Speakers

DeMarcello Funes, a native of Oakland CA, is a well rounded physical performer. Funes has performed throughout the Bay Area and beyond, honing his circus skills of juggling, clowning, hambone body percussion, and onstage presence in the Prescott Circus Theatre, and later polishing up new skills in Circus Bella. His experience in stage acting, musical theatre, and improv stems from his emphasis on drama at Oakland School for the Arts. Funes is now in works with Thrillride Mechanics at ZSpace, Beautiful Beginnings Art Collective (BBAC), and Circus Center as an Instructor & Community Engagement Associate of Performance.

San Francisco Children’s Art Center is a non-profit organization founded in 1978 with the mission to empower children and nurture their sense of self through creative exploration. In our art studio at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and in school classrooms across San Francisco, SFCAC serves more than 1200 students annually, supporting children as they develop language to share their ideas, learn to solve challenges, and connect with others through visual storytelling.

Marc Abensour, a career diplomat, was appointed Ambassador for the Indo-Pacific on 24 October 2022. His professional experience mainly covers the Asia-Pacific area and political and military affairs. He was First Secretary at the Embassy of France in China from 1996 to 2000, and at the Embassy of France in the United States from 2000 to 2002, before becoming Head of the Far East Department from 2003 to 2005. From 2008 to 2012, Marc Abensour was Deputy Permanent Representative of France to NATO, followed by positions as Diplomatic Adviser to the Minister of Defense in 2014 and Director for International, Strategic and Technological Affairs at the General Secretariat for Defense and National Security in 2012 and 2013. Before his appointment as Ambassador for the Indo-Pacific, Mr. Abensour was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in Singapore from 2016 to 2022. He succeeded Christophe Penot, former Ambassador to Malaysia and Australia, and who was the first Ambassador for the Indo-Pacific. Created in September 2020, this position aims to strengthen France’s Indo-Pacific strategy and assert French diplomacy in the region. Based in Paris, the Ambassador for the Indo-Pacific has a role in coordinating, representing and promoting France’s Indo-Pacific strategy. He travels around the region to identify and launch tangible projects aimed at developing sovereignty partnerships with the countries of the Indo-Pacific.

Cécile Alduy is Professor of French literature and culture in the French and Italian Department at Stanford University. She is also an Associated Scholar at Sciences Po-Paris since 2017. Dr. Alduy is a specialist of political discourse analysis, with a focus on far right and populist discourse and ideology. She has been teaching French cinema for fifteen years, especially the New Wave.

All The Way Live Foundation (ATWLF) is a Bay Area-based grassroots organization centered in preserving and honoring Hip Hop Culture by elevating and amplifying young voices and kinetics from historically marginalized communities. Through the powerful and beautiful movement of Breaking, youth are taught to express, heal and liberate from archaic structures of dance; and encouraged and celebrated to be their own unique selves. To learn more about our FREE Fulton/UN Plaza Youth Dance Programs, events and festivals, please visit our website: www.allthewaylive.org

Alphabet Rockers make music that makes change. Winners of the 2023 GRAMMY for Best Children’s Album, 3x GRAMMY nominees, children’s book authors, Othering & Belonging Institute Fellows and industry leaders for change, Alphabet Rockers leadership and work spark conversations towards a world of belonging. Co-led by Kaitlin McGaw (she/her) and Tommy Soulati Shepherd (he/him/they), AR are pre-eminent racial justice advocates and children’s media creators, who use the power of music to change frameworks, challenge individuals and systems, and support individuals and organizations in the movement for change. National recognition includes: SXSW, Austin City Limits, the Kennedy Center, National Museum of African American History, YouTube Kids, Sensical TV and many others. Kaitlin is a Harvard University graduate in African American Studies; Tommy graduated from Pacific Conservatory Theatre. After years of working in schools and working to understand our diverse audiences, we began a rigorous practice of participant action research towards writing songs towards a culture of belonging. As a BIPOC-led company living in the communities from which our material originates, we create content for families that is healing, reflects who we are and empowers us— embracing Black liberation, Queer liberation, Indigenous rights, immigrant rights, and intersectionality. We curate this content with the community, centering children’s voices and cultivating our collective radical imagination. Together we amplify authentic stories and interrupt the patterns that got us here. Reaching over 5 million families since 2007, Alphabet Rockers inspire us all to stand up to hate and be our brave and beautiful selves.

Sylvia Amar is a French researcher in the history of art and architecture, a curator, and a producer of contemporary art projects commissioned by communities (Nouvelles Donnes Productions). She completed her doctoral thesis, “Ecotopian Architecture Laboratories: From Past Communities to Today’s Ecovillages (United States–Europe, 1965–2015),” in 2020 as part of the INAMA Laboratory (ENSA-Marseille), where she holds the position of associate researcher. She is currently a resident at Villa Albertine in San Francisco. 

Amma Ateria is an electroacoustic composer and sound artist working in psychoacoustics with binaural beats and equal-loudness contour. Compositions developed during her concussion recovery utilize brainwave entrainment, time shifts, and changes of neurological responses to DELTA, THETA, ALPHA, BETA, GAMMA waves as materials and focal point. ‘The Entropic Arias: I. Neurogenesis Overload’ sonically encapsulates her post-concussion neurogenesis as it enters stages of maximal entropy. A series of sonic movements develops as she navigates entropy acceleration to reach equilibrium. This work invites audiences into a space where breakdowns—sonic or cognitive—become thresholds for clarity and balance for meditation, blurring the line between collapse and emergence.

Laure Andrillon is a freelance reporter and photographer from France, currently in San Francisco. She is a member of Women Photograph. She speaks English, French and Spanish. Her work is largely focused on issues related to migrations, health, environmental justice and climate change. She is an FAA-certified drone pilot, which allows her to shoot aerial photography and videography for editorial and commercial use.
She holds an MA in contemporary philosophy from the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, 2015) and an MA in journalism from the Centre de Formation des Journalistes (Paris, 2016). She is also a graduate of the International Center of Photography in New York City, where she completed a documentary photography program after receiving the ICP Director’s merit-based fellowship (2021).
Her work has been published by The Washington Post, Le Monde, Libération, GÉO Magazine, Reuters, AFP, Corriere della Sera, The San Francisco Chronicle, CalMatters, LensCulture, Usbek & Rica Magazine, Reporterre, Néon Magazine, Slate Magazine, WeDemain Magazine, Ouest-France, L’Usine Nouvelle, and FishEye Magazine, among others.

Chef Francis Ang owns ABACÁ restaurant. ABACÁ is a contemporary Filipino-Californian restaurant, showcasing the beauty and vibrance of Filipino culture and cuisine from co-owners, Chef Francis Ang and his wife and Director of Operations, Dian Ang. ABACÁ honors old family recipes and flavors while using some of Northern California’s best seasonal ingredients. The cocktail program features a wide array of drinks from classics to imaginative Filipino-inspired libations.

Victoria Arcangeli is a Master’s student at EDHEC currently completing her degree at UC Berkeley, and specializes in finance and economics. As part of her Master Project, she is collaborating with the Everyone.AI team as a consultant to design a workshop that explores the strategic and ethical challenges of artificial intelligence development.

Sholeh Asgary (b. Iran) engages performance, interdisciplinary forms, and collective processes to investigate, memorialize, and express the complexities of joy and survival inherent in diasporic and refugee experiences. Her work challenges colonial assumptions about what is heard, proposing new futures through sound. Asgary’s debut album, آبـان (Aban), was released in 2024 through Sming Sming Books and Crystalline Morphologies to critical acclaim. Her performances include SFEMF, The Lab, Stanford, and PICA. She is exhibited in PST-Getty’s Atmosphere of Sound, Bay Area Now 9 at YBCA, and ARoS Kunstmuseum. Asgary holds an MFA from Mills College and is on the UC Berkeley faculty.

Paulin is a French engineering and business student with a global academic journey spanning France, South Korea, and California. He pursued his engineering studies at Centrale Lille Institute and his business master’s at EDHEC, Sungkyunkwan University, and UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Since August 2024, he has been collaborating with Everyone.AI to develop an innovative educational workshop, leveraging his diverse international experiences and interdisciplinary background.

