L Sam Zhang is the author and illustrator of the The First Chinese Festivals series of children’s books. Behind each festival lies a fantastic tale steeped in history and legends thousands of years old. She aims to make these stories available in English so more people can enjoy the festivities throughout the year in a meaningful way. These colorful books also help children better understand themselves and the world around them in our increasingly global environment.

Sam was born in Shanghai and grew up in Buffalo, NY. After getting a BS in Biology from Cornell and a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan, she spent a decade on the West Coast doing branding and outreach for startups, research institutes, and nonprofits. Sam now lives in Michigan, and is the Executive Director of the Kalamazoo Chinese Academy, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing Chinese language and cultural experiences to youth from all backgrounds.

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.

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.

Program Assistant, East-West Center Arts Program

Leonard Leon is a photographer, filmmaker, cultural jewelry artist, and lifelong creative who draws influence from around the Pacific. Originally born and raised in the Marshall Islands, Leon moved to the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands (CNMI) as a young man and grew to admire the indigenous Chamorro and Refaluwasch cultures he encountered while living in Saipan, CNMI. Leon has a BA in Creative Media with a Minor in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. On Saipan, Leon is best known creatively for the series of photos and stories he collected of the island in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Yutu.

Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Crafts&Visual Arts

Leonard Leon is a multidisciplinary artist whose practices stem from Pacific cultural values and heritages. As a carver, photographer, graphic designer, and a filmmaker, Leon leverages visual arts to invoke conversations on shared cultural practices as well as for interpretive storytelling. As a Marshallese, Leonard was raised in a family with great respect and love for the ocean. Later moved to the Northern Mariana Islands, Leon was adopted and raised by Francisco Babauta and his Chamolinian family. In this family, he was taught the value and respect for land, where he spent many years tilling native fruits and medicinal plants in the former botanical garden, Fruitland, now an abandoned mall in Saipan.

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Leta Harris Neustaedter is a musician and actor who founded Metamorphosis Performing Arts Studio, where she integrates life skills into arts education. She has directed musical theater camps, Make-A-Movie camps, and created three seasons of Chill Skillz, an educational sketch comedy series. Neustaedter collaborates with the Boise High Orchestra on an ongoing program called Music That Matters, performs at local venues, and sings with the Boise Philharmonic Chorale.

She is a Certified Change Leader with the Idaho Commission on the Arts and a juried member of Music to Life. Neustaedter composed the musical underscoring for all 70-plus episodes of her podcast, The Lovely Afro, an archive of stories from the BIPOC community.

Last year, she produced, directed, and starred in a reading of a Lynn Nottage play. She also served as bandleader and pianist for a production of Lizzie. Neustaedter was one of nine recipients of the 2024 National Alliance for Musical Theatre New Writer Residency Grant for her original musical, for which she has since completed two drafts.

Executive Director, Chelmsford Center for the Arts

Lexy Lattimore is an artist, director, and social worker. She recently became the Executive Director for the Chelmsford Center for the Arts (CCA). She is the first person of color to serve as the head of a department in Chelmsford, MA, her hometown.

Lexy was a Mandel Leadership Fellow at Case Western Reserve University where she studied healing-centered community building through the arts. Lexy’s masters in social work focused on community trauma and resilience and influenced her place-keeping and resiliency work in Cleveland’s historic Hough and Glenville neighborhoods. Project highlights include working with Cleveland teens to produce a performance educating neighbors on redlining and involving them in a zoning project to “”undesign”” redlining; facilitating storytelling workshops that fueled a major roadway improvement plan; and, supporting youth to create theater about community safety, violence, recovery, and perseverance.

In addition to her community practice, Lexy has had an extensive career as a dancer, performer, and storyteller. She has performed with two contemporary ballet companies and has traveled to Cuba, Spain, Italy, and Australia, sharing her love for dance with the world. She has produced her own work in NYC, Boston, Durham, and Cleveland. Lexy graduated cum laude from Duke University with a Bachelor’s in History and honors in Dance. She is the recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize Verge Fellowship.

Born in Nanjing, China, and raised in Portland, Oregon, Lianna Hamby holds a bachelor’s degree in Studio Art and a master’s degree in Museum Studies. Lianna is a public art administrator in Boise, Idaho and through her work she is able to support local, regional, and national artists, prioritize and uplift community input, and develop opportunities that result in artwork and experiences that can be enjoyed by all members of the public. Lianna is drawn to the fact that public art is not static – every interaction with public art adds to the growing and evolving story of the artwork, as well as the overarching story of Boise. By facilitating collaboration between artists and community members, she supports public art that reflects and shapes what Boise is, what Boise has been, and what Boise can be. In doing her part to help shape the cultural landscape, Lianna strives to uplift and amplify unheard voices. She hopes that in asking Boiseans to confront narratives that are unfamiliar and unlike their own, she encourages empathy, deeper connections, and ultimately a more equitable community.

Lofanitani Aisea is a Black Indigenous interdisciplinary multimedia experimental performance artist, filmmaker, and storyteller. She is Modoc, Klamath, Tahlequah, Black, and Tongan. Aisea’s work combines film, movement, and sound to transform cultural memory into immersive experiences, centering joy as a radical act of reclamation.

Using an experimental lens, she examines identity, intergenerational storytelling, and the ways histories are archived, embodied, and reimagined.

