Nybria Acklin is an artist and administrator based in New Orleans. She is a Human Resources Manager at an education and capacity building nonprofit, and she is a deeply invested supporter of the arts and equity initiatives. Over the past two years she’s worked with Friends of the Freedom House – a house museum and community space in New Orleans – as a lead project manager doing grant writing, research, and coordination support; strategic planning support; and administrative support for the organization’s museum and archives projects. She commits to transition into the arts full-time with hopes of supporting BIPOC artists and culture workers gain more access to funding, opportunities, and connections. Nybria graduated from Smith College in 2018 with a B.A. in Sociology. She is also a Venture for America and Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs alumna. Nybria is excited to participate in the National Leaders of Color Fellowship program where she hopes to connect with like-minded individuals, and to better educate herself on the arts landscape and equity in the arts in order to make a positive impact in the field.
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co-director of arts education, Arts Corps Olisa Enrico is an artist, educator and administrator who believes in the unique power of art to cultivate community and culture. Olisa spent her childhood writing music and performing, traversing genres and rooting in hip hop as her primary form of expression. She branched out to theater and found passion for the power of story to reveal and heal. She earned her BFA in Theatre Performance Magna Cum Laude and an MFA in Theatre Pedagogy with a dual focus in Both Acting/Directing and Voice/Speech. She specializes in the use of Ritual Poetic Drama Within the African Continuum and Archetypes for the Actor. Olisa is a board member of The Conciliation Project (TCP) facilitating courageous conversations to undo oppression that is woven into the fabric of this complex nation.She is the Artistic and Executive Director of Griot Girlz, a collective of Black Womxn artists whose mission is to to engage the community in the art of storytelling through cultural practice and performance. Olisa provides performances, professional development, curriculum development, consultations and workshops through her business Praxis Essentials.Olisa believes that artists and art are vital to the state of culture and society and hopes to share her soul through performance. Olisa believes in collaboration, in relationship, in the value of community. |
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Director of Arts in Healthcare, Virginia Commonwealth University Health System Philip Muzi Branch, a Native of Richmond, Virginia, received both his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and his Master of Art Education degree from Virginia Commonwealth University. His award winning paintings have been exhibited at The Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, PANAFEST, Ghana, West Africa, The Banneker Douglass Museum, Annapolis, Maryland and The Daura Gallery. His work is included in the collections of SunTrust Bank, Richmond Community Hospital, Lynchburg College, Children’s Hospital of Richmond, The African American Museum of Dallas and First Market Bank. While participating in the Virginia Commission for the Arts “Artists in Education”” Program, Branch completed over 20 mural-painting residencies in public schools. He has taught at Virginia Union University, Saint Paul’s College and Virginia State University. Currently, he is Director of Cultural Programs for the VCU Health System in Richmond and president of the Black American Artist Alliance of Richmond (BAAAR). BAAAR is an artists’ collective committed to identifying and codifying African American art, and supporting artists who create it. Philip, also known as P. Muzi Branch, is an accomplished bassist and songwriter. He performs with the internationally acclaimed musical group, Plunky and Oneness. |
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Pablo Regis de Oliveira Born and raised between Los Angeles and Brasília, Brazil, Pablo is a recognized musician and arts administrator, championing equity in the arts. He is an active member of the Brazilian cultural arts community in the greater Washington DC region, performing on the cavaco on local stages and presenting concerts of touring Brazilian artists. He has served as a community-based arts administrator at Prince George’s Arts and Humanities Council and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. He serves as Education and Community Manager at Strathmore, where he furthers access to the arts through the Strathmore Bloom and Education programs. Pablo co-founded and is executive director of the Maryland-based nonprofit EducArte, a Brazilian performing arts presenter and arts education organization. |
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Pamela Hart is considered Austin’s First Lady of Jazz, designated by AustinWoman Magazine. She has devoted over 25 years of her life towards singing jazz and keeping the jazz genre alive. She and her husbanded Kevin Hart co-founded the Women in Jazz Association, Inc. in 1994, and she has been an advocate for women keeping jazz alive. She performed Sunday livestream house concerts most Sundays in 2020 to soothe the soul during Covid-19 sheltering. She released a CD, “Happy Talk” in May 2021. She was inducted into the Austin Jazz Society Hall of Fame in 2018. Pamela Hart has received many awards for her community work as a jazz supporter. These include the Connie Yerwood Conner National Woman of Achievement Award, and Jazz at St. James A.D. Mannion Award, Texas State University Outstanding Alumni Award, Links Austin Chapter Arts Award, and the BOSS Award of Distinction. With her performances, the Women in Jazz Association, Inc., vocal performance workshops, and vocal coaching, Pamela is making a difference in the Austin music scene. Thanks to City of Austin Economic Development Department Thrive funding, she produced the first annual Austin Women in Jazz Festival in November 2023. |
