Israel Carranza is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and cultural organizer whose work bridges abstract expressionism, community building and cultural storytelling rooted in his Indigenismo, Xicanx and Mexicano identities. Holding a bachelor’s in fine arts in illustration from the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Carranza has exhibited, curated and produced events across the Midwest, fostering collaboration between artists, musicians and communities.

As art and cultural director at Proyecto Cultural in Lincoln, Nebraska, he cultivated inclusive creative spaces through all-ages art and music events that celebrated diversity and cultural heritage. His experience spans nonprofit administration, event production, curation, art handling, ornamental metalwork, docent work, youth entrepreneurship mentorship and art education. Each reflects his deep commitment to craftsmanship, identity, creative rebellion, cultural resilience, collective empowerment and decolonized, regenerative futures.

Now based in San Diego, Carranza continues to explore the intersections of art, culture and community as a horticulturalist at the Japanese Friendship Garden & Museum. There, he integrates traditional Japanese garden aesthetics with contemporary creative practice, deepening his exploration of harmony between people and place and treating horticulture as an extension of his artistic expression.

Director of Community Impact, Aurora Theatre

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, I have always been an art dreamer since I was about 4 years old. Singing was my favorite thing to do growing up. Through high school, I explored playwrighting and storytelling without knowing the impact it would have late in my life. It wasn’t until I reached college that I discovered Musical Theatre and the possibilities this would bring. For the last 11 years, I’ve dedicated my life to exploring, studying, and experiencing the arts in many of their forms. From classical to Spanish Rock singing, to musical theatre, to acting, to arts administration. With my degrees in Music, Performing Arts, and Arts Presenting and Live Entertainment Management; and my experience as a singer, actor, playwright, and administrator, I possess a wide perspective of the world of art. Currently, after wearing different hats as an Acting Apprentice, I hold the Director of Community Impact position at Aurora Theatre, where I connect with our diverse communities and provide them with multicultural programming that highlights heritage and culture. My job is the best combination of community and arts building. A true dream come true.

Youth Studios Manager, The Union for Contemporary Art

Jacquline Smith is the youth studios manager at The Union for Contemporary Art. In addition to developing and administering The Union’s Youth Engagement programs, she serves as a liaison between the artists, partner organizations, youth and their families. She graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha with a Bachelor’s in General Studies – Art Concentration, with a certification in nonprofit management. She brings nearly 20 years of experience working with youth to The Union’s programs. Prior to joining The Union, Smith served as an art teacher at The Montessori Co-Op School from 2016 to 2019 and taught at Metropolitan Community College in its Continuing Education program from 2015 to 2018. She also taught art classes abroad as a volunteer in San Ignacio, Belize (March-May 2010), and Banos, Ecuador (October 2016).

Jada Renée Allen is a writer, educator, and culture worker from Chicago’s South Side. She has received fellowships, scholarships, and support from Tin House, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Community of Writers, The Frost Place, and VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation), among other organizations.

Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Academy of American Poets’ “Poem-a-Day,” Callaloo, Chicago Reader, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Logic(s), Virginia Quarterly Review, Wildness, and other publications.

Allen is the founding executive director of The Frances Thompson Arts Foundation and serves as editor-in-chief of Bodemé. She lives in Phoenix on U.S.-occupied Yavapai, O’odham, and Hohokam land.

Instagram: @jadareneeholy
Facebook: Jada Renée
Bluesky: jadarenee.bsky.social

Jaewook Lee is an associate professor of new media art at Northern Arizona University, where he leads courses in experimental game design, extended reality and 3D animation. His work explores the intersection of ecology, technology and speculative histories through immersive media such as virtual reality and video games. Lee’s recent projects, including “Toward Entropy” and “Game Over: Planet,” reimagine art history and environmental narratives through critical play and digital world-building.

Before joining NAU, Lee taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and served as a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts. His works have been exhibited internationally at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Currents New Media Festival and SACO9 Biennale in Chile.

Lee earned his Master of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University.

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Jaime Alejandro Cruz is a playwright/multimedia creative from Wyoming. He produces the Arts Calling Podcast, and publishes short-form literary and audio projects at the coalition. Recent collaborations with Teatro del Pueblo, The Ugly Radio, and self-produced at the coalition. His plays have been produced at University of Wyoming, Rain City Projects, Casper Children’s Theater, Las Vegas Little Theater, among others.

