Artist Communities Alliance (ACA) is led by an enthusiastic and dedicated Board of Trustees selected for their demonstrated commitment to serving artists and advancing the role artists and creativity play in society.

2025 Board of Trustees

Sanjit Sethi, Co-Chair | Minneapolis College of Art and Design (Minneapolis, MN)
Kibra A Yohannes, Co-Chair + Secretary | The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (New York, NY)
Geoffrey Jackson Scott, Vice Chair | Peoplmovr (Los Angeles, CA)
Brandi Turner, Treasurer | Mississippi Center for Cultural Production "Sipp Culture" (Utica, MS)

Roberto Bedoya | Cultural Strategist (Oakland, CA)
Kevin Bitterman | Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts (Winston-Salem, NC)
John Davis | Independent Consultant (Tower, MN) 
Holly Doll | Ignite Rural + Arts Midwest (Bismarck, ND)
Joel Garcia | Meztli Projects (Montebello, CA)
Jeffreen Hayes, Ph.D | Threewalls (Chicago, IL)
Alana Hernandez | ASU Art Museum (Tempe, AZ)
D.S. Kinsel | BOOM Concepts (Pittsburgh PA)
M. Carmen Lane | ATNSC: Center for Healing and Creative Leadership (Cleveland, OH)
Melissa Levin | Jerome Foundation (New York, NY)
Esther Park | Independent Programmer + Journalist (Miami, FL)
Megha Ralapati | CEC ArtsLink (New York, NY)
Reveca Torres | BACKBONES (Chicago, IL)
Amy Wheeler | Independent Consultant (Whidbey Island, WA)
Jenni Wu | MacDowell (Peterborough, NH)

Board Biographies

Sanjit Sethi | Co-Chair
President, Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Sanjit Sethi has two decades of experience as an artist and cultural academic leader. Sanjit served as the first Director of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University, where he oversaw the reestablishment of the historic art and design college as it integrated with the University. His previous positions include serving as Director of the MFA program at the Memphis College of Art; Director of the Center for Art and Public Life, Barclay Simpson Professor, and Chair of Community Arts at the California College of the Arts; and Executive Director of the Santa Fe Art Institute. Additionally, Sanjit has lectured and taught at the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology in Bangalore; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and Saint Mary’s College in London.

Born in Rochester, NY, Sanjit received a BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, an MFA in Ceramics from University of Georgia, and he holds an MS in Advanced Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sanjit has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships, including an Enrichment Travel Fellowship to work on a project in London, Budapest and Dublin, and a Fulbright fellowship in India.

Geoffrey Jackson Scott |Vice Chair
Co-Founder/Creative Director, Peoplmovr

A native of Quincy, IL, Geoffrey Jackson Scott is a Los Angeles-based cultural organizer, creative producer, and engagement strategist. He is Co-Founder and Creative Director of Peoplmovr, a creative studio specializing in engagement and communications that partners with artists, organizations and communities on the development and delivery of strategies designed to bring arts and culture closer to the people and people closer to arts and culture. Peoplmovr is committed to undoing racism and centers the principles of equity and inclusion in all areas of its work. Recently, Geoffrey and Peoplmovr developed The Mile-Long Opera, a citywide public engagement project that brought together 1,000 singers for free performances on the High Line in Manhattan. At the heart of the work was an extensive engagement initiative that activated nonprofit cultural organizations across all five boroughs. Seven Anchor Partners served as hubs for engaging local communities—from recruiting singers, to welcoming the public for open rehearsals and workshops, to hosting social and cultural events and public programs in the lead-up to the performances. From 2014-2016, Geoffrey served as Director, Engagement at Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI). At MoMI, he led an ambitious two-year engagement and outreach pilot, funded by the Ford Foundation. From 2012 - 2014, he delivered a suite of new programs and initiatives as a senior member of the in-house creative strategy team at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago where he was the Director of New Play Development. At Victory Gardens, he conceived, developed and launched a civic engagement platform designed to embrace and reflect the diversity of Chicago. From 2004 - 2012, Geoffrey spent eight seasons as the Literary Associate at New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW), where he led the Artist of Color Fellowship program and supported the cultivation, development and production of new work by both emerging and established artists.

