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Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer is a neuroscientist who writes extensively on the themes of change and the importance of art and creativity from a scientific perspective. In his most recent book, How We Decide, he addresses how we make decisions, and how we can make better decisions by understanding how our minds work. In his first book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, an upcoming book called Imagine: The Science of Creativity, as well as numerous articles and speeches, he explores our creative brains and how art helps us understand human consciousness and our world. He is a passionate advocate for integrating science and art to understand and advance human culture and consciousness. He graduated from Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Currently, he is a Contributing Editor at Wired. He has also written for The New Yorker, SEED, and The Washington Post, and is a Contributing Editor at Scientific American Mind and NPR's Radio Lab. Holly Sidford
Holly Sidford is the founder of Helicon Collaborative, a company that helps nonprofit and philanthropic organizations adapt dynamically and strategically to changing conditions. Prior to launching Helicon in 2007, she was the founding president of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC), a ten-year initiative to expand support for creative artists. She initiated the Urban Institute’s national study on artists’ support structures, Investing in Creativity, which formed the basis for LINC’s work. She has also been program director for arts, parks and adult literacy at the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, where she pioneered philanthropic strategies for expanding audience participation and community engagement; interim director of arts and culture at the Ford Foundation and The Howard Gilman Foundation; executive director of the New England Foundation for the Arts and associate director of the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. She holds a B.A. in American history and literature from Mount Holyoke College and a Management Certificate from Columbia University. Perry Chen
Perry Chen is co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter, an innovative online platform for funding creative ideas and endeavors. Kickstarter allows artists to offer goods, services and other unique benefits in return for direct funding of as little as $1 per backer. Through Kickstarter, artists raise modest sums of money from a large number of patrons to help them fund their projects. A pioneer in online crowdfunding, the site challenges artists to come up with innovative ways of getting potential backers to feel intrigued by and invested in their proposed projects. Most recently, he has been a featured speaker at TEDx East and is a 2010 TED Fellow. He is especially interested in the socio-psychological motivations for why people give to creative projects. James Rucker
James Rucker is co-founder of ColorOfChange.org and serves as its executive director. Prior to this position, he served as Director of Grassroots Mobilization for MoveOn.org Political Action and Moveon.org Civic Action and was instrumental in developing and executing innovative fundraising, technology, and campaign strategies. Prior to joining MoveOn, he worked in various roles in the software industry in the San Francisco and has provided coaching and technology consulting for other start-up ventures. Rebecca Ratzkin
Rebecca Ratzkin is a consultant for WolfBrown consulting. Her interests and skills focus on bridging theory with practical and achievable solutions and seeing opportunity in the midst of the deepest challenges. Rebecca graduated with honors and Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin College with a BA in art history, and completed a Master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA School of Public Policy. She is the recipient of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies Thesis Award and the California Planning Foundation Award. Rebecca has worked in various galleries and arts nonprofits, including Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, and SOHO20 Chelsea in New York, and has been a member of Collage Ensemble, a Los Angeles artist collective. She also plays the clarinet, experiments in various art media, particularly photography, collage, and water color, and teaches yoga. Diane Sanchez
Diane Sanchez is responsible for the East Bay Community Foundation’s grantmaking activities and programs as well as grantmaking services to the Foundation’s donors. A veteran Program Officer and a former member of the Board of Directors at the East Bay Community Foundation, he had a consulting practice in organizational development for 14 years before coming to the Foundation in 2000. Her clients included a wide variety of corporations and community-based organizations, and much of her work focused on strategic change management as well as race and gender issues. She has also held senior management positions with J. Walter Thompson, Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation, and Bedford Properties. Throughout her career, she has been active in the community, serving on the boards of La Raza Graphics, The Spanish Speaking Unity Council, The City of Oakland Civil Service Commission, Goodwill Industries of the East Bay, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Marcy Cady
Marcy Cady is a principal of Helicon Collaborative, a company that helps nonprofit and philanthropic organizations adapt dynamically and strategically to changing conditions. She has 20 years of experience working with nonprofit cultural organizations and foundations on strategy, program development and assessment. Prior to joining Helicon, she was Program Director at The James Irvine Foundation in charge of their Arts Program and Innovation Fund. There she commissioned groundbreaking research on cultural engagement and initiated innovative programs to boost cultural participation. Prior to Irvine, she worked with the TCC Group, where she developed and managed the Knight Foundation's Community Partners in the Arts Access Program, among other large-scale projects. She also managed the Ford Foundation's $40 million New Directions/New Donors for the Arts program, and has held positions at the Nonprofit Finance Fund, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds a B.A. from Skidmore College and an M.F.A. from Brown University. Philip Huang