Jaime was a Screencraft Horror Competition International Semifinalist and ScriptLab International Quarterfinalist for ‘The Inherited.’ His plays have been workshopped at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, Last Frontier Conference, UNLV, Relative Theatrics, Northwest Playwrights, and others.

He was invited to serve as panelist for Ohio Arts Council Award for Playwriting, and was recently seen onstage as a University of Wyoming visiting artist. Through an absurdist immigrant lens, Jaime creates stories about family, working-class people, and outsiders.

Discipline: Music

Discipline: Multidisciplinary

Jan Reyes is a meditation facilitator and early childhood administrator from Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands. Through a spiritual awakening in 2019, she learned breathwork, meditation, and grounding practices that honor and acknowledge the Marianas’ deep ancestral presence through offerings and developing profound relationships with the surrounding nature and ocean.

Reyes shares her gifts with the local spiritual community, the children in her care, schools, and anyone who feels called to her path. Her unique integration of modern and ancestral traditions helps pave the way for others to pursue their own unique paths to healing and cultural connections.

Jan Reyes is a meditation facilitator and early childhood administrator from Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands. Through a spiritual awakening in 2019, she learned breathwork, meditation and grounding practices that honor the Marianas’ deep ancestral presence. She does this through offerings and by developing profound relationships with the surrounding nature and ocean.

Reyes shares her gifts with the local spiritual community, the children in her care, schools and anyone who feels called to her path. Her unique integration of modern and ancestral traditions helps pave the way for others to pursue their own paths to healing and cultural connections.

Graduate Teaching Assistant, The University of Wyoming

Communications Manager,, Baltimore Center Stage

I am a Baltimore native who is passionate about writing, youth work, and community service. My writing focuses mainly on equity, community service, and community organizations, and I have several published pieces, including work in Baltimore City Paper and BMoreArt. I also have worked as a mentor & writing coach for youth in Baltimore through the Bloomberg Arts Internship, and have committed much of my time to community service. During my time at UMBC, I co-founded a student organization called The Charm City Connection that focuses on connecting people from UMBC’s campus to the people of Baltimore City through service and community engagement. Currently, I work as a Gift Officer at Baltimore Center Stage, which is a role that allows me to use my writing and community engagement skills to engage with funders, donors, and other community members.

Jeanika Browne-Springer (she/her) is first generation Caribbean-American, a resident of East Hartford CT, and local creative. She has a BA from Trinity College in Theater & Dance with minors in Studio Arts and Urban Studies and holds an M.Ed from the University of Saint Joseph in Multiple Intelligences. She was a Hartford elementary teacher for several years then transitioned into arts administration as a grant writer and programmer at an arts education non profit. She is now the Director of LifeLong Learning at HartBeat Ensemble, a non profit professional theater company that helps audiences interrogate civic issues and develop empathy through theatre. She is an artistic collaborator and Board Vice President for Night Fall, local performer with Vintage Soul Productions and SageSeeker Productions, and emerging director for youth performances. She is a member of the Artists of Color Unite! advisory group for Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, academic teacher of arts & culture at the Legacy Foundation of Hartford, and is currently part of the Hartford Heritage curriculum writing team around 19th Century Black community formations in Hartford.

Arts Education Director + Co-Interim Director, Juneau Arts & Humanities Council

I am an adoptee. Raised Tlingit-Filipino & Norwegian-German, of Athabascan, Inupiaq, and Japanese descent. I’m Luxnax.adi, Raven-Coho, and Shungukeidi yadi (child of the Eagle Thunderbirds). My birth-mother’s clan is the Bedzeyh Ti Xwt’ana, Caribou Tail Clan. My life has always been involved in the arts since I was a teenager and I have pursued it as a way of healing trauma to pass on to others through the arts, and community advocacy. Trauma impacts my Native communities, and adoptees especially. Through my pursuit of decolonizing, I have been navigating a way to lend to the prevention of, and healing of trauma.

Program Director, Brevard Music Center

Jenny Snyder Kozoroz is an active performer and enthusiastic educator who is committed to positively impacting the lives of the next generation of artists and musicians from across the country. As Program Director at the Brevard Music Center, Jenny is deeply committed to providing the intensive training and mentoring crucial to the success of young artists pursuing careers in classical music. Jenny previously served as Director of the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra’s award-winning Progressions program – an intense string training program designed to increase participation by students from populations that face barriers of access and equity in music study.