Brandi Turner | Treasurer
Artist + Founder, Sipp Culture

Brandi Turner is the Co-Founder and Co-Director for the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (MCCP), best known as Sipp Culture (SC) in Utica, MS. MCCP, an organization taking a place- based approach to holistic community development through agriculture, cultural production, community engagement and organizing, artistic funding, along with advisory support and digital media. As a partner in the design of SC programming, Brandi is also the lead coordinator of all SC events. Formally, the Managing Director of TWA Consulting, a company that provides services in creative consulting for artists looking to strengthen their work in arts and culture. Currently a member of the Daisa Enterprises CoPA Steering Committee, Alternate ROOTS member, and a Utica Institute Museum board member.

Through nurturing, Brandi has developed an inseparable love for culinary arts, aiding as a tool in her community engagement and artistic practices. She is also a freelance makeup artist with an extensive career in cosmetic sales, management and event coordinating. Raised by proud Motown natives (Detroit, MI) in the south (LA & MS), she became a student of dance for 15 years. Brandi lives in Utica, MS with her husband Carlton Turner and their three children, Jonathan, Xiauna, and Tristan.

Kibra A Yohannes | Co-Chair + Secretary
Senior Program Associate, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

As the founding Executive Director, Kibra drove the programming, administration, and operations of AFRICA'SOUT!, a nonprofit organization that honors, supports and defends artists who radically change the narrative around Africa and its Diaspora, first and foremost, for themselves. Before joining AFRICA’SOUT! Kibra was the Director of the School of Professional and Continuing Studies at Long Island University, where she managed and designed children’s programs and accredited adult education, non-traditional and professional programs. Previously she served as Director of Operations and Director of Programs, respectively, at Arts Engine, Inc. a film production company producing social-issue documentaries of consequence, and programs such as the Media That Matters Film Festival, MediaRights and Filmmaker Services. Kibra holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Virginia and is a candidate for an MA Social Science, with a Graduate Certificate in United Nations Studies, from Long Island University.

Roberto Bedoya
Cultural Strategist

Roberto Bedoya is a cultural strategist who most recently served as Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Oakland (2016-2024), 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) as well as the Executive Director of The National Association of Artists’ Organizations, (NAAO) in Washington, DC, a national arts service organization for individual artists and artist-centered organizations. As a cultural policy researcher, he has worked on projects for the Ford Foundation and the Urban Institute regarding the support systems for artists. He is the author of The Ballad of Cholo Dandy, a poetry chapbook (Chax Press).

Kevin Bitterman
Executive Director, Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts

Kevin Bitterman joined the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2021. Under his leadership, the Institute is focused on serving as an incubator and accelerator for new ideas and programs spanning arts and cultural research, building sustainable creative careers, and promoting thought leadership on the future of creative practice and the social impact of the arts. 

Previously, Bitterman served as Director of Institutional Advancement & Partnerships for Theatre Communications Group and Assistant Director of the Bush Foundation’s Artist Fellows program. He has participated in national relief and recovery efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Helene, in addition to developing  grantmaking, capacity-building initiatives, conveinings, and professional development programs for early- to mid-career artists and leaders with a range of national philanthropic partners. Most recently, Bitterman co-led a multi-sector partnership with arts, municipal, and public health leaders, securing Winston-Salem’s selection as one of 18 communities in the national One Nation/One Project initiative, Arts For EveryBody, to highlight the the role of the arts in fostering healthier communities.

John Davis
Independent Consultant + Leadership Team, Waterers.org

John Davis is currently a Senior Policy Fellow with the Rural Policy Research Institute, University of Iowa. He has over 30 years of experience creating and implementing rural artist residency programs and art centers. His innovative work in New York Mills, MN (pop. 1,199) has been recognized as a national model for rural economic development in the arts, and New York Mills was twice recognized as one of the top 100 small arts towns in America. His work as Executive Director of the Lanesboro Arts Campus initiative resulted in the city’s selection as one of the top 12 Small Town Artplaces in America. In 2018, Mr. Davis received a Bush Fellowship to study and advance the field of rural arts and rural sustainability; in 2020, he presented case studies of New York Mills and Lanesboro at the European Regional Science Association (ERSA) International Conference in Florence, Italy. Davis is currently a leadership team member of the ArtPlace America Upper Midwest Assembly (Waterers.org.)