Erin Baldassari oversees the housing affordability desk at KQED, the San Francisco Bay Area’s premier public radio station, and she hosts the station’s housing podcast, SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America. Prior to joining KQED, she worked as a print journalist for a decade at a variety of outlets, including the Mercury News and East Bay Times, where she served on the paper’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning team.

BARRACUDA (it) is a multi-gender avatar of Salimatu Amabebe (he/they), a trans, Nigerian-American chef and multimedia artist, working in food, film, photography, performance, sculpture and installation. His work focuses on the intersection of food and art while centering community activism, African diasporic culinary traditions and Black queer/ trans liberation. Amabebe is the founder/ director of Black Feast – a culinary event celebrating Black artists and writers through food. BARRACUDA has gathered the entirety of its learning from movies, TV shows, and the series of images on its mobile device, and is prone to the occasional “glitch,” veering into the opulent, decadent and perverted. It identifies most significantly as a “crowd-sourced slut.”

Beth has been with SIFF since 2003, and is responsible for managing the artistic vision of SIFF, including all aspects of programming for the Seattle International Film Festival, SIFF Cinema’s 6 year-round screens, and the SIFF Education team. She secured SIFF’s status as an Academy Award® qualifying festival for short film in 2008. Beth currently serves on the City of Seattle Film Commission and the Board of the Arthouse Convergence. In addition to her daily work in programming, Beth has served on juries and panels in Palm Springs, Park City, Cleveland, Nashville, Calgary, Vancouver BC and Berlin, Germany.

Theodore (Ted) Barrow, Ph.D. is an American art historian, writer, professor, skateboarding critic, social media persona, lecturer, and skateboarder. Barrow hosts, researches, and produces a series of videos on Thrasher Magazine’s Youtube Channel, titled This Old Ledge, that explore the built and cultural history of past and present skate spots. Barrow is a writer, publishing work about a range of topics including skateboarding history, art history, and the relationship between the two. Barrow is a curator who most recently co-curated the exhibition Skateboarding San Francisco: Concrete, Community, Continuity to great acclaim at the San Francisco Public Library.

BALA is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. We are a grassroots, community-run archives committed to building community, fostering intergenerational dialogue and keeping a culture of activism vibrant in the lesbian community.

Cheyenne (Chiricahua Apache) is a social video producer with KQED and host of PBS Voice’s YouTube series Sovereign Innovations, which celebrates and explores Indigenous technology and innovation and how it allows Indigenous communities from around the globe to thrive. As a reconnecting Urban Native, her personal work challenges audiences to re-think their understanding of Indigenous identity; and she is passionate about decolonizing media and Indigenizing digital spaces by amplifying Indigenous voices and connecting with Indigenous creatives in the Bay Area and around the country.

Jason is leading Technology, Innovation, Data Systems, and Computer Science Education at the Santa Cruz County Office of Education as the Chief Technology & Innovations Officer. Jason has worked in the K-12 environment for over 20 years. First as a teacher focused on creating an environment beyond brick and mortar learning. Jason spent many years following by supporting school administrators across California with effective ways to leverage technology to lead 21st century schools as part of the statewide Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership (TICAL) project as well training teachers in transformative practices in their classroom. Jason spent 3-years in leading curriculum and technology programs in a small school district in the Silicon Valley. He is a former president of the Board of CUE, INC. Board of Directors – a non-profit focused on inspiring innovation in education and currently is chair of the Data sub-committee of of Santa Cruz County DataShare – a multi-agency collaborative focused on data literacy and supporting data elements aligned to equity initiatives. He currently serves on the Board of CAASCD and Santa Cruz Works.

Clotaire Boyer’s research focuses on state capacity and social protection, and he collaborates with Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman on projects related to economic inequalities. He currently serves as a Consultant Economist for the World Bank, advising the Mongolian government on targeted social safety nets and developing methods to track poverty in real-time. Previously, he worked at MIT’s Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Harvard’s Center for International Development, evaluating national-scale experimental programs focused on financial inclusion and poverty alleviation in Indonesia.

Bran(…)Pos is the ongoing audio-visual-performance-noise-musique-brain-bend of Jake Rodriguez from the San Francisco Bay Area, CA. Rodriguez has been performing and recording under this moniker since 1996 with releases on C.I.P., Resipiscent, Ratskin Records, Planetary Magnetics, Tymbal Tapes, Rubber City Noise, Animal Disguise, and Chitah! Chitah! Soundcrack. Rodriguez also plays organ and synthesizers with Oakland, CA psychedelic cumbia band Ritmos Tropicosmos, and designs sound for live theater.

Peter Brastow has worked for 30 years to restore biodiversity in San Francisco. In 2005, Peter
founded Nature in the City, the first and only organization (still) wholly dedicated to restoration
and community stewardship of the Franciscan bioregion. Since 2012, Peter has worked at the San
Francisco Environment Department as the Senior Biodiversity Coordinator and a restoration
ecologist for Yerba Buena Island, working closely with the Treasure Island Development
Authority to implement the island’s Habitat Management Plan.

Jaz Brisack is a union organizer and cofounder of the Inside Organizer School, which trains workers to unionize. After spending one year at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, they got a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, becoming a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helping organize the first unionized Starbucks in the United States. As the organizing director for Workers United Upstate New York & Vermont, they also worked with organizing committees at companies ranging from Ben & Jerry’s to Tesla.

Karl Britto is Associate Dean of Arts & Humanities and Associate Professor of French & Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. He is the author of Disorientation: France, Vietnam, and the Ambivalence of Interculturality, and has published articles and essays on diasporic Vietnamese literature in French and English in such journals and venues as Yale French Studies, Representations, French Studies, and Public Books.

Doan Bui is a writer and journalist. She was awarded “Prix Albert Londres” for her work about refugees. Her memoir, “Le silence de Mon père”, published in 2016, won “Prix de la porte Dorée” and “Prix Amerigo Vespucci”. La Tour (Editions Grasset), fiction novel (2022) was shortlisted for Goncourt premier roman and Orange Prize. She is currently a Resident of Villa Albertine in San Francisco, investigating Angel Island and narratives of exile.

Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí is a reporter with KQED News in San Francisco and his main focus is empowering audiences by making complex political, economic and legal topics accessible and practical to their day-to-day lives. He is now looking at how workers in California are organizing — either through unions or informally — to respond to the growing role of AI in the workplace. He previously worked with Univision, 48 Hills in San Francisco and REFORMA in Mexico City.

Serving for over fifteen years as Director and CEO of two major US art museums—the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2009–2017, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco since 2018—Thomas P. Campbell has dedicated his life to the preservation, study, and promotion of art as a gateway to human understanding.

At the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Campbell oversees the institution’s award-winning program, and has strengthened ties to local communities through key initiatives, partnerships, and innovative new education programs.

Florian Cardinaux was born in Blois in the Loire Valley, near the Château de Chambord, and has just moved to the City by the Bay to take up his post as Consul General of France in San Francisco.

Florian Cardinaux was previously one of the advisors to the French Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, in charge of Asia, the Pacific and consular affairs (2022-2024). He had previously held the position of Head of Operations at the Crisis and Support Center (2020-2022), a position which led him to manage numerous international crises involving the French (Afghanistan, Ukraine, Sahel, Sudan, Ethiopia in particular). In recent months, following the departure of Catherine Colonna, he resumed this activity to help manage the crisis in Gaza and its regional consequences.

This is his third post abroad, after Doha, where he was Number Two at the French Embassy in Qatar (2018-2020), and Delhi, where he was Political Counselor at the French Embassy in India, in charge of the Franco-Indian strategic partnership (2015-2018). He began his career at the Quai d’Orsay on the Middle East, first in charge of relations with Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then the Syrian crisis (2012-2015).

Florian Cardinaux, 39, is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris. He also spent a year studying at Princeton University. He is also an alumnus of the École nationale d’administration, class Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2012).

Born and raised in Berkeley, CA, Colette Carrière is a French-American teen who is passionate about soccer, school and sustainability. Colette started advocating for solutions to climate change as the eco-class representative in elementary school. Tired of hearing about all the terrible things humans are doing that are destroying our planet, Colette decided to focus instead on the ways in which humans are innovating to help save it. Most recently, she presented her research at TEDx Youth @ EB. In the near future, Colette hopes to learn more about the impacts of climate change, and then eventually educate others on the importance of fighting against it.