Phillip Huang’s writings have appeared in numerous anthologies including Queer PAPI Porn, Charlie Chan is Dead II, Best Gay Asian Erotica, Take Out: Queer Writing From Asian Pacific America, Fresh Men: New Voices in Gay Fiction, Inside Him: New Gay Erotica, as well as POZ Magazine, Hyphen Magazine, The Asian Pacific American Journal, The East Bay Express, and the queer online journals of Lodestar Quarterly, Velvet Mafia, and Suspect Thoughts. In 2000, he was the 1st and 2nd Place Winner of the POZ/Artery Poetry Contest; in 2006 he was a finalist for the Asian America Writers’ Workshop Short Fiction Prize; in 2008 he was a finalist for the Open Door Gay Fiction Prize. In 2008 he received funding from the East Bay Fund for Artists to develop his one-woman show, Semen and White Lace, with the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. He has since performed in the National Queer Arts Festival, the SF Fringe Festival, and APAture. You can see his work on Youtube by searching his name. Judilee Reed
Judilee Reed is the Executive Director of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (www.LINCnet.net). Founded in 2003 with seed support from the Ford Foundation, LINC is a 10 year initiative to build and strengthen the infrastructure for individual artists in the United States. Prior to joining LINC, Judilee was Program and Resource Manager at the New England Foundation for the Arts, where she helped design program and manage fundraising efforts for special initiatives including the programs of the National Dance Project and Art & Community Landscapes, a public art program in partnership with the National Park Service. In addition, Judilee managed the Cambodian Artists Project, a ten-year program to develop the capacity of Cambodian performing arts in the US and in Cambodia that now continues as a program of LINC. Judilee has a BFA in painting, a BA in Art History, and has completed the Leadership Development certificate program at the Harvard Business School. Judilee has served on several panels and review committees, including the Fast Track program of the National Endowment for the Arts. Jaime Cortez
Jaime Cortez is an artist, writer and cultural worker based in Oakland, CA. He was raised between Mexicali, Baja California and Watsonville, Alta California. His visual art has been exhibited at numerous venues including the Oakland Museum of California, Huntington Beach Center for the Arts and in San Francisco art spaces including Southern Exposure, The Lab, Intersection for the Arts and Galería de la Raza. He has also performed at Theater Rhinoceros, Josie's Cabaret, the Cell, the SomArts Gallery, the Grasshopper Palace, the CoCo Club, Brava Theater, the Glaxa Theater and Club Axis in Los Angeles. Jaime's writing has been anthologized in numerous collections including Besame Mucho, 2sexE and Queer PAPI Porn. He has edited an anthology entitled Virgins, Guerrillas & Locas for Cleis Press (1999). He is the author of a graphic novel, Sexile (Los Angeles: 2004). Jaime has been a public high school teacher abroad (Japan), and an AIDS educator. Jaime attended the University of Pennsylvania and is pursuing an MFA in visual arts at the UC Berkeley. Margaret Jenkins
Margaret Jenkins is a choreographer, teacher and mentor, as well as a designer of unique community-based dance programs, such as CHIME (Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange). In her 35-year career, Ms. Jenkins has created an impressive body of work, with over 75 works created on her Company as well as resident companies in the United States and Europe. In addition, she has received numerous commissions from renowned national and international arts presenters and cultural institutions. Her Company tours regularly in this country and abroad, and her recent cross-cultural collaborations with the Tanusree Shankar Dance Company of Kolkata, India and the Guangdong Modern Dance Company of Guangzhou, China have been the focus of her choreographic attention since 2003. She is committed to an art of inquiry and will workshop a new work with visual and media artist Naomie Kremer in 2010 with its premiere in 2011. Cora Mirikitani
Cora Mirikitani is the President and CEO of the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI) an organization that works to promote knowledge sharing, networking and financial independence for individual artists and creative entrepreneurs. Previously she was Program Officer for Culture at The Pew Charitable Trusts and later as Program Director at The James Irvine Foundation in charge of their Arts Program and Innovation Fund. She has been CEO of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles, Director of Performing Arts and Film at the Japan Society in New York, and Executive Director of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. She served on the board of directors of Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) and chaired the 1999 GIA Conference held in San Francisco. She was appointed as a member of the Los Angeles Mayor’s Council for the Arts in 2004 and has served on many national advisory committees including the Japan Foundation’s Performing Arts Japan program in the U.S. from 2002-2004, and The American Assembly. She also served as a member of the board of directors of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) from 2003-2007, and is the current recipient of a Durfee Foundation Stanton Fellowship award for 2008-2009. Hugo Morales