Holly Doll
Program Director, Ignite Rural 

Holly Doll/Anpao Win (First Light Woman) is an enrolled citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and resides in her home state of North Dakota.  In addition to being an artist who specializes in Lakota cultural art, Holly brings over a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector, specializing in designing equity-based initiatives and collaborative projects. Holly started off her career by managing a Native American gallery, later co-founding and serving as President of Native Artists United, an artist cooperative dedicated to supporting Native American artists. She was then invited to join the Waterers, a collective of arts, cultural, and community leaders who are committed to transforming traditional philanthropy by centering trust and cultural values in grantmaking efforts.

Holly is currently a Program Manager with Arts Midwest, where she collaborates with the other USRAOs to co-design national grantmaking initiatives and deepen relationships with Native Nations in the Midwest region. She also is the Program Director with the Department of Public Transformation, where she oversees Ignite Rural, an artist residency program designed to support emerging, rural BIPOC artists. 

Joel Garcia 
Artist + Cultural Organizer Director, Meztli Projects 

Joel Garcia (Huichol) is an Indigenous artist, cultural organizer, co-founder, and Director of Meztli Projects, an Indigenous- based arts & culture collaborative centering Indigeneity into the creative practice of Los Angeles. In various roles, he has worked with Indigenous communities across borders in support of issues of land, access, and self- determination. His work explores healing and reconciliation, as well as memory and place. He’s a current Stanton Fellow and former fellow of Monument Lab, and co-facilitator of the Intercultural Leadership Institute which proposes to hold space for cultural production outside of white supremacist frameworks.

Jeffreen M. Hayes, Ph.D
Executive Director, Threewalls

Jeffreen M. Hayes, Ph.D., an art historian and curator, merges administrative, curatorial and academic practices into her cultural practice of supporting artists and community development. As an advocate for racial inclusion, equity and access, Jeffreen has developed a curatorial and leadership approach that invites community participation, particularly those in historically excluded communities. Her curatorial projects include SILOS (2016-18), Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman (2018-2020), AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People (2018), Process (2019) and AFRICOBRA: Nation Time (2019). 

Jeffreen speaks and writes about art history, Black art, and arts activism. She participated in TEDX Jacksonville and spoke about “Arts Activism in Simple Steps” and “Small Great Conversations on Race” and has spoken at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Norton Museum of Art; ArtPace; Rollins Museum of Art; and Columbia College. Her writing can be found in independent online print art publications as well edited museum publications. 

As the Executive Director of Threewalls, Jeffreen provides strategic vision for the artistic direction and impact of the organization in Chicago. Under her leadership, Threewalls intentionally develops artistic platforms that encourages connections beyond traditional engagements with art. These engagements help manifest the organization’s vision of art connecting segregated communities, people and experiences together. Jeffreen earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the College of William and Mary, a MA in Art History from Howard University, and a BA from Florida International University in Humanities. Jeffreen’s leadership practice is rooted in her matrilineal connections to her West Indian and Caribbean heritage and love of Blk people.
 

Alana Hernandez
Senior Curator, ASU Art Museum

Alana Hernandez is Senior Curator at the ASU Art Museum. In her curatorial practice, Hernandez co-creates and develops relational projects and exhibitions that amplify intersectional and multifaceted interpretations of Latinx art. She actively engages in a curatorial and methodological model that prioritizes visibility, decentralized institutional authorship, and community-embedded agency. She works directly with constituencies to facilitate meaning-making that is generative, mobilizing, and transformative. In recent years, much of Hernandez’s curatorial work centers on Latinx art and artists working with print and craft-based mediums and investigates how the aesthetic statements thus employed are integral, often political producers of cultural consciousness. Her practice endeavors to bolster critical engagement with U.S. Latinx art that is inclusive of Afro-Latinx, Indigenous, and queer histories, underscoring that these narratives are formative to an understanding of the histories of this country. She has recently organized artist projects with Carolina Aranibar-Fernández, Sam Frésquez, Luis Rivera Jimenez, Alejandro Macias, Sarah Zapata, Mariana Ramos Ortiz, and Estephania González. She is currently at work on a major retrospective of Carmen Lomas Garza.