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Artist, individual artist I am an islander from a tiny island of Saipan, Called Nrthern Marianas Islands.A US citizen, and an active artist uneer the Office of the Community and Cultural Affairs under Arts Council. I have been doing my variety of cultural ear head lei, bead making, coconut crafts and many recycle materials that i can teach our children. |
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Patrick Arthur Jackson, a Richmond, VA native now residing in St. Petersburg, FL, is a dynamic creative, producer, director, actor, and teaching artist deeply committed to connection through storytelling. A Morehouse College Drama graduate, he honed his skills at the British American Drama Academy and the Florida Studio Theatre Apprentice Program. |
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Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts Patrick Camacho, devoted teacher who has paved the way to young minds to continue their education about Chamorro culture and language. He’s a teacher within Guam Department of Education and a Saina(teacher) and creator of Guma’ Ma Higa Dance Academy, having numerous students walk through all wanting to expand and explore the meaning of Chamorro. He credits much of his learning and teaching to Saina Frank Rabon, who has taken the initiative to find the true Chamorro roots in dance and chant and has bestowed it upon his students, making it their goal to teach the people of Guam. |
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Discipline: Crafts Lopez is a prominent painter and muralist whose acrylic paintings are driven by color and convey a multi-faceted array of symbolic, cultural and feminine imagery infused with spiritual vision and incendiary composition, establishing her as a key artist in the Latina/Hispana/Chicana/Mestiza genre. Born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, she identifies as an artist of mixed Jicarilla Apache and European heritage. An active and fulltime artist, she operated studio galleries in Las Vegas, Taos and in Santa Fe, exhibited in Contemporary Spanish Market and had the honor to represent New Mexico as the “official portrait artist, at the White House, in Washington D. C., in 2006, when NM provided the People’s Christmas Tree. Relocating in 2003 to California, she maintained a public studio/exhibit space in Los Angeles. As a muralist, she produced individual, community and student-assisted murals as a teaching artist. She returned home to New Mexico in September 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. |
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Discipline: Visual Arts Pete “”Pedru”” Perez has been a cultural leader and practitioner in the movement to restore canoe culture in the Mariana Islands for nearly 20 years. He and his wife Emma co-founded the nonprofit 500 Sails where he was its Executive Director and lead canoe builder until retiring in April 2024. The canoes he builds are based on the historic record that describes the Chamorro sailing canoes that were banned and lost during two centuries of Spanish colonial occupation of the Mariana Islands. Canoe building is an art that has its origins over 3500 years ago when the Chamorros settled in the remote Pacific, and they are decorated today using Oceanic motifs and traditional designs that come from Chamorro cave art and jewelry found in ancient graves. Since 500 Sails completed its first Chamorro “”Flying Proa”” in 2016, Pedru has sailed by canoe between the nearby islands and as far south as as Guam and Yap. His experiences on ocean inform both the design and decoration of the canoes he builds. |
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Discipline: Literature Peter R. Onedera is a storyteller from Sinajana, Guam. He speaks, reads, and writes in a bilingual format incorporating the indigenous language of CHamoru along with English. His talk story skills began in childhood from elders in his clan. Through the years, he created additional skills using situational scenarios, costumes, props, and puppets in presentations abroad and in schools. He has also written books, plays, poems, academic articles, and taught in the island’s school system from elementary to the University of Guam. He is also a noted playwright, having written over one hundred plays and staged and directed nearly half of them on Guam, Saipan, Northern and Southern California, Hawaiʻi, and in the Festivals of Pacific Arts in Palau, the Solomon Islands, as well as Guam’s hosting of the 12th FESTPAC in 2016. |
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Discipline: Visual Arts Peter manifests safe and creative spaces for ‘Brown Dance’ culture and the arts to thrive and grow equally in the traditional and contemporary expressions. Centering focus on Indigenous identities and voices in a moving dialogue addressing current local issues of urbanization and globalization. Through a NEA – Challenge America grant, Peter continues his journey towards articulating Pōhuli, reindiginization through the creation of his own movement modality and vocabulary reformed into the foundation of a new movement language paradigm for his dance company, Tau Dance Theater, the only professional dance company based in Honolulu directed by a Native Hawaiian. Peter is a 2022 recipient of the Western Arts Alliance, Advancing Indigenous Performances – Native Launchpad, was awarded a three-week Intercultural International Choreographer’s Creation Lab residency at Banff Center for the Creative Arts in Canada, and is round 2 Dance/USA Fellowship to Artists recipient. |