Hugo Morales is the Executive Director and founder of Radio Bilingüe, a national satellite community radio service in Spanish, English and Mixteco that serves Latino radio audiences in the Northern Hemisphere. It serves over half a million listeners with its daily talk and music programming. Radio Bilingüe is preparing to launch a new English-language format targeted to young, educated minority listeners in Los Angeles. In addition, Morales serves on the boards of numerous organizations including Central California Legal Services; California Tomorrow; Fresno Arts Council Folk Arts Program Advisory Committee; The Appleseed Foundation; The California Wellness Foundation Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative Advisory Panel; the Rosenberg Foundation and the San Francisco Foundation. He grew up as a farmworker in Sonoma County and graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He received the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1994 followed by the Edward R. Murrow Award, public radio's highest distinction, in 1999. Laura Sydell
Laura Sydell is a radio journalist who has covered politics, arts, media, religion, and entrepreneurship. Most recently she has been the Arts & Technology Correspondent for the NPR newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition. She covers the multiple ways in which technology is changing our culture, including pieces on music prediction software, Google book search, and new online business models. Previously, Sydell was based in New York City where she worked as a reporter for NPR member station WNYC. Her reports on race relations, city politics, and arts won numerous awards from The Newswomen's Club of New York, The New York Press Club, The Society of Professional Journalists, and others. She has a BA from William Smith College and a J.D. from Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law. Jon Funabiki
Jon Funabiki is a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, where he developed the Renaissance Journalism Center, which aims to stimulate journalistic innovations that strengthen communities. Before joining SFSU he was Deputy Director of the Media, Arts & Culture (MAC) Unit at the Ford Foundation, and was responsible for the grantmaking strategies on news media issues. Funabiki was the founding director of San Francisco State University's Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, which developed model programs to improve news media coverage of ethnic minority communities and issues. Funabiki was awarded the John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, the Jefferson Fellowship at the East-West Center of Honolulu, a National Endowment for the Humanities Professional Summer Fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was a visiting scholar at the Center on Politics and Public Service at the University of California, Berkeley. Funabiki serves on the boards of the Center for Investigative Reporting and Images & Voices of Hope. He also has served on the boards of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Insight Center for Economic Development, New York Regional Association of Grantmakers, Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy and Asian American Journalists Association.
Jonah LehrerJonah Lehrer is a neuroscientist who writes extensively on the themes of change and the importance of art and creativity from a scientific perspective. In his most recent book, How We Decide, he addresses how we make decisions, and how we can make better decisions by understanding how our minds work. In his first book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, an upcoming book called Imagine: The Science of Creativity, as well as numerous articles and speeches, he explores our creative brains and how art helps us understand human consciousness and our world. He is a passionate advocate for integrating science and art to understand and advance human culture and consciousness. He graduated from Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Currently, he is a Contributing Editor at Wired. He has also written for The New Yorker, SEED, and The Washington Post, and is a Contributing Editor at Scientific American Mind and NPR's Radio Lab. Holly Sidford
Holly Sidford is the founder of Helicon Collaborative, a company that helps nonprofit and philanthropic organizations adapt dynamically and strategically to changing conditions. Prior to launching Helicon in 2007, she was the founding president of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC), a ten-year initiative to expand support for creative artists. She initiated the Urban Institute’s national study on artists’ support structures, Investing in Creativity, which formed the basis for LINC’s work. She has also been program director for arts, parks and adult literacy at the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, where she pioneered philanthropic strategies for expanding audience participation and community engagement; interim director of arts and culture at the Ford Foundation and The Howard Gilman Foundation; executive director of the New England Foundation for the Arts and associate director of the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. She holds a B.A. in American history and literature from Mount Holyoke College and a Management Certificate from Columbia University. Perry Chen
Perry Chen is co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter, an innovative online platform for funding creative ideas and endeavors. Kickstarter allows artists to offer goods, services and other unique benefits in return for direct funding of as little as $1 per backer. Through Kickstarter, artists raise modest sums of money from a large number of patrons to help them fund their projects. A pioneer in online crowdfunding, the site challenges artists to come up with innovative ways of getting potential backers to feel intrigued by and invested in their proposed projects. Most recently, he has been a featured speaker at TEDx East and is a 2010 TED Fellow. He is especially interested in the socio-psychological motivations for why people give to creative projects. James Rucker