Greg Castillo is Professor of Architectural History at the University of California, Berkeley. His topics of research include the cultural and spatial legacies of Bay Area Counterculture, architecture’s role in the cultural cold war, and the model home as a stage-set for enacting postwar domestic ideals.

Dr. Mathilde Cerioli is the Chief Scientist and cofounder of Everyone.AI, a nonprofit dedicated to anticipating and educating on the opportunities and risks of AI for children. She holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience and a Master’s Degree in Psychology, with a research focus on how AI intersects with cognitive and socioemotional development in children, adolescents, and young adults. In May 2024, she published the influential report Child Development in the AI Era, examining the potential impact of emerging technologies on cognitive and socioemotional development. Within everyone.ai—and in collaboration with the Paris Peace Forum—Dr. Cerioli contributed to the launch of the Beneficial AI for Children Coalition, an international initiative supported by 11 governments, various tech companies including Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, as well as the support organizations such as UNICEF, UNESCO, and Common Sense Media. The coalition’s goal is to guide AI development, deployment, and adoption to support healthy short and long term brain development among younger users.

Jason Chau is a Senior Program Officer at the Gates Foundation and leads Emergency Relief and Learning & Innovation for the Emergency Response Team. In this role, he helps the foundation develop initiatives to address humanitarian crises and to improve the implementation of innovative approaches to meet acute needs. Previously, he managed multiple humanitarian assistance portfolios at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), where he most recently led COVID-19 and global food security efforts. For more than 16 years, Jason has supported global humanitarian and international development initiatives for the White House National Security Council, USAID, the United Nations, and several international NGOs. A graduate of the Columbia University School of International & Public Affairs and the University of California, Santa Barbara, with degrees in marine biology, anthropology, French, and international affairs, Jason is a lifelong learner and avid traveler. He has lived in Niger, DRC, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Turkey.

Sally Chen is Deputy Director at the nonprofit Livable City, whose mission is to empower and
inspire San Franciscans to co-create an equitable, healthy, and joyful future. Born and raised in
the city, Sally is an organizer and advocate dedicated to building the capacity of working-class
communities of color in their own neighborhoods. She has experience in direct service,
grassroots organizing, policy advocacy, community education, and civic engagement, particularly
with Chinese immigrant families.

Terri Cohn is an independent curator, writer, and art historian who is committed to preserving and contextualizing the contributions of women and under-recognized artists in the Bay Area and California. Her particular focus is oral histories, ecological practices, and the legacy of community spaces. Since the 1990s Terri has participated in and documented numerous artist-run projects including an interview and several essays about The Farm and Bonnie Ora Sherk.

Jodi Davenport is Vice President of Learning, Technology & Innovation at WestEd, where she bridges cutting-edge research and classroom practice to advance education. Trained as a cognitive scientist with a PhD from MIT, Jodi brings deep expertise in how people think, learn, and solve problems. She oversees a broad portfolio of work exploring how educators are integrating AI into instruction and how technology can support more authentic, student-driven engagement. Jodi is passionate about AI’s potential to ignite creativity, curiosity, and community involvement—helping students move beyond rote learning to real-world impact. She imagines a future where AI enables more hands-on experiences, meaningful collaboration, purpose, and joy.

Arnaud de Fontenay has over twenty-five years of experience as a legal advisor to production companies in the French film industry. He has collaborated with prominent figures such as renowned actor-director Alain Chabat. In 2017, he relocated to San Francisco. For six years, he has curated and organized screenings at the Lycée Français de San Francisco (LFSF). In January 2024, he founded French Premiere, an initiative dedicated to bringing recent French film releases to American audiences on a monthly basis in California and other states (Georgia, Oregon, and Washington).

Sabine de Maussion is a cultural diplomat and the director of Villa Albertine in San Francisco, the French Institute for Culture and Education. She oversees cultural, artistic, and educational initiatives across 11 states on the West Coast, fostering transatlantic collaboration at the intersection of culture, education, and innovation.

Josh Decolongon is the audience engagement producer for KQED Food and Check, Please! Bay Area as well as the host and producer of No Crumbs, KQED’s first vertical video Food series. His flavorful adventures have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Vice News, SFGate and Thrillist. On his spare time, Josh enjoys experimenting with flavors for a new cocktail or finding the next exciting wine pairing.

Deidre DeFranceaux is a painter, sculptor, activist, performance and kinetic installation artist residing in the Bay Area since 1990. As a 35 year resident of the Bay, she has developed deep ties to a wide, diverse, and rich community in the arts, education, LGBTQ and underground creative scenes. Since 2018, she has been working on a Legacy Project with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, consisting of a series of sculptural oil paintings with 3D elements and epoxy resin that, like the Sisters, break the box in every direction, command attention, are ornately embellished, and larger than life. It is her honor, as a Saint of the Sisters, to share this work for the Night of Ideas 2025.

Dr. Randy Depew is KQED Education’s Managing Director. Prior to KQED, Randy spent 20 years as teacher-leader at Mt. Diablo High School in Concord and an adjunct faculty member in Brandman University’s School of Education. At KQED, Randy oversees the development of KQED education content.

MSCA postdoctoral fellow, François Drémeaux has conducted research on the history of Hong Kong and its connections with French Indochina. He now specializes in maritime history, focusing on health aboard passenger ships.

Stefania Druga graduated with a Ph.D. in Creative AI Literacies at the University of Washington Information School. Most recently, she completed a research internship at Microsoft’s Human-AI eXperience Team focused on Large Language Models applications. Her research focuses on Large Language Models and the design of Creative AI tools and resources. She also enjoys designing and building future smart toys and games. She is a former an AI Resident at X Moonshot Factory, product engineer at Fixie.ai, a Weizenbaum Research Fellow. An awardee of the NSF Formal Verification in the Field Grant and the Jacobs Foundation Grant, she was previously a LEGO Papert Fellow during her time as a master student at MIT researching with Prof. Mitch Resnick and the Scratch team

For over thirty years, Dunlop Fletcher has worked in curatorial roles in California cultural institutions, where she has organized several key acquisitions and exhibitions with a focus on bold visionary works of architecture and design from the late 20th century to today. Recent curatorial projects include Get in the Game: Art, Sports and Culture (2024) (co-curator); Conversation Pieces: Contemporary Furniture (2022); Nature x Humanity: OXMAN Architects (2022); Tatiana Bilbao Estudio (2021); Far Out: Suits, Habs and Labs for Outer Space (co-curator) (2019), and The Sea Ranch: Architecture, Environment and Idealism (co-curator) (2018.) 

Jacqueline Fabius obtained her undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in Comparative Literature and Spanish. She worked in media and management consulting for 11 years prior to joining the United Nations and later UCSF in the role of the Chief Operating Officer for the Quantitative Biosciences Institute, where she headed a number of initiatives including establishing relationships and collaborations as well as media and communication strategy for the institute. With QBI’s mission to bring young investigators and women scientists to the forefront, she started the Scholarship for Women from Developing Nations. Her focus is facilitating communication and networking across wide audiences ranging from scientists to lay audiences. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020, Jacqueline was a co-founder of the QBI Coronavirus Research Group (QCRG), an emergency response dedicated to the identification of possible druggable targets by combining the interdisciplinary expertise of hundreds of scientists from around the world.

Ethan Fenner is the Museum Scientist and Horticulturist for the Southern African Collection
and Cycad and Palm Collection at the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley. He
has a passion for plant conservation, habitat restoration, and the uniquely attractive qualities of
gardens. His first co-authored book, The Art and Philosophy of the Garden, came to print from
Oxford University Press in May of 2024.

Tarts de Feybesse is a family-owned business that offers French-inspired pastries, breads, and events, described as a “Contemporary pâtisserie where tradition meets our era”. It was created by Chefs Monique and Paul Feybesse in 2016, after they both worked in great houses and met at Geranium restaurant, Copenhagen.

Abe Frank has worked as a screenwriter for the past decade, receiving awards and other recognition from festivals including the International Family Film Festival, the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, the Los Angeles Film Festival, and the Oaxaca International Film Festival. He currently has one feature film (SPANGER, RG Films) in post-production and another (ENCORE, Focus Features) set to film this summer.