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Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts Pi‘ilaniwahine Smith is a Native Hawaiian contemporary artist and kumu hula, descending from a matrilineal genealogy of kumu hula within her ‘ohana. Her mother, Alicia Keolahouakamalama Keawekane Smith of Haleʻiwa, Oʻahu, is her kumu hula and the founder of the esteemed Hālau O Nā Maolipua. Smith’s ʻieʻie weaving is deeply informed by her practice of hula kuahu, where the ‘ie‘ie serves as a manifestation of Laka. She is recognized in her community as a hula practitioner who uses her cultural knowledge and experience as a form of political resistance and activism, advocating for the protection of ʻāina and Native Hawaiian rights. Through her use of ‘ie‘ie, Smith reclaims the connection between people and place, reigniting conversations of the sacred with the sacred through Ma ka ʻike ka hana, a traditional Native Hawaiian worldview where continuity of knowledge informs future generations. In 2024, Smith celebrated her artist debut with her solo exhibition, ʻIe holo ē, at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hamilton Library, Hawaiʻi and Pacific Collections. The exhibition featured a nine-piece collection, culminating in a rare kiʻi akua hulu manu. Today, Smith continues her family’s hula legacy as kumu hula of Hālau Mālamalamapiʻopiʻookalāpukakakahiaka. |
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Executive Director, Queerlective Inc Hello! My name is Randall Nielsen and I am a Queer Black artist and engineer living in New Hampshire. I move to Boston in 2010 to obtain a Bachelors in Engineering from Boston University. In 2014, I moved to New Hampshire for a lower cost of living. Since living in New Hampshire, I have met a lot of interesting Queer/BIPOC artists and saw a fantastic opportunity to engage and be a part of that community. This year I decided to take my art career seriously and started my art business From Strange Pieces. My primary media at first was digital illustration, but through some experimentation I developed a new process using resin and iridescent cellophane to create novel pieces that are celebrations of color and form and light. This year I have been working to grow my art skills and engage the art community. That initial work has led me to see a great opportunity for bolstering the already growing art community here in New Hampshire by forming Queerlective. Since then Queerlective has been working on building it’s foundation in the community here and providing ways for promote and support Queer and BIPOC artists. Running Queerlective has come with it’s challenges but it has been a very rewarding process given the fantastic reception from the community. |
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Rebecca Evans, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware Marketing & PR Artistic Communications Director, Social Justice Artist & Activist, and Consultant Rebecca Evans is a Rehoboth Beach-based integrated communications director, social justice artist & activist, unconscious bias consultant and life coach, writer, and cofounder and co-owner of Diamond State of Mind, LLC. Rebecca also identifies as a proud parent, Black, queer-lesbian, multiethnic, multicultural, disABLED woman, who can be referred to as she/her/they. Evans promotes social and cultural equality, inclusion, diversity, and justice through all forms of artistic expression. She seeks to connect with underrepresented and isolated communities to locate artists, and provide an exhibition space, artistic supplies, and other resources to display an artists’ work, and further their professional and academic goals. Evans obtained her bachelor’s degree in English and Women Studies from Tufts University, and her master’s degree in Corporate Public Relations from Boston University. She has over a decade of experience in integrated communications and working and volunteering within the artistic community. She has written for non-profits, directed, and acted in plays in Central Jersey, and performed in New York City and Boston before moving to Delaware with her family and three seizure-alert service dogs. Through Diamond State of Mind, Rebecca, along with her wife, Natalia will provide unconscious bias training, consultancy, and coaching to individuals and organizations based upon their unique integration of the arts and communications strategies. |
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Executive Director, Arrowhead Regional Arts Council I am an enrolled citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, native American woman. I have an undergraduate degree from Bemidji State University in Business Administration with an emphasis in Finance. My masters degree is from University of Minnesota Duluth in Tribal Administration and Governance. I worked for 20+ years in Tribal Government with the most recent position being Internal Audit Division Director. My most recent position prior to ARAC was for the Boys & Girls Club of the Leech Lake Area as the Executive Director. Since I have spent most on my career working with my own community it has been an eye opener of the extreme need for DEI work in the general community. I have had two specific acts of racism with the employer I joined. |
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Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Crafts&Visual Arts From the villages of Aoloau and Fagasa, Renisha Reid now resides in Vaitogi with her husband Tyrone and their four children—Jordan, Janae, Jesalyn, and Jrue. Her cultural journey began with music and dance and has grown into creating clothing, accessories, and crafts that reflect Samoan values and beauty. Inspired by the women in her life—her mother, sisters, aunts, and close friends—Reid blends creativity with community, honoring family, uplifting traditions, and sharing cultural pride with the next generation. |
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Robert Martinez, born in Riverton, Wyoming, draws profound inspiration from his Chicano and Northern Arapaho heritage. He graduated from the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design in just three years, making him one of the youngest graduates at the time. Martinez’s work merges Indigenous Plains Ledger Art traditions with graphite-rendered figures, bold airbrushed acrylics, and brushed highlights on antique paper, resulting in powerful visual statements. Drawing inspiration from the hardworking people of the West, his art serves as a bridge between the past and present. A recipient of Wyoming’s Governor’s Art Award, his work is part of the permanent collections at The Plains Indian Museum at the Center of the West, The Brinton Museum, The Wyoming State Museum, The Nic, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. |