Jennifer Gilligan Cole (Jen) is the Jordan Schnitzer Dean of Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) at Willamette University. Cole’s focus at PNCA is to create an ecosystem of students, faculty and community collaborators who can reimagine arts and design at the heart of civic imagination, justice and human thriving in Portland and the greater region. Prior to joining Willamette/PNCA, Cole served as Executive Director of Programs & Public Affairs (external affairs) at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University—the largest comprehensive art and design college in the U.S.  While at ASU, she co-founded The National Collaborative for Creative Work-- a network of creators, policy thinkers, movement makers that weave projects, partnerships and policy solutions that enable healthy, equitable creative work in America. Before joining ASU, Cole was Nashville’s chief cultural officer working with the mayor, elected officials, artists, cultural organizations, and activists to explore how arts and cultural participation were central to community prosperity and health. There, she led strategic and policy planning for culture and creative economy and widened arts-based investments in housing, parks, youth justice and creative placemaking. She has served as board member of Americans for the Arts, chaired the US Urban Arts Federation, and in national advisory roles with Creative Youth Development Network, ArtPlace America, Creative Capital, Grantmakers in the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her research and consulting focus on community-centered cultural planning and fair labor structures for creative workers. 

Roberto Bedoya is the Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Oakland, where he recently shepherded its Cultural Plan, Belonging in Oakland: a Cultural Development Plan. Throughout his career, Bedoya has consistently supported artist-centered cultural practices and advocated for expanded definitions of inclusion and belonging in the cultural sector. His essays, “U.S. Cultural Policy; Its Politics of Participation, Its Creative Potential;” “Creative Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging;” and “Spatial Justice: Rasquachification, Race and the City,” have reframed the discussion on cultural policy to shed light on exclusionary practices in cultural policy decision making.  Prior to his work in Oakland, he was the Executive Director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council (Tucson, AZ), where he established the innovative P.L.A.C.E (People, Land, Arts, Culture and Engagement) initiative, which supported art-based civic engagement/creative placemaking projects. He is the author of The Ballad of Cholo Dandy, a poetry chapbook (Chax Press, Tucson AZ ) and has contributed poems to publications about visual artists James Luna, Daniel J Martinez, Dario Robelto, and the artists group Postcommodity. Bedoya has been a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, a Rockefeller Fellow at New York University, and a Creative Placemaking Fellow at Arizona State University. He is the recipient of the United States Artist 2021 Berresford Prize.

Estrella is a multi-disciplinary artist, arts administrator, and cultural strategist in Arizona and New Mexico. Esquilín’s applied creative practices have been intuitively rooted in spatial justice. She is an observer of how people interact with, relate to, and impact each other in the built environment. Formally trained as a printmaker, her artwork also explores building human-scale installations and composing scores for somatic experiences in the built and natural environment. As a cultural strategist, she embraces a guiding question, “how could it feel to be welcomed into a space designed for you?” She embeds her values of social justice, racial equity, and inclusion into her studio practice, administrative processes, program design, and creative professional development to narrow gaps of inequity within arts and culture. She serves as Residency Director at the Sante Fe Art Institute and previously held senior management roles at Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, as well as City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture. Esquilín holds a Master of Fine Art degree in Interdisciplinary Studio Art from Arizona State University and a Bachelor of Fine Art in Printmaking from Kansas City Art Institute.

Danielle is a national arts and cultural leader, committed to advancing the role arts, culture, and creativity play in advancing civic belonging, equity, economic prosperity, and social connectedness. Her career spans thirty years, first as an artist, teaching artist, cultural producer, and administrator, and most recently as the General Manager of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA). A passionate advocate, she continues to advance the support systems for creativity to thrive. As the former General Manager to the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Ms. Brazell expanded funding programs, such as the Arts Activation Fund, developed new public and community arts programs including CURRENT:LA, the city’s first citywide temporary public art exhibition, and policies including adopting new administrative guidelines for the one-percent for art program. Additionally, Ms. Brazell delivered the first UNESCO World Heritage Site - Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House and oversaw an historic restoration of the Watts Towers, in partnership with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Each of these initiatives, advanced access and equity for thousands of residents and visitors to the city annually. During her tenure, Ms. Brazell elevated the role, the Department, and creativity, plays to key stakeholders and authorizers leading to the largest budget and staffing allocation in the history of the agency. Appointed by Mayor Garcetti in July 2014, Ms. Brazell grew the agency from $13 to $22 million and formalized a robust $150 million portfolio of capital projects, facilities, programming, and initiatives of free/low-cost publicly accessible arts and cultural services citywide. Ms. Brazell, in collaboration with a dynamic staff of 84 full-time (and over 200 part-time including a robust roster of teaching artists), leveraged the city's investment in direct benefit to the 4 million residents, and 50 million visitors to Los Angeles annually. Prior to 2014, Ms. Brazell was the Executive Director of Arts for LA, a highly effective arts and arts education advocacy organization serving the greater Los Angeles region. Under her stewardship, Arts for LA became a formidable coalition advancing the arts in the largest county in the country. Ms. Brazell was previously the Artistic Director of Highways Performance Art Space and the Director of Special Projects for the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. She currently serves on the World Cities Culture Forum Transition Advisory Board and the DataArts Advisory Board.