Founder/Executive Director, AfroMundo

I am a daughter of a man who at 19 ruptured ancestral links and converted to Christianity in 1937, the very year Dominicans who shared his polytheistic faith or were Black as he were massacred alongside an estimated 15,000 to 35,000 others profiled as Haitian.

I am the daughter of an Afro-Indigenous Dominican woman who only on the sly admitted she inherited an ability to commune with spirits.

From both parents I learned of the complexities of identity, of the plight of those who stray from the normative and prescribed, of the need for narratives that honor lived experiences and counter whitewashed histories.

My art and cultural activism center the voices and histories of Afro-Latinx erased although 2/3 of an estimated twelve million who survived the trans-Atlantic slave trade were shipped to Spanish speaking America where slavery persisted for about 350 years.

My novel Geographies of Home explores racial identities. My upcoming nonfiction book Beyond the Pale won a PEN America 2019 Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History.

Beyond that I am a native of Quisqueya divvied by colonialism into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I am an immigrant and an American whose Latinidad and Americaniidad are called into question due to race. I am a sister, aunt, friend, scholar, cultural activist who believes in community. I also believe art is a form of restorative justice able to nurture the soul, spark informed dialogues, address inequities, and foster collective healing.

Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts

Loida Maritza Pérez is the Founder and Executive Director of AfroMundo. A native of the Dominican Republic, she is an independent scholar, cultural activist and author of Geographies of Home, a novel published in the United States and abroad. Her upcoming book, Beyond the Pale, won a PEN America 2019 Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History. Her work has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Latina, MaComere, Meridians, Edinburgh Review, Bomb, Callaloo and Best of Callaloo. A 2022-2023 National Leaders of Color Fellow, she has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts in collaboration with University of New Mexico and Rutgers University, IC3-Institute for Communities, Creativity and Consciousness, Djerassi’s Henry Louis Gates Fellowship, Ragdale Foundation for the Arts U.S.–Africa Writer’s Project, MacDowell Arts Colony, Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, Millay Arts Colony, Ucross Foundation and Villa Montalvo.

Discipline: Crafts

Losalia Ah Chee is a revered traditional weaver from Pago Pago, American Samoa, whose artistry is deeply rooted in Samoan heritage. Entirely self-taught, she honed her craft through keen observation and an intuitive connection to her surroundings, mastering the intricate techniques of weaving with dried pandanus and coconut leaves. Over time, weaving has become more than a skill, it is an extension of her identity and a source of strength. Her passion for the art was nurtured by the enduring wisdom of her late mother, Telesia Ah Chee, whose words “‘E te ola i ou lima” (“You live by your hands”) that continue to guide her journey. Through weaving, she has cultivated resilience, purpose, and a profound sense of cultural pride. Committed to preserving the traditions of her ancestors, Chee actively shares her knowledge with youth and community members, ensuring that the legacy of Samoan weaving lives on through intergenerational learning and cultural stewardship.

Artist

(Amanalli Lu) was born in Mexico City. Vargas migrated to Los Angeles, California at the age of 11. She then moved to Santa Rosa where she works as a Professional Tattoo Artist. Inspired by Mexican and Native American Culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, and race in American society. Art has transformed her life and has helped her heal her trauma. She hopes to use the same process to help young people. Vargas strongly believes art is one of the best activities for anyone to heal the body, mind and spirit.

Chief Entertainment Officer, CASA ALTA LLC

Lynne Hardy, originally from Arizona, currently resides in Provo, Utah. She earned a Bachelor of Arts with a minor in entrepreneurship.

Her work, created using digital drawing and painting in Adobe Fresco, is described as colorful, modern depictions of her Navajo people and culture. Inspired by her ancestors, Hardy strives to preserve their stories. Authenticity, Native representation, and inclusion are central to her creations, as she aims to share her culture and combat harmful Native stereotypes.

In 2020, Hardy launched her small online business, Ajoobaasani, where she sells self-designed Navajo products, including stickers, prints, and apparel. The success of Ajoobaasani opened doors for her to collaborate with Native-led organizations and companies seeking Native art, enabling her to become a full-time illustrator.

Hardy hopes to continue growing her art career and business while working with clients who value Native culture.

Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts

Magdalen Santos is an emerging bead-maker from Talabwogh, also known as Tanapag. She is learning her craft through the guidance of her maternal aunts and relatives, whose knowledge deeply shapes her journey. Through bead-making, she connects with her cultural roots and contributes to the preservation of her community’s traditions. Her growing practice is both a personal exploration and a tribute to the history, skills, and resilience passed down through generations.

Maka/Keixe Yaxti, a Tlingit woman from Yaakwdaat, carries a rich heritage rooted in her clan’s migration along the Copper River from the North. Based in Southeast Alaska, Yaakwdaat is where her ancestors have lived and stewarded the land for hundreds of years.

Monture belongs to the Raven moiety of the Copper River Clan, the House of the Owl, and she is a child of the Kanien’kehá:ka people. Her early education was shaped by the land itself, with her maternal grandparents serving as interpreters. Her understanding of humanity has been profoundly influenced by traditional practices, including harvest, song and dance, language, ceremony, and genealogy.

 

Maka’s creative work stems from the intersection of storytelling and a vision for radical abundance. She remains a lifelong student of Tlingit history and art.