Discipline: Multidisciplinary

Latina Dance Project

Latino Arte and Culture

Discipline: Multidisciplinary

Actor and Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (EDI) Dramaturg, Salt Lake Acting Company

Latoya Cameron (She/Her/Hers) is an advocate/actress/singer/writer. Growing up painfully shy, she found her voice and presence through acting and hasn’t looked back. She has been performing professionally for 17 years and is a proud member of Actors Equity. She made her New York debut as the lead in Shelter: the Musical at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2012. She has always hoped that theater would be a place that could unite and cause positive change.
Along with performing, she is currently working on making theatre spaces more equitable for historically underserved communities who continue to be excluded by systemic oppressive behaviors and racism. For almost two years, she has worked as the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Dramaturg at Salt Lake Acting Company in Salt Lake City, Utah. She continues to dive into the organization’s infrastructure to implement EDI practices and policies in hiring, casting, marketing, outreach, and how to build a supportive, brave rehearsal process. In addition, she continues to advocate for BIPOC artists within the community by standing up against problematic erasure in casting and being a voice when exclusionary practices are happening within the greater Utah theatre community.

Discipline: Visual Arts

Lauren Benetua (she/they) is an American-born Filipina of Illonggo, Batangueña, Bikolana, and Ilokana heritage residing in Huichin Ohlone territory. They are a dedicated cultural practitioner and weaving apprentice with Kalingafornia Laga, a weaving collective of Pilipino American women who preserve, promote, and maintain the indigenous backstrap weaving traditions from Kalinga in the Philippines. Lauren brings with them 10 years of textile weaving experience, including facilitating cultural educational workshops and weaving demonstrations alongside their mentor and teacher, Jenny Bawer Young. She now explores the responsibility of teaching traditional backstrap loom weaving to new learners in the same tradition taught to her that has been passed down by the hands of indigenous women for generations and is eager to continue cultivating a community of Pilipinx weavers in the diaspora.

Lauren Fitzgerald (Black Womxn from the South) is the Managing Director of the Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI), the founder and Lead Executive Strategist for Strategize/619, a cultural strategy firm, and the Interim Director of the Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership (JUMP Nashville). She has worked with and performed at several art institutions and theaters such as the Carpetbag Theatre (Knoxville TN), The Walnut Street Theatre (Philadelphia, PA), The York Theatre Company (New York, NY), The Weathervane Theatre Company (Whitefield, NH), The Nashville Children’s Theatre, and with the Metro Nashville Arts Commission as the Neighborhood and Artists development coordinator managing the THRIVE funding program for community art projects.

LED

Left of Center Art Gallery

Discipline: Visual Arts

Roux Haile is a transdisciplinary artist whose work and social practice centers creativity as the driving force for personal and collective liberation. Through tattooing, dance, circus, protest and community organizing they explore the relationship between individual, interpersonal and communal freedom.

Collections Manager and Archivist, Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Leila Hamdan is an art historian with over fifteen years of experience in archiving, curating, and preserving works, and serving as a vital channel in educating the public about those works. Her knowledge and curiosity have helped nationally recognized cultural institutions, such as the National Civil Rights Museum and Penland School of Craft to preserve priceless American artifacts. A lifelong steward of art and material culture, Hamdan’s dedication to its research, record and care has been rewarded with a breadth of opportunity to share the stories told by both visual and audio pieces and their creators. Hamdan is a Lebanese American from the Deep South delta region who specializes in American and African American art and history. She processes, catalogs, and preserves ephemera and objects belonging to arts and cultural institutions to make vital information useful and accessible. As an academic, she studies works of art, music, photographs, and documents to illustrate a more nuanced and detailed story about historical events and individuals centered around the counter-narrative and the underrepresented subject. Currently, Hamdan holds the position of Collections Manager and Archivist for the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and the Soulsville Foundation in Memphis, TN.

Discipline: Dance

Leilani I. Marciano of Saipan, CNMI, carries the wisdom and love passed down from her mother and the women of her community. A traditional craftswoman and teacher of local modernized dance, she nurtures culture the same way she nurtures her family—with patience, care, and deep-rooted pride. A mother to one, but a guiding hand to many, Marciano has helped raise countless nieces, nephews, and grandchildren, all while keeping tradition alive.

She generously shares her knowledge not only within her family, but throughout the wider community—teaching in schools, workshops, and participating in cultural events to ensure these traditions continue to thrive. When she’s not teaching, she turns to her quiet craft—creating lighatutuur, delicate beaded necklaces. Each piece is created with intention, preserving the essence of her culture and passing along its meaning, one bead at a time.