. Their work and collaborations have been supported by The New Museum, The Museum of Art and Design, Queens Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Rhizome, Eyebeam, ILAND, Brooklyn Arts Council, NARS, Smack Mellon, among other institutions and groups.