James Rucker is co-founder of ColorOfChange.org and serves as its executive director. Prior to this position, he served as Director of Grassroots Mobilization for MoveOn.org Political Action and Moveon.org Civic Action and was instrumental in developing and executing innovative fundraising, technology, and campaign strategies. Prior to joining MoveOn, he worked in various roles in the software industry in the San Francisco and has provided coaching and technology consulting for other start-up ventures. Rebecca Ratzkin
Rebecca Ratzkin is a consultant for WolfBrown consulting. Her interests and skills focus on bridging theory with practical and achievable solutions and seeing opportunity in the midst of the deepest challenges. Rebecca graduated with honors and Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin College with a BA in art history, and completed a Master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA School of Public Policy. She is the recipient of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies Thesis Award and the California Planning Foundation Award. Rebecca has worked in various galleries and arts nonprofits, including Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, and SOHO20 Chelsea in New York, and has been a member of Collage Ensemble, a Los Angeles artist collective. She also plays the clarinet, experiments in various art media, particularly photography, collage, and water color, and teaches yoga. Diane Sanchez
Diane Sanchez is responsible for the East Bay Community Foundation’s grantmaking activities and programs as well as grantmaking services to the Foundation’s donors. A veteran Program Officer and a former member of the Board of Directors at the East Bay Community Foundation, he had a consulting practice in organizational development for 14 years before coming to the Foundation in 2000. Her clients included a wide variety of corporations and community-based organizations, and much of her work focused on strategic change management as well as race and gender issues. She has also held senior management positions with J. Walter Thompson, Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation, and Bedford Properties. Throughout her career, she has been active in the community, serving on the boards of La Raza Graphics, The Spanish Speaking Unity Council, The City of Oakland Civil Service Commission, Goodwill Industries of the East Bay, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Marcy Cady
Marcy Cady is a principal of Helicon Collaborative, a company that helps nonprofit and philanthropic organizations adapt dynamically and strategically to changing conditions. She has 20 years of experience working with nonprofit cultural organizations and foundations on strategy, program development and assessment. Prior to joining Helicon, she was Program Director at The James Irvine Foundation in charge of their Arts Program and Innovation Fund. There she commissioned groundbreaking research on cultural engagement and initiated innovative programs to boost cultural participation. Prior to Irvine, she worked with the TCC Group, where she developed and managed the Knight Foundation's Community Partners in the Arts Access Program, among other large-scale projects. She also managed the Ford Foundation's $40 million New Directions/New Donors for the Arts program, and has held positions at the Nonprofit Finance Fund, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds a B.A. from Skidmore College and an M.F.A. from Brown University. Philip Huang
Phillip Huang’s writings have appeared in numerous anthologies including Queer PAPI Porn, Charlie Chan is Dead II, Best Gay Asian Erotica, Take Out: Queer Writing From Asian Pacific America, Fresh Men: New Voices in Gay Fiction, Inside Him: New Gay Erotica, as well as POZ Magazine, Hyphen Magazine, The Asian Pacific American Journal, The East Bay Express, and the queer online journals of Lodestar Quarterly, Velvet Mafia, and Suspect Thoughts. In 2000, he was the 1st and 2nd Place Winner of the POZ/Artery Poetry Contest; in 2006 he was a finalist for the Asian America Writers’ Workshop Short Fiction Prize; in 2008 he was a finalist for the Open Door Gay Fiction Prize. In 2008 he received funding from the East Bay Fund for Artists to develop his one-woman show, Semen and White Lace, with the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. He has since performed in the National Queer Arts Festival, the SF Fringe Festival, and APAture. You can see his work on Youtube by searching his name. Judilee Reed
Judilee Reed is the Executive Director of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (www.LINCnet.net). Founded in 2003 with seed support from the Ford Foundation, LINC is a 10 year initiative to build and strengthen the infrastructure for individual artists in the United States. Prior to joining LINC, Judilee was Program and Resource Manager at the New England Foundation for the Arts, where she helped design program and manage fundraising efforts for special initiatives including the programs of the National Dance Project and Art & Community Landscapes, a public art program in partnership with the National Park Service. In addition, Judilee managed the Cambodian Artists Project, a ten-year program to develop the capacity of Cambodian performing arts in the US and in Cambodia that now continues as a program of LINC. Judilee has a BFA in painting, a BA in Art History, and has completed the Leadership Development certificate program at the Harvard Business School. Judilee has served on several panels and review committees, including the Fast Track program of the National Endowment for the Arts. Jaime Cortez