Laura Gao is an award-winning author-illustrator, comics professor, and living proof that doodling in class can indeed get you somewhere in life (take that, Mrs. Dutton).
Their work includes the bestselling graphic memoir, Messy Roots, and their newest queer romance, Kirby’s Lessons on Falling (In Love).

Nimah Gobir is a writer and producer for MindShift. She has worked with young learners in many capacities including teacher, curriculum developer, and youth media producer. Each role offered a window into the different ways caregivers and educators strive to meet children’s needs and promote meaningful learning experiences in and out of the classroom. Nimah is committed to exploring stories about how to make learning more equitable, accessible, and magical for all students.

Chris Grady, trumpet, has been performing and recording music in the San Francisco Bay area for more than 35 years. Chris has studied at San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and has performed and recorded with many bay area groups and artists including Tom Waits, Jewel, Beth Custer, The Grassy Knoll, The Guadalajara based band “SUTRA”, and the Club Foot Orchestra among many others. Chris has a solo project featured on i-tunes and Pandora music stations entitled “On It.” Currently Chris teaches, records, and performs in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Kalie Granier is a French interdisciplinary artist based in Santa Cruz, explores the profound connections between humans and non-human entities through ecofeminist values. Her work addresses social and ecological imbalances, envisioning alternative narratives for a more equitable future. Engaging at the intersection of art, science, and activism, Granier collaborates closely with scientists and environmentalists. She co-founded Loud Spring, an ecofeminist-inspired European-American Art Tank/Collective, and holds an MA from the ESAG, Penninghen School of Visual Art in Paris. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States, Europe and Argentina and she delivers lectures at various institutions, including UCSC, Cabrillo College, and Santa Clara University.

Sarah is thrilled to use her expertise in marine ecology, conservation management, public policy and education to facilitate international and dynamic solutions to the problems facing marine biodiversity. She sees her charge as ensuring that salient science plays a guiding role in efforts to protect marine wildlife and support the economies that rely on ocean ecosystem services. Sarah grew up exploring the tide pools and coral reefs of Maui. She earned her Ph.D. in Marine Ecology with a certificate in Conservation Management at the University of California, Davis, where her research focused on population connectivity along an open coast – a significant knowledge gap for marine protected area design and management. Prior to earning her doctoral degree, she earned an A.B. in Public Policy and an M.A. in Teaching from Brown University. She serves on the Advisory Council for Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary and is a Switzer Environmental Fellow. In her free time, Sarah loves surfing and building sandcastles with her family.

Step into Harmonic Drift: Sounds & Shadows, a music and storytelling experience where you become part of the performance. Engage with our resonant aluminum plate gongs, bells, and an array of found-object percussion instruments, crafting your own rhythmic soundscape reminiscent of traditional gamelan ensembles. Then, bring stories to life with an array of creatures and props on our interactive shadow puppet stage, echoing the magic of traditional Balinese shadow puppetry. Join Katie Harrell and Dan Boles and play, explore, and create! All ages welcome.

Isabelle C. Hau is a visionary leader who is dedicated to transforming the way we nurture and educate our children. As executive director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, she leverages brain science, learning science, and technology to champion innovative, effective, and inclusive learning solutions. As a successful impact investor, Isabelle previously led the US education practice at Omidyar Network and Imaginable Futures, where she invested in mission-driven organizations. She is the author of “Love to Learn: The Transformative Power of Care and Connection in Early Education”. Recognized as 100 most inspiring Harvard Business Business Women, Isabelle has also received distinctions in early childhood education and human-centered artificial intelligence. A mother of two, she co-starred with Grover of Sesame Street. Her lifelong professional goal is to bring the love of learning to each and every child.

Rebecca Hinds is a leading authority on work transformation and the future of work. Rebecca earned a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Stanford University and is now the Head of the Asana Work Innovation Lab. Her award-winning work and research have been featured in publications like Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNBC, Inc., and Time.

The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF) is a non-collecting art museum that offers artists from around the world an opportunity to push boundaries, experiment with new ideas, and take risks. We believe in the power of art to explore the most critical social, political, and cultural questions of our time and are committed to expanding the art historical canon of the future. Building upon the lessons learned in our early start-up years, ICA SF remains continuously “under construction,” embracing a nimbleness rarely found in art institutions. We seek to make contemporary art relevant and meaningful for all audiences. Admission is always free. Instagram: @icasanfrancisco

David James (guitar) draws from his years of performing hip-hop, film and theater scores, afrobeat, noise/ambient music, and more. David has been a recording and touring member of Spearhead, The Coup, the Beth Custer Ensemble, and Afrofunk Experience, performing chamber jazz at San Francisco community-level venues Red Poppy Art House and Bird & Beckett; live scores to silent films at the Museum of Modern Art (NY) and SFMOMA; and hip-hop at the Glastonbury Festival (UK) and the Fillmore (SF) He currently leads the rhythm-horns-and-strings sextet GPS, and co-leads the group Russian Telegraph.

Ryan Jang, AIA, LEED AP, is a Principal at LEDDY MAYTUM STACY Architects in San Francisco, and the recipient of the 2022 AIA National Young Architect Award. He specializes in diverse building types, primarily learning environments and higher education, but also affordable multifamily housing and civic and adaptive reuse projects. His passion for working with clients and meaningfully understanding their values allows him to facilitate an inclusive design process in pursuit of collaborative and uplifting architecture. His buildings strive to be an exuberant expression of the communities they serve and sensitively responsive to their cultural and environmental context. Ryan’s projects have been recognized with multiple local and national design awards and he has been an invited speaker at several conferences and design juries. He is a registered Architect in California, a LEED accredited professional and received a Bachelor of Architecture from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

JanpiStar was born and raised in Puerto Rico, with a Degree from the University of Puerto Rico had the opportunity of working with recognized artists in the island. JanpiStar has done works with choreographers like Petra Bravo 2016, Arthur Pitta, Jennifer Archibal 2019, Asun Noales 2022, and participated at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival 2023. Janpi has been commissioned in the Bay Area by different organizations like : Queering Dance Festival & The FreshMeat Production. Recently JanpiStar has developed a new way to express themselves, doing Drag presentations. Janpi has performed at the MOMA SF, Oasis SF, The Academy Science and Oaklash.

Tyrone Jue serves as Director of the San Francisco Environment Department and San Francisco’s chief sustainability executive, spearheading the city’s mission to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040. Over two decades in local government, he leads a team of 100 professionals developing policies that advance climate protection and environmental justice. The son of immigrants who witnessed environmental challenges firsthand, Jue brings personal passion to his integrated approach bridging climate action, resource efficiency, and community resilience, positioning him as a leading voice in transitioning San Francisco’s urban systems to regenerative, circular models.

Luc Julia is a French-American engineer and computer scientist, born in Toulouse, and world renowned expert in AI. He co-created voice assistant Siri at Apple, participated in the launch of Nuance Communications, the world leader in speech recognition, and co-founded several start-ups in Silicon Valley. He was also the Chief Technologist at Hewlett-Packard, and was CTO and SVP of Innovation at Samsung Electronics. In May 2021, he joined the Groupe Renault as Chief Scientific Officer. Luc Julia is the bestselling author of the book “There is no such thing as Artificial Intelligence!” with First Editions, and he was honored with the greatest French distinction, the Légion D’honneur (Legion of Honor) and is a member of the National Academy of Technologies.
Throughout his career, Luc Julia conceived, built and deployed complex digital media desktop products, scalable Mobile and Internet applications (500M+ users), worked on big data and distributed architectures. He is interested in all kinds of technologies to improve human lives with a special twist for data fusion, home automation, wearable devices and the next generation of context-based Human-Computer Interactions.

Once upon a time, all of your favourite cartoon, anime, and video game characters had a party in the machine from The Fly, and the result was KaiKai Bee Michaels. As versatile as they are tall, their stamina is unmatched, and their energy is intoxicating.

Providence Kamana is the founder and CEO of Cocreative Culture, a nonprofit disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline through restorative justice and cultural healing. A certified WA Credible Messenger and a graduate of Georgetown University’s program in Advancing Racial Justice and Equity in the Youth Legal System, he brings over eight years of experience mentoring and organizing with BIPOC youth. Born during the 1994 genocide in Eastern Congo and the grandson of King Matonda VIII, Providence is also an award-winning artist using music and Ubuntu values to empower under-resourced communities.