Hernandez was previously Executive Director & Curator at CALA Alliance. She has held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Páramo, Guadalajara, Mexico; Hunter East Harlem, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Phoenix Art Museum; and BRIC Arts Media, Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in several exhibition catalogues and online journals. Hernandez received her M.A. from CUNY Hunter College, where she specialized in Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art. She currently lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona.

D.S. Kinsel
Co-Founder, BOOM Concepts

DS Kinsel is an award winning creative entrepreneur and cultural agitator. He expresses his creativity through the mediums of painting, printmaking, collage, installation, curating, performance and public art. Kinsel’s work puts focus on themes of space keeping, urban tradition, hip-hop, informalism and cultural re-appropriation. DS is the co-founder of BOOM Concepts; a creative hub dedicated to the advancement of black, brown, queerm and femme artists. BOOM Concepts is located in Pittsburgh and since 2014 has curated 50 exhibitions on-site, paid out over $75k in artists fees and produced 200+ events across the country. BOOM Concepts serves as a space for field building, knowledge sharing, mentorship, and storytelling. In its 8th year, BOOM Concepts continues to work with creatives to find innovative strategies around entrepreneurship and artistic practice. In 2021, BOOM Concepts was recognized as one of America's Cultural Treasures through The Heinz Endowments and The Ford Foundation.

A former AmeriCorps Public Ally member, Kinsel has been recognized as an awardee of the Pittsburgh Courier Fab 40, Pittsburgh Magazine PUMP 40 Under 40, Pgh Tech Council Creative of The Year, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s "Top Ten People To Meet in 2016" and the Incline’s “Who’s Next” for 2018. D.S has served as a board member of Pittsburgh Center for Creative REuse and the Black Transformative Arts Network. Kinsel currently serves on the advisory board for Shady Lane School, PearlArts Studios, and the Artist Communities Alliance.

M. Carmen Lane 
Founder + Director, ATNSC: Center for Healing and Creative Leadership  

M. Carmen Lane (African-American, Mohawk, Tuscarora) is a two-spirit contemporary artist, writer and facilitator based in Cleveland, Ohio. Carmen’s work explores Black/Indigenous identities, two-spirit and non-binary masculinities, intergenerational grief and settler colonial behaviors within human systems. They are the founder and director of ATNSC: Center for Healing and Creative Leadership, an artist-led incubator and exhibition space for socially engaged Indigenous artists and artists of color. They also work with arts and culture leaders on equity leadership and change through their consulting firm MC Lane Consulting. 

Melissa Levin
Independent Curator + Program Officer, Jerome Foundation

Melissa Levin is a values-driven arts administrator and artist-centered curator with more than 15 years of experience in the field. Levin is currently the inaugural New York City-based Program Officer with the Jerome Foundation, supporting early career artists in MN & NYC. Previously, she worked at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) for more than 12 years, where—as Vice President of Cultural Programs—her role encompassed wide-ranging institutional and artistic leadership, including overseeing the organization’s major artist-centered and public-facing initiatives: the River To River Festival, the Arts Center at Governors Island, and LMCC’s exhibitions and artist residency programs.

Since 2016, with collaborator Alex Fialho, Levin has stewarded the legacy of artist Michael Richards. In 2021, Levin and Fialho curated Richards’s first museum retrospective, Michael Richards: Are You Down?, at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. The exhibition—which traveled to the North Carolina Museum of Art and The Bronx Museum—was recognized by Frieze magazine as one of the “Top 10 Shows in the United States of 2021” and by Hyperallergic as one of the “The Top 50 Exhibitions of 2023.” In addition to serving on the Artist Communities Alliance board, Melissa is also a board member at Danspace Project.

Esther Park
Independent Programmer + Journalist

A journalist for over 15 years, Esther Park has been a contributing writer for many reputable publications such as Vice, Spin, XLR8R, Miami New Times, and the Village Voice, and held the title of editor-at-large for the respected underground hip-hop magazine Elemental from 1999-2004. Her move to Miami in 2003 resulted in Esther becoming the Director of Public Programs for the Museum of Contemporary Art. There she programmed events, curated series in music and art and worked closely with the local community. After her tenure at MOCA, she became the Director of Programming at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. After five years there, Esther became Director of Alumni and Public Programs at the National YoungArts Foundation. Most recently, Esther oversaw Oolite Arts' robust programming portfolio as VP of Programming which included managing ongoing exhibitions, public programs and the studio residency program.