Jenny has served as Assistant Principal violist with the Virginia Symphony, performed with the Milwaukee Symphony, the Columbus Symphony, the Harrington String Quartet, and the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. An advocate for education at every level, she has been on the viola faculty at Old Dominion University, Denison University, Christopher Newport University, West Texas A&M, The Sewanee Music Festival, The New England Music Camp, and for more than a decade at the Brevard Music Center. She also continues to be a strong advocate and advisor for the Sphinx Organization.

Jenny received her BM at the Ohio State University, and her MM at the Juilliard School. She currently serves on the faculty of Brevard College.

Founding Director, The Black Donors Project

I am pleased to submit for consideration an application for the National Leaders of Color Fellowship. I am an equitable fundraising practitioner and cultural worker with 20+ years in nonprofit management. My work is designed to shape organizational equity in nonprofit sectors with a focus on implementing new frameworks that optimize collective and inherent strengths.

From 2002 to 2016, I served as the executive director for Rennie Harris Puremovement, the world’s first and longest-running Hip Hop dance company to perform on national and international concert stages. I have watched the symbiotic relationship between Hip Hop culture and Black philanthropy grow, and it has shaped my work to include discourse regarding the art of Hip Hop, its impact on Black philanthropy, and its contributions to the arts ecosystem.

In late 2022, I created The Black Donors Project (www.theblackdonorsproject.org). The initiative is a participatory action research project that employs disciplined inquiry utilizing surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews to examine and highlight the relationship between the community, Black donors, Black artists, and Black-led arts organizations. My goal is to fill a void within the fundraising field that fails to investigate the capacity and willingness of communities of color to support the arts and dispel the mythology that drives racial disparities in and across the universe of giving and philanthropy.

Arts And Culture Coordinator, Latino Network

Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts

Jessica Harned has been fortunate to begin her career in Boise, Idaho. She first became a member of the Boise Philharmonic in 2016, and since, has performed with most local professional ensembles, including Mariachi Sol de Acapulco, who won the Governor’s Award for Musical Excellence in 2018.

To Jessica, education is of the utmost importance. In 2020, Jessica received her Masters degree from Boise State, after having won the Boise Philharmonic Graduate Quartet Fellowship. This experience emboldened her to speak up about the life and experiences of the BIPOC community within classical music. Since then, she has spent her time fostering conversation about representation in classical music, on the radio, in the classroom, and within her own work, all while participating in music in inventive and diverse spaces.

Understanding that her career is multi-faceted, and being very proud of that, Jessica believes that this diverse path has helped her become the musician and person she is today.

Discipline: Theatre

Jessyca Valdez is an aspiring photographer from Toluca, Mexico. She began pursuing photography 5 years ago when she moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and her passion is to shed light on the untold stories of the immigrant experience. She has completed advanced photography coursework through UNAVID: Escuela de Fotografía in Toluca, Mexico. Jessyca is a Community Mobilizer for Voices JH, and also works as a housekeeper.

Discipline: Humanities

H. Larry Raigetal is from Lamotrek atoll in Yap state. He is a Pairourou (Pwo) traditional navigator of Weiyeng school and from the lineage of Haboilol in Polowat. His teachers include Petrus Pakamai, Serphin Ochaitir, Baskas Mark and Edward Rainam. Raigetal teaches at the University of Guam as an assistant professor for MARC.

Program Assistant, Osage Nation Musuem

Hello, my name is John HorseChief. I am from the Osage, Pawnee, Blackfeet, Potawatomi and Irish people. I live in Oklahoma and work at the Osage Nation Museum.I am a father and a grandfather. I am the Program Assistant at the museum, my main focus is digital archives and the digitization of cultural material. I am also a beadworker, moccasin maker, and a lodge builder within my community on the Osage reservation. I enjoy doing both technological work and traditional crafts. Preserving and sharing my plains culture and specifically my Osage culture gives me a sense of well being. Before working at the Osage Nation Museum I was employed with the Wahzhazhe (Osage) Cultural Center. During my time there I was part of a team that developed the Wahzhazhe Digital Preservation Project. The project aims to digitize and archive all media related to Osage language, culture and history. We currently have over 10 terabytes of data in our project. This exposure to media has made me aware of Indigenous and Osage people’s representation and the importance of telling our own stories through the media. Whenever you google Image search “”Osage people”” you mostly see black and white photos. I want our search to show us as we are today; vibrant and alive. Indigenous people have had a long struggle with other people telling their stories. I would like to learn to be a better storyteller and museum worker. Thank you for your consideration.