Guillaume Kientz currently serves as the Director and CEO of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library (HSM&L) and is spearheading the museum’s restoration and renovation efforts to bring the historic institution into the present day. An accomplished Art Historian and Curator, Kientz does not have the typical background of one in this profession. Rather than focusing his efforts singularly on university studies, Kientz dedicated much time to experiencing cultural institutions firsthand, traveling the world and discovering interesting objects and cultures. His unique background has given him the perspective of the visitor, using this viewpoint to approach the curation of exhibitions through the lens of the institution’s audience, making the visitor his top priority. Kientz is a specialist in Spanish painting, and in particular the works of El Greco, Velazquez, Ribera and Goya, as well as in European Caravaggism. At the Louvre, where he served as a curator in the Department of Paintings for eight years with a focus on Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American painting, Kientz developed the revered exhibition Le Mexique au Louvre, Chefs-d’œuvre de la Nouvelle Espagne, XVII–XVIIIe in 2013, bringing Mexican masterpieces to the spotlight for the first time in the institution’s history.

Bay Area Native Kitten on the Keys has been performing stateside and internationally for 25 years -everywhere from sleazy bars to the award winning French film “Tournee” at the Cannes Film Festival. She can be seen in a variety of piano bars and cabarets throughout San Francisco including The Rite Spot, the Madrone Art Bar, the Royal Cuckoo Market, and annually at Flower Piano. Her songbook is deep and wide. Pianist, accordionist, and singer, she plays a delicious smorgasbord of styles and eras from kitschy cabaret originals to bawdy blues, unexpected covers and forgotten gems of yesteryear.

Maia Kobabe is the author and illustrator of GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR, which won a Stonewall Honor and an Alex Award from the American Library Association in 2020. It was also the number one most challenged book in the US in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Maia’s short comics and writing have been published by The New Yorker, The Nib, The Washington Post, NPR, Time Magazine, and in many print anthologies. Eir second book is BREATHE: JOURNEYS TO HEALTHY BINDING with Dr Sarah Peitzmeier.

Ava Koohbor is a poet, visual and sound artist. Through sound, words, and objects she seeks to find balance in everyday’s chaos. Her latest works have been exhibited and performed at San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Audium, APICC Festival 2023: Reimagine Horizons, and as a part of group exhibition at RootDivision: ME in a(ME)rica. Her latest publication, a collection of her poetry, Death Under Construction has been published by Ugly Duckling Presse. She believes that each artist is a medium to transfer the world of possibilities to what is.

Ava Koohbor is an experimental sound artist and instrument builder. Through an undetermined process she transforms the acoustical properties of everyday objects to create an immersive experience of sound in space. Her latest works have been performed at Qualia Contemporary Gallery, Stanford Green Library, Vallejo’s Re:sound series, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Audium, APICC Festival and more.

Nina LaCour is the bestselling, Michael L. Printz Award and Lambda Literary Award-winning author of picture books, a chapter book series, young adult novels, and adult literary fiction. Nina loves cooking, gardening, and daytripping through the ever-inspiring regions of Northern California with her wife and their daughter.

Evan Laforge studied Balinese music under Pak Wenten at CalArts, and after that under Pak Terip in Buleleng, Bali. Since then, He has played with Bay Area groups such as Sekar Jaya and Gadung Kasturi. He studied Carnatic Mridangam under Ganesh Ramanayaranan and Carnatic vocal under Kaushik Lakshiminarayanan. In his spare time, he works at a chip design startup and writes software for music composition.

Fabien Lamaison is a social and climate entrepreneur who co-founded the U.S. nonprofit arm of Plastic Odyssey—Plastic Odyssey Fund—in 2024 to expand the organization’s mission across North America. As U.S. Director, he leads U.S. operations, strategic partnerships, philanthropy, and community engagement to support global efforts in ocean plastic cleanup, recycling innovation, and biodiversity restoration. With a background in fintech and impact tech, Fabien brings over two decades of experience launching ventures and scaling teams to drive systems-level solutions to some of today’s most urgent environmental challenges.

Hélène Laroche Davis holds a PhD from Stanford University and an MA from the Sorbonne, Paris. She is a Professor of French and Film Studies at Notre Dame de Namur University (NDNU) and Santa Clara University (SCU), and the Founder and Director of the French Ciné-Club of Palo Alto. A Fulbright Scholar and Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1999), she is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance Française of Silicon Valley.

Olivia Lazard is a fellow at Carnegie Europe. Her research focuses on the geopolitics of climate, the transition ushered by climate change, and the risks of conflict and fragility associated to climate change and environmental collapse.

Olivia is an environmental peacemaking and mediation practitioner as well as a researcher. She has over twelve years of experience in the peacemaking sector at field and policy levels. With an original specialization in the political economy of conflicts, she has worked for various NGOs, the UN, the EU, and donor states in the Middle East, Latin America, Sub-Saharan and North Africa, and parts of Asia. In her fieldwork, her focus was to understand how globalization and the international political economy shaped patterns of violence and vulnerability patterns as well as formed new types of conflict systems that our international governance architecture has difficulty tackling with agility. It is also through fieldwork that she came to observe the ways in which the plundering of ecosystems feeds conflict systems across the world and contributes to climate disruptions.

Her research at the field level and on thematic issues has led to support the European External Action Service in integrating environmental peacemaking as part of their mediation toolkit. Prior to joining Carnegie Europe, Olivia set up her own consultancy firm, Peace in Design Consulting, which remains exclusively active in conflict and fragile zones.

Ana Leash, burlesque persona of Amanda Vigil, is named for the way women are kept on a leash in our society; her performances often combine burlesque with social or political commentary. She loves to craft her own costumes and serves as the high femme outlet for adult sexy tantrums as part of Clutch The Pearls.

Corine Lesnes is a correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde, based in San Francisco after years in Washington and New York.

Mike Linksvayer is Vice President of Developer Policy at GitHub, leading the company’s efforts to advocate for developers globally, including by helping policymakers understand and foster open source collaboration. Mike has worked in the “open” space for two decades, including previously as VP and CTO of Creative Commons. Mike began his career as a Web 1.0 developer.

Stella Lochman (she/her) is a born and raised San Franciscan who has dedicated her career to cultivating the spirit of collaboration, creativity, and joy in the Bay Area. A graduate of Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and San Francisco State University, she previously worked in San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) where she produced hundreds of community programs that connect the work of local, national, and international artists.

Robert Long is a philosopher specializing in the intersection of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and AI ethics. He serves as the Executive Director of Eleos AI, a research organization focused on understanding and addressing the potential well-being and moral considerations of AI systems.

Clemencia Macias has been showcasing her short documentaries, experimental and nature films to international audiences. In the last 3 years her work has been recognized with seven international awards in Berlin, London, Panama, Sweden, and Prague. Born in Bogota, Colombia, Clemencia came to the USA to pursue her career as a filmmaker. She earned a degree in Film Studies from UC Berkeley and a Masters degree in Creative Documentary from Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV, San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. Her films reveal her strong sense of the sensual together with her deft interplay of color and light.

MAKEROOM is an emerging collective based in the Bay Area. Their focus is curating spaces with a strong emphasis on representation and intentionality. MAKEROOM not only provides platforms for local artists to showcase their talents but also hosts events at prominent venues throughout New York, LA, and the Bay Area. They aim to keep intentionality and inspiration at the core of everything they do; something they hope to echo worldwide in all their endeavors. 

Céline Malvoisin is a speech therapist who has worked for over 15 years with children and adults, helping them overcome difficulties related to speech, language, writing, and neurological disorders.
Passionate about education, she serves as the Director of Education at Everyone.AI, working towards the responsible, safe, and beneficial integration of AI to ensure children’s well-being and development.

Composer Richard Marriott is the founder and artistic director of the Club Foot Orchestra, an ensemble best known for their live music performance with silent films at venues such as Lincoln Center, SF Silent Film Festival, Smithsonian Institution and SF JAZZ. He has written music for dance, television, opera, film, video games and toys. He studied composition with Dominick Argento and Pauline Oliveros, Indian music with Ali Akbar Khan, shakuhachi with Masayuki Koga, synthesizer design with Serge Tcherepnin and Balinese music with Nyoman Windha and Made Subandi. He worked with Atari Games as a composer and sound designer 1992-1997. His operas include DIVIDE LIGHT, PASSION OF LEYLA and BAHAYA. Oakland Symphony’s late music director Michael Morgan commissioned and premiered his Ghost Ship Cello Concerto in November 2018. He has written other concertos for violin and contrabass.