Jaime Cortez is an artist, writer and cultural worker based in Oakland, CA. He was raised between Mexicali, Baja California and Watsonville, Alta California. His visual art has been exhibited at numerous venues including the Oakland Museum of California, Huntington Beach Center for the Arts and in San Francisco art spaces including Southern Exposure, The Lab, Intersection for the Arts and Galería de la Raza. He has also performed at Theater Rhinoceros, Josie's Cabaret, the Cell, the SomArts Gallery, the Grasshopper Palace, the CoCo Club, Brava Theater, the Glaxa Theater and Club Axis in Los Angeles. Jaime's writing has been anthologized in numerous collections including Besame Mucho, 2sexE and Queer PAPI Porn. He has edited an anthology entitled Virgins, Guerrillas & Locas for Cleis Press (1999). He is the author of a graphic novel, Sexile (Los Angeles: 2004). Jaime has been a public high school teacher abroad (Japan), and an AIDS educator. Jaime attended the University of Pennsylvania and is pursuing an MFA in visual arts at the UC Berkeley. Margaret Jenkins
Margaret Jenkins is a choreographer, teacher and mentor, as well as a designer of unique community-based dance programs, such as CHIME (Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange). In her 35-year career, Ms. Jenkins has created an impressive body of work, with over 75 works created on her Company as well as resident companies in the United States and Europe. In addition, she has received numerous commissions from renowned national and international arts presenters and cultural institutions. Her Company tours regularly in this country and abroad, and her recent cross-cultural collaborations with the Tanusree Shankar Dance Company of Kolkata, India and the Guangdong Modern Dance Company of Guangzhou, China have been the focus of her choreographic attention since 2003. She is committed to an art of inquiry and will workshop a new work with visual and media artist Naomie Kremer in 2010 with its premiere in 2011. Cora Mirikitani
Cora Mirikitani is the President and CEO of the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI) an organization that works to promote knowledge sharing, networking and financial independence for individual artists and creative entrepreneurs. Previously she was Program Officer for Culture at The Pew Charitable Trusts and later as Program Director at The James Irvine Foundation in charge of their Arts Program and Innovation Fund. She has been CEO of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles, Director of Performing Arts and Film at the Japan Society in New York, and Executive Director of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. She served on the board of directors of Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) and chaired the 1999 GIA Conference held in San Francisco. She was appointed as a member of the Los Angeles Mayor’s Council for the Arts in 2004 and has served on many national advisory committees including the Japan Foundation’s Performing Arts Japan program in the U.S. from 2002-2004, and The American Assembly. She also served as a member of the board of directors of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) from 2003-2007, and is the current recipient of a Durfee Foundation Stanton Fellowship award for 2008-2009. Hugo Morales
Hugo Morales is the Executive Director and founder of Radio Bilingüe, a national satellite community radio service in Spanish, English and Mixteco that serves Latino radio audiences in the Northern Hemisphere. It serves over half a million listeners with its daily talk and music programming. Radio Bilingüe is preparing to launch a new English-language format targeted to young, educated minority listeners in Los Angeles. In addition, Morales serves on the boards of numerous organizations including Central California Legal Services; California Tomorrow; Fresno Arts Council Folk Arts Program Advisory Committee; The Appleseed Foundation; The California Wellness Foundation Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative Advisory Panel; the Rosenberg Foundation and the San Francisco Foundation. He grew up as a farmworker in Sonoma County and graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He received the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1994 followed by the Edward R. Murrow Award, public radio's highest distinction, in 1999. Laura Sydell
Laura Sydell is a radio journalist who has covered politics, arts, media, religion, and entrepreneurship. Most recently she has been the Arts & Technology Correspondent for the NPR newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition. She covers the multiple ways in which technology is changing our culture, including pieces on music prediction software, Google book search, and new online business models. Previously, Sydell was based in New York City where she worked as a reporter for NPR member station WNYC. Her reports on race relations, city politics, and arts won numerous awards from The Newswomen's Club of New York, The New York Press Club, The Society of Professional Journalists, and others. She has a BA from William Smith College and a J.D. from Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law. Jon Funabiki
Jon Funabiki is a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, where he developed the Renaissance Journalism Center, which aims to stimulate journalistic innovations that strengthen communities. Before joining SFSU he was Deputy Director of the Media, Arts & Culture (MAC) Unit at the Ford Foundation, and was responsible for the grantmaking strategies on news media issues. Funabiki was the founding director of San Francisco State University's Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, which developed model programs to improve news media coverage of ethnic minority communities and issues. Funabiki was awarded the John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, the Jefferson Fellowship at the East-West Center of Honolulu, a National Endowment for the Humanities Professional Summer Fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was a visiting scholar at the Center on Politics and Public Service at the University of California, Berkeley. Funabiki serves on the boards of the Center for Investigative Reporting and Images & Voices of Hope. He also has served on the boards of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Insight Center for Economic Development, New York Regional Association of Grantmakers, Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy and Asian American Journalists Association.
