Discipline: Visual Arts

Founder & Executive Director, Arts.co.lab

Arturo Méndez-Reyes is a performing arts producer working in areas of development/fundraising, communication, event production/curation, community organizing, and cultural diplomacy in the Mission District of San Francisco, California, and Puebla, Mexico, for over 10 years. His work strives to curate and preserve spaces for political empowerment and community healing through cultural equity and intersectional representation. “La Cultura es una herramienta indispensable para la Dignidad de los Pueblos” He is the creator and current Executive Director of Arts.Co.Lab, ‘La Diáspora Festival’ and a curator of the ‘Mission Arts and Performance Project’, formerly working at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts. He has produced shows for Harvard and Cornell University and the United Nations, as well as the Mexican Consulate in SF and the Secretary of Culture of Puebla, Mexico. He has participated in different Fellowships such as the Policy Fellowship with WESTAF (’24), the Advocacy Leadership Institute (’23), the Intercultural Leadership Institute (’22), and the Arts Leadership Institute (’21) by NALAC, Emergent Arts Professionals of SF and Seeding Reciprocity with the San Francisco Arts Commission (’20). His commitment to telling stories about immigrants and underrepresented groups is an endless source of inspiration in the search for justice and dignity for all. “Culture is an essential tool to grant dignity for all people”.

Executive Director, Teachers & Writers Collaborative

Asari Beale is an Afro-Latina writer, educator, and leader deeply committed to children’s literacy. Since 2019, she has served as the executive director of Teachers & Writers Collaborative, one of the oldest writers-in-the-schools organizations in the country. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, and a steering committee member of LitNet, a network serving America’s literary community. She has taught literature and creative writing at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and Fordham University. Prior to joining Teachers & Writers, she served as the Director of Communications and Community Relations at LSA Family Health Service and as Communications Manager at Reach Out and Read of Greater New York. Ms. Beale holds a BA from New York University and an MFA from Brooklyn College. She lives, loves, and writes out of Harlem, New York City.

Discipline: Dance

Ashli St. Armant is a vocalist, writer, arts educator, playwright, and composer. A professionally trained singer and actor with 25 years of experience in education and performing arts, her work includes original music, books, and theatrical productions. Her debut musical, NORTH, explores Black American life during the antebellum period and is celebrating its second national tour with rave reviews. St. Armant is also the founder of Leaping Lizards Music, an arts education program for students, and she tours with her band, Jazzy Ash and the Leaping Lizards, performing jazz for young audiences. Together they have performed at numerous venues including Lincoln Center and Sprout Network (NBC), have produced six albums, and have been featured by NPR and LA Times. Her mystery series, Viva Durant, features a teen girl who solves mysteries in New Orleans. The first book in the series, Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons, is a national best-seller with over 10,000 reviews.

Asya P. Webster is one of two of the Program Officer for Grants and Public Programs for the Arkansas Humanities Council. Webster is an Arkansan who was raised in rural Wrightsville but considers it close enough to call herself a Little Rock city native. She has always been involved in humanities even from a young age, performing in dance at the Tidwell Centre for the Dancarts for 7 years and student theater for 4 years. Webster completed her undergraduate experience with a B.A. in English Literature at Philander Smith College. She also served as the President of the Creatives, an organization for students interested in the visual and performing arts. Webster’s play, Waiting on Sunrise, is a three-act play consisting of seven individual 10-minute plays. The last segment of Waiting on Sunrise was selected to be a part of ACANSA’s Third Annual 10-Minute Play Showcase. She also taught high school English at a rural underserved school. Webster’s passion is making more space for and having the arts be more accessible for disadvantaged/overlooked populations in Arkansas. She is currently co-founding the Next Gen(eration) Humanities Conference through the Arkansas Humanities Council.

Atabey Sánchez-Haiman is a Puerto Rican artist, biologist, trainee mindfulness teacher and small business owner. Atabey owns Giraffes and Robots Pop Art Studio, which is located in artsy, quirky, small but mighty Rhode Island. Atabey loves to explore different ways of making art, she combines different mediums and techniques (drawing on paper, painting on canvas, collage, photo illustrations) to create her pop art. Atabey intentionally uses a palette of red, yellow and orange because these colors make you smile and cultivate joy. Atabey is currently training at Brown University and at the Oxford Mindfulness Foundation to teach Mindfulness with a view of combining art and mindfulness to create safe spaces for marginalized communities to come together to create, heal, recharge, cultivate joy and effect change. Atabey believes that by becoming aware of social constructs and the hurdles that they unfairly impose on marginalized communities, possibilities and opportunities can arise and these obstacles can then be challenged creatively and peacefully from a place of centered, rooted awareness. The fact that communities of color value collectivity is an asset and Atabey wants to harness this skill that people of color share through their upbringing and experiences and start moving society away from its current individualistic, self centered focus towards a more compassionate, humane, community oriented direction. Art and mindfulness as activism and vehicles for personal and societal change.