Michiko Marron-Kibbey, a fourth-generation Japanese-American, grew up immersed in both Japanese and American cultures, which now inspire her art of chocolate. Her 10 years in Japan, from traveling with family to learning recipes in her grandmother’s kitchen, instilled a love for food and the Japanese practice of honoring every detail, from fresh fruit to bento boxes.
In 2015, Michiko left her career in education to pursue her dream of becoming a pastry chef. She trained at Ferrandi, a prestigious French culinary school, and refined her craft at Mori Yoshida, a Franco-Japanese pastry shop in Paris.
Now based in Northern California, Michiko leads Deux Cranes, a chocolate brand blending Japanese and French traditions with her unique perspective. Each handcrafted creation reflects her cultural heritage, celebrating flavors and traditions that enrich both her life and the lives of others.

Miya Masaoka is a Guggenheim and Rome Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist. Her work explores the natural world, bodily perception of vibration, movement and time while foregrounding complex timbre relationships. She is the director of Columbia University’s Sound Art Program, a joint program of the Visual Arts Department and Computer Music Center. A 2019 Studio Artist for the Park Avenue Armory, Masaoka has also received the Doris Duke Artist Award in 2013, a 2025 US Artists Fellowship, a Fulbright, and an Alpert Award. She has been commissioned by and collaborated with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Glasgow Choir, International Contemporary Ensemble (Ensemble Evolution), Bang on a Can, Jack Quartet, Del Sol, MIVOS, Momenta and the S.E.M. Ensemble. She is a polyglot, and speaks six languages.

Until its 2021 closing, Keith Scott Ferris was represented by SFMOMA’s Artists’ Gallery, and has shown at Oakland’s Gallery 55 and with the Book Club Van Kleef, a Bay Area artists’ group. His focus has always been abstract oil paintings, and drawing remains foundational to his work.

Simon Melrose is a San Francisco Bay Area based guitarist and songwriter. With guitar riffs steeped in the blues, and songs inspired by the troubadours of the 70’s, Simon has carved out a career as a sideman for several bands and is featured prominently on his own projects Central Station and The Get Down. Following on the success of his solo acoustic album “Freedom’s Road” and subsequent tours, Simon has added a power packed rhythm section featuring the harmonica of John Cunha, Drummer Stephen Traversi (Clustaphunk/Phatty), and bass player Shawn Maloney (Central Station/Northbay Blues Revue) to form The Get Down.

Kompiang Metri Davies is the founder and artistic director of Gadung Kasturi Balinese Dance and Music. She has worked as a dancer and choreographer in numerous cross-cultural and cross-media collaborations with artists Abhinaya Dance Company, Pandit Chitresh Das, ShadowLight Productions, and Yasmen Sorab Metha. She has toured and performed with Vancouver’s Gong Gita Asmara and Bay Area’s Gamelan Sekar Jaya. In 2011 she composed and choreographed a dance piece “Nyapuh Jagat” for the opening of a Balinese exhibition at SF’s Asian Art Museum. Besides dancing and teaching, Kompiang designs and constructs dance costumes and works as a certified massage therapist.

Pascal Molat is Associate Director of the San Francisco Ballet School Trainee Program. Born in Paris, Molat trained at Paris Opera Ballet School and danced with Royal Ballet of Flanders and Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo before joining SF Ballet. Molat performed principal roles in 150 ballets over his career, including Don Quixote, Sylvia, Romeo & Juliet, Onegin, Giselle, and Little Mermaid. After retiring as a SF Ballet principal dancer in 2016, he joined the SF Ballet School faculty. In 2017 he received the distinction of “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres,” awarded by the French Minister of Culture.

Sara “Toby” Moore is a critically acclaimed, award-winning clown, actor, director and filmmaker who is currently founding Artistic Director of Thrillride Mechanics physical theatre troupe in San Francisco, California and director of the Department of Clown & Performance at Circus Center. Known affectionately as the “poet clown of San Francisco,” Toby has four decades of experience as a performer, director, teacher, writer and provocateur.

Awarded “Most Influential African American in the Bay Area” in 2005 and “Best Jazz Group” in 2013, vocalist Dr. Kim Nalley was discovered by Michael Tilson Thomas singing to packed audiences live with no amplification at the Alta Plaza. Subsequently she became a Rounder Records recording artist and went on a worldwide tour gracing concert halls from Moscow to Lincoln Center and festivals from Umbria Jazz to Monterey Jazz garnering effusive international press and awards. Nalley had a solid background in classical music before switching to jazz for the freedom it provided. A true Renaissance woman, Kim Nalley has been a featured writer for JazzWest and SF Chronicle’s City Brights, shortlisted for a Grammy nomination, a produced playwright, an avid Lindy Hop & blues dancer, and the former owner of Jazz at Pearl’s. She earned her Ph.D. in history at UC Berkeley and is a published scholar.

Charlotte Neltner is a graduate student pursuing a Triple Degree in Business Management, Global Economic Transformation, and Technology at EDHEC Business School, UC Berkeley Haas, and SKK GSB Seoul. Her expertise lies in AI, business strategy, and innovation, with a specific focus on the ethical use of AI. As a Growth Strategic Contributor at Everyone.AI, she has led initiatives like developing educational materials, providing help for a Responsible AI conference for children in San Francisco organized by Everyone.AI team. Charlotte is passionate about creating a positive impact through technology and education, and is involved in projects that aim to empower young people. Outside of her academic work, she enjoys writing, volunteering, and equestrian sports.

Isella Nepomuceno is a third-year college student at CSU, Sacramento, who is passionate about the French language and culture. She is the president of The French Connections, a Francophone club dedicated to fostering an appreciation for the French language at the university by connecting with the greater Francophone community in Sacramento.

Chris Norwood is a dedicated social change agent and advocate for K-12 equity in STEM, Civic Engagement and Entrepreneurial Leadership. He proudly represents the city of Milpitas, his hometown where 52 languages are spoken and socioeconomics vary greatly. Chris constantly encourages 10,200+ students, their families, and more than 1100 Milpitas Unified School District employees to always strive to be their best selves. Chris became a public figure in middle school at the age of 10 speaking on local and national platforms on a wide variety of topics including; Civil Rights, Educational Equity, Race, Religion & Technology. Chris had his first business at the age of 16 and was an early participant of the Silicon Valley technology boom and honed his leadership, business development, management and public speaking skills in product management, product marketing and conducting technical training seminars across America and internationally, including Canada, UK, Germany, France, South Korea and Australia. Chris has been married 24 years 8 months 17 days. His hobbies include, basketball coaching, chess, backgammon and binge watching Law and Order (original).

Founded in 1971 by Artistic Director Brenda Way, ODC/Dance was one of the first American companies to incorporate a post-modern sensibility (an appreciation for pedestrian movement) into a virtuosic contemporary dance technique and to commit major resources to interdisciplinary collaboration and musical commissions for the repertory. ODC/Dance returns to the Blue Shield of California Theater at YBCA for Dance Downtown, April 10-13, 2025. Use DANCEFAN15 for 15% off tickets.

Mathilde Ollivier is a French politician serving as a member of the Senate since 2023. She represents the French Citizens Abroad. A Sciences Po Lille student and protestor in the French “Marches for the Climate”, she is the youngest French Senator and a member of the French Green Party, “Europe Ecologie Les Verts”.

Born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Ashwin first started out his career working for some of Malaysia’s most prominent French chefs. He then went on to train under Bocuse d’Or winning chefs in France and competed around the world in culinary competitions. In 2018, Ashwin found his way into the San Francisco dining scene and worked under James Beard award winning chefs, Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski where he played his creative role at The Progress, The Anchovy Bar and currently, State Bird Provisions.

Héloïse Pajot leads Digital Innovation for the electric utility EDF in the U.S., exploring how AI, quantum computing, and other emerging technologies can drive a more efficient and sustainable energy system. Passionate about turning ideas into impact, she bridges research, industry, and strategy to accelerate meaningful change toward a net-zero energy future. Prior to this role, Héloïse worked in science diplomacy, digital consulting, and DeepTech innovation.