Megha Ralapati
Program Director of Fellowships, CEC ArtsLink

Megha Ralapati is the Program Director of Fellowships at CEC ArtsLink. Prior to this role, she developed and oversaw the Jackman Goldwasser Residency at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, where she forged partnerships with the French Embassy, Goethe Institut, Asian Cultural Council, Northwestern University and other institutions to design intentional cross-cultural artistic exchanges. Megha specializes in artist mobility and has collaborated with community-centered organizations based in the US and internationally like Project Row Houses, ARTPORT Tel Aviv, and Center for Contemporary Art Lagos.

Before joining Hyde Park Art Center in 2011, she was Director of Bose Pacia in New York, an international visual art gallery presenting contemporary work from across the Indian subcontinent. Megha regularly participates in award and fellowship juries, presents ideas and workshops to artists of all levels, including at the School of the Art Institute, NYU, and most recently at Asiko, an alternative pan-African summer intensive for artists, and has contributed to publications for Documenta 14, Brooklyn Museum, Sharjah Art Foundation, among others. Megha received an MA in Visual Culture from Goldsmiths and a BA in Art History and Anthropology from Columbia University. She is on the board of Enrich Chicago.

Reveca Torres
Artist + Founder, BACKBONES

Reveca Torres was paralyzed in a car accident as a teenager. After completing degrees in Fashion Design and Theatre Arts, Reveca worked as a costume designer and simultaneously with organizations doing disability work in health, advocacy, recreation, and peer support. She started a nonprofit called BACKBONES after realizing that years of interaction and friendship with others living with spinal injuries (SCI) made a significant impact in her own life. Reveca wanted to ensure that others, especially those newly injured, had access to resources, information, and the same type of support she has had.

She is co-director of ReelAbilities Film Festival Chicago and has curated touring photography and art exhibitions that showcase work of people with disabilities and bring awareness to disability rights. Reveca received Creative Access Fellowships at Vermont Studio Center (2014) and Santa Fe Art Institute (2017). She was selected as a fellow for Kartemquin Films Diverse Voices in Docs program (2017) and Hulu+Kartemquin Accelerator Program (2020). She received a 3Arts Residency Fellowship at the University of Illinois Chicago in 2018 and is one of 2020 3Arts Awardees. In 2020 she was awarded the Craig Neilsen Visionary Award for her art and advocacy work. Reveca uses painting, illustration, photography, film, movement, and other media as a form of expression and a tool for advocacy and social justice.

Amy Wheeler
Playwright + Theatre Artist, Educator, Speaker, Nonprofit Leader, Creative Entrepreneur

Amy Wheeler has built a career around bringing people together, across generations, to collaborate on inspiring productions, innovative programs, and spirited events imbued with a social justice message. Wheeler led the nonprofit Hedgebrook for 13 years, evolving it from a renowned Whidbey Island-based residency program into a global community of influential womxn writers authoring change in the arts (literary, film, television and music), culture, politics and social justice. Celebrating the culmination of her tenure in 2020, Seattle Arts & Lectures recognized Wheeler with the Prowda Literary Champion Award for “demonstrating true commitment to the Pacific Northwest’s community of readers and writers.” Wheeler has several theatre projects currently in development, with a track record of productions at theatres across the country. A Yaddo fellow and Hedgebrook alum, Wheeler holds an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Cornish College of the Arts, and MFA from the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her current ventures are: Dancehall Productions, generating creative projects that bring to life the stories, real and imagined, of those who have been left out of, silenced or erased from the patriarchal narrative; and Play Club, a Book Club with a Theatrical Twist.

Jenni Wu
Chief of Staff, Macdowell

Jenni Wu (she/her/hers) started working at MacDowell in 2013 and currently serves as the organization’s first Chief of Staff. In this role, she focuses on strengthening and maintaining a healthy and inclusive work culture, creating opportunities for staff professional development, and coordinating MacDowell’s ongoing work in diversity, equity, inclusion, and access.

Jenni studied art history and French at Grinnell College and has a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She enjoys spending time with her dog Marvin, reading, painting, and doing crossword puzzles.