Emmanuelle Pauliac-Vaujour is a physicist of the “infinitely small” and a researcher by training. She is currently the attachée for science and technology at the French consulate in San Francisco. An open-minded all-science optimist, she likes to put her passion for physical systems and emerging technologies at the service of cutting-edge innovation and cross-border collaborations.

Lucas Paupin studied at Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, where he earned his master’s degree in French as a Foreign Language and didactics. After writing a thesis on AI and education, he is eager to introduce students to learning French through engaging, fun, and digital methods. He strives to make inclusivity and respect for everyone his core values.

Arthur is a senior urban designer at SITELAB urban studio, in San Francisco, where he plays a key role in shaping downtown public realm plans and strategies to bring life back to city core. Arthur has contributed to major efforts around downtown recovery and activation, combining a creative design approach with deep attention to place—its history, geography, and communities. Trained as an architect in France and with experience in Paris and Bordeaux, Arthur brings a unique international perspective to transforming urban environments at multiple scales.

Aimee Phan is the author of The Lost Queen, the first book in a young adult fantasy duology inspired by the mythology of the Vietnamese heroines the Trung Sisters. She has also written two adult books of fiction, We Should Never Meet and The Reeducation of Cherry Truong. She has received fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment of the Arts, MacDowell Colony, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Djerassi and Hedgebrook. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Time, USA Today and CNN.com among other publications. She teaches writing and literature at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Steven Pitts recently retired from the UC Berkeley Labor Center, where for 19 years he focused on leadership development and Black worker issues. He received a master’s and Ph.D. in economics with an emphasis on urban economics from the University of Houston in 1994, and he holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. At the Labor Center, Steven focused on issues of job quality and Black workers. In this arena, he published reports on employment issues in the Black community, initiated a Black union leadership school, shaped projects designed to build solidarity between Black and Latino immigrant workers, and provided technical assistance to efforts in developing Black worker centers around the country. Since his retirement from the Labor Center, Steven created and hosts the podcast Black Work Talk, which looks at the struggles to build Black workers’ collective power and to challenge racial capitalism.

Nick Polansky is an environmental designer, licensed architect, artist, and skater working based in San Francisco. He studied art, architecture and landscape architecture at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design and holds a Master of Architecture from MIT’s school of architecture and planning. San Francisco’s waterfront was the site of his graduate thesis, “Inhabiting cycles of maritime obsolescence: redirecting the National Defense Reserve Fleet”. From 2012-2014 Nick was the west coast director of the MIT’s Urban Risk Lab where disaster preparedness and disaster recovery were used as design metrics for urban planning and community organization in the face of natural disaster. Through his analysis of urban systems and recovery, Nick established new design languages for how to shape and inhabit accessible public space in a city where the water is rising, and the ground is bound to break. 

Originally from Corsica, France, Ms. Porta is a Principal Water Resources Engineer with over a decade of groundwater and integrated water planning experience. She is an expert in California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) legislation and implementation, and provides related technical support to local agencies.

Project Flashlight is about interactive light at a grand scale! The joy of light. Pure, incredibly bright white beams, like fingers of God in the night sky. Participant controlled with a tablet. The searchlights are 1.2 billion candlepower military battlefield illuminators, formerly used by NASA to illuminate Apollo and Space Shuttle launches. Project Flashlight reanimated 1960s technology, added motors and computer controls, all for the sake of art! https://projectflashlight.org

Dr. Jeanne Proust has been teaching Philosophy in the US for the past 15 years and is actively involved in the Center for Public Philosophy (UC Santa Cruz), where she served as director from 2023-2024. She currently holds the position of Vice President of the Public Philosophy Network, and advocates for a widening of philosophical education beyond academia by planning, producing, and participating in different events open to the general public. She has also recently started her own philosophical counseling practice, open to individuals seeking to examine their values and life concerns through the lens of philosophical inquiry. With the Center for Public Philosophy, she helped launch the first Tech Ethics Bowl in the Bay Area, and spearheaded the Santa Cruz edition of the Night of Ideas.

Armando Quintero was named director of the California Department of Parks and Recreation in
2020. An experienced parks professional with expertise in park operations, outdoor education,
equity and access, and diversity and inclusion in hiring and retention, Quintero previously served
as executive director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the University of California (UC),
Merced and chair of the California Water Commission. Quintero held multiple positions at the
National Park Service (NPS) from 1976 to 1998

Ana Ramírez González is an artist hailing from the vibrant city of Guanajuato, Mexico. With over 10 years of magical storytelling at Pixar Animation Studios as a visual development and story artist, Ana has also sprinkled her artistic pixie dust across major companies like Google, DreamWorks, and Nickelodeon. She’s illustrated picture books for beloved publishers and is a proud New York Times bestselling illustrator!

Anthony Raynsford is Associate Professor of Art History at San Jose State University. His research focuses on the ways in which cities have been visually imagined and represented by architects and urban planners in the late 20th century. Publications include, “Civic Art in an Age of Cultural Relativism” and “The Limits of Counterculture Urbanism.” His current book project, “Cities for an Open Society,” is an intellectual and cultural history of Anglo-American urban design of the postwar period.

The East Cut Community Benefit District (The East Cut) leads initiatives to elevate public spaces and enrich the quality of life in one of San Francisco’s most rapidly evolving neighborhoods. Formed in 2015, The East Cut has overseen the district’s transformation into a model of urban revitalization, ensuring that parks, open spaces, retail areas, and street services align with the community’s dynamic growth. The East Cut plays a central role in cultivating community culture and vitality and has been a central partner in the launch of San Francisco’s Downtown First Thursdays, the lead operator of the award-winning Crossing at East Cut pop-up park, and interagency collaborator in maintaining and programming Salesforce Park, where The East Cut is the primary funder.

Sébastien Robert is the Head of School at Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley since 2020. Before taking this position, he was the Director of Primary at Ecole Bilingue and an elementary teacher at Lycée Français de San Francisco. He also served as the Director of Primary at the bilingual Ecole Elémentaire Felix Eboué in Le Pecq, France. Although he has a long record in school administration, he began his career in the classroom and sees his primary role as an educator. He has extensive experience in curriculum design, bilingual education, and incorporating new technology into instruction.

Ezra David Romero is a climate reporter for KQED News. He covers the absence and excess of water in the Bay Area — think sea level rise, flooding and drought. For nearly a decade he’s covered how warming temperatures are altering the lives of Californians. He’s reported on farmers worried their pistachio trees aren’t getting enough sleep, families desperate for water, scientists studying dying giant sequoias, and alongside firefighters containing wildfires. His work has appeared on local stations across California and nationally on public radio shows like Morning Edition, Here and Now, All Things Considered and Science Friday.

Ruth’s Table is a Front Porch program committed to increasing access to creative opportunities for older adults and adults with disabilities, providing an inclusive and inspiring environment for creative expression and meaningful connections.

Alex Sagues oversees a seven-person Urban Retail team, which focuses on representation and consulting for best-in-class landlords and tenants throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Alex and the Urban Retail Team are called on for their exceptional consulting work for assets in need of repositioning, assets needing a fresh perspective and large national scale developments.

Paul Salvaire is the Deputy Consul General of France in San Francisco. Before arriving in San Francisco, he was the deputy head of the climate and environment department at the ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs in Paris. He was previously posted at the French Embassy in New Delhi as a global issues counselor, and at the French Embassy in London, as chief of staff to the ambassador.

San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a non-profit organization dedicated to the presentation and preservation of films from the cinema’s silent era. SFSFF presents live-cinema events with films that highlight the era’s breadth and diversity and relevance to our modern era—all with live-musical accompaniment by world-renowned musicians.

Since 1956, the San Francisco Sound Wave Chorus, a chapter of the Sweet Adelines International organization, has been delighting and entertaining Bay Area audiences with the uniquely American 4-part acapella art form known as Barbershop. Under the direction of Diane Myrick, the Chorus has won multiple awards competing in annual regional contests. Members include women from all walks of life across the Bay Area. The Chorus offers vocal training during rehearsals as well as at organized retreats and conventions, in addition to performance experience, to women of all ages. Singing in an ensemble is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Join us!

Marisa Sanchez-Dunning is the Chicana woman behind If Only Creative, a Bay Area creative studio founded in 2022 that builds and executes brand design, strategy, social media management, and trend-setting commercial photography. A veteran of working with POC-owned and purpose-driven brands, Marisa possesses a POV that taps into different cultures and can resonate with a global and diverse audience.
Central to Marisa core are sustainability, equity, transparency, authenticity, and quality. If Only Creative became a reality because she was motivated and driven to craft a better world for creatives from all backgrounds. Whether it’s developing a sustainable materials guide, working with high-profile brands like Whole Foods, Bawi, and Date Better or hosting, El Otro Lado, a series of dinners reclaiming and celebrating Cinco de Mayo, Marisa has proven herself a game-changing creative director and founder with a talent for design leadership and strategic thinking, dreaming up brands rooted in human connection and industry know-how. She has spoken at conferences like AIGA, Brand New, and Dieline.

Sendy Santamaria is an illustrator, designer & kids lit author from San Diego, currently based in Northern California. She received her BFA in Illustration with distinction from California College of the Arts. She enjoys storytelling with multiple mediums. Santamaria released her debut picture book, Yenebi’s Drive to School, in June 2023. She grew up along both sides of the border between San Diego and Tijuana and spent a lot of time daydreaming on the San Diego Blue Line trolley. Her work celebrates everyday narratives and Mexican American culture. She is inspired by migration, perseverance, pigeons and love.

Sendy Santamaria is an illustrator and children’s book author from San Pablo, CA. Raised between San Diego and Tijuana, her work celebrates everyday stories and Mexican American culture.

Lakshmi Sarah is an educator, author and journalist with a focus on innovative storytelling. She has worked with newspapers, radio and magazines from Ahmedabad, India to Los Angeles, California. She has written and produced for Die Zeit, Global Voices, AJ+, KQED, Fusion Media Group and the New York Times.

Maia Scott is an interdisciplinary artist and arts educator who teaches accessible arts, theater and movement with City College of San Francisco and Lighthouse for the Blind. Scott is also a certified labyrinth facilitator and bodyworker. Though she aims to embody peace and gentleness, Scott regularly shows up to fight the good fight with her guide dog, Gleam, to ensure access and inclusion for EveryBody in both doing and viewing the arts. Scott earned an MFA from the California Institute of Integral Studies, a BA in Therapeutic Recreation and an AA in dance.

Vin Seaman (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, drag performer (LOL McFiercen) and the founder and director of Diamond Wave.

Since 2004, they have been an active player in the San Francisco Bay Area arts ecosystem as an artist, grantmaker, technical assistance provider, advocate and organizer. Their work exploring queer identity and drag culture has been presented at The Stud, Brava, Oasis, El Rio, CounterPulse, the de Young, Salesforce Tower, Frameline, the Tank NYC, the Austin International Drag Festival, SATELLITE ART SHOW Miami, the National Queer Arts Festival, Stockholm’s Stolt Scenkonst, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Yale School of the Arts.

They have been featured on Shondaland and Vice.com, were an inaugural Association for Performing Arts Professionals Leadership Fellow, and received the 2017 Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Award, the 2019 Theatre Bay Area Legacy Award, and a 2022 CALI Catalyst award.

Marco Senghor is the owner of San Francisco restaurant Bissap Baobab, where he shares his passion for Senegalese cuisine. Through his restaurant, he creates a welcoming space that celebrates Senegalese culture and fosters a sense of belonging within the local Francophone and African community.

Laura Sheppard is Director of Events at San Francisco’s historic Mechanics’ Institute where she has presented author programs, panel discussions, films and literary celebrations for 25 years. She  is co-artistic director of Yiddish Theatre Ensemble in Berkeley and a professionally trained actor. Laura’s theatrical work includes Still Life with (Gertrude) Stein which toured internationally and Paris Portraits featured at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and Marine’s Memorial Theatre.

Hannah Simonson is a Cultural Resources Planner at Page & Turnbull in San Francisco, where she has worked on a range of projects from documenting the significance of the Transamerica Pyramid to developing design guidelines for Eichler neighborhoods. She received a Master of Science in Historic Preservation at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture in 2017 where her thesis, “Modern Diamond Heights: Dwell-ification and the Challenges of Preserving Modernist, Redevelopment Resources in Diamond Heights, San Francisco,” was awarded the Outstanding Thesis in Historic Preservation. Her personal and professional research interests include Late Modernism, Bay Area regional Modernism, and San Francisco redevelopment and public art. Hannah is the current board president of the Docomomo US/Northern California chapter. She also regularly gives walking tours of the Modernist enclave of Diamond Heights and manages the Instagram account @moderndiamondheights.

Founded in San Francisco in 1979, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc. are a legendary order of queer and trans nuns dedicated to community service, outreach, and the promotion of human rights, sexual health, and diversity. Through activism, education, and irreverent humor, The Sisters have fearlessly served LGBTQ+ communities for over four decades, making the world a safer, more fabulous place—one glitter-covered step at a time.

Zuzanna Stamirowska is CEO and Co-founder of Pathway, the company building live AI that thinks and learns in real-time as humans do. Before funding Pathway, Zuzanna created state-of-the-art forecasting models for complex network evolution – published by the Academy of Sciences of The United States of America. She holds a PhD in Complexity Science and a Master’s degree in Economics from Sciences Po and Ecole Polytechnique.

Tamara Suarez Porras (they/she) is an artist, writer, and educator from (South) Brooklyn, NY, and based in the San Francisco Bay Area, working across photography, filmmaking, and writing. Tamara examines dynamics of seeing, remembering, forgetting, and how photography attempts to know the unknowable. Often beginning with collected and family archives, their work explores how memory and self-knowledge can be unraveled through layers of a photograph.

Mickey Tachibana is a modular synthesizer performer and sound artist whose career bridges the electronic music hubs of San Francisco and Kanazawa, Japan. In San Francisco, Mickey T founded the Drum Machine Museum and curated the iconic Whitebox VIP series, a defining platform for late ’90s live electronics and visual performance culture. Now based in Kanazawa, Mickey T co-founded Soundscape Kanazawa, infusing the city’s serene landscapes and cultural heritage into their artistry. Performing at venues such as Artgummi gallery and the Kanazawa Citizen’s Art Village, Mickey T creates layered, immersive experiences by integrating modular synthesis, ethnic instruments, and field recordings into their audio-visual performances, transforming modular synthesis into boundary-pushing art.

Tatsuya Tanaka manages a wide range of projects from new restaurants site development, operational efficiency, and integration & localization of Japanese restaurant brands here in San Francisco. EK FOOD SERVICES operates authentic Japanese food brands such as ramen, shabu-shabu, and udon in more than 20 restaurants throughout the United States.

Dr. Anu Taranath brings both passion and expertise as a speaker, author, educator, and racial equity consultant. In all her work, she partners with a range of people to deepen conversations on history, harm and healing. A University of Washington Seattle professor for the past 24 years, Dr. Anu knows that the most compelling conversations on race, identity, power, and belonging take place when people feel valued and heard. She has received the Seattle Weekly’s “Best of Seattle” recognition, the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and multiple US Fulbright Fellowships to work abroad. As a consultant she has partnered with over 300 clients from National Geographic Society to the Raging Grannies. Her book “Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World” was named a Washington State Book Award Finalist, Newsweek’s Future of Travel Winner in Storytelling, and included in Oprah Magazine’s “Best 26 Travel Books of All Times.” 

The Living Earth Show exists to push the boundaries of technical and artistic possibility while amplifying voices, perspectives, and bodies that the classical music tradition has often excluded. The organization uses the tools of experimental classical music to facilitate the creation of its collaborators’ most ambitious musical visions and create work that reflects and responds to our world. Based in San Francisco, The Living Earth Show is simultaneously one of the premiere contemporary chamber ensembles in the United States, a groundbreaking production company (TLES Productions), and uncompromising record label (Earthy Records). TLES co-founders Andy Meyerson and Travis Andrews work with dance companies, visual artists, sculptors, poets, and other musicians to craft compelling, immersive, progressive new work.

Isabelle Thuy Pelaud is Professor of Asian American literature at SF State University. She is the author of This Is All I Choose To Tell: History and Hybridity in Vietnamese American Literature and the co-editor of Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora and of The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora, as published academic essays on diasporic Vietnamese literature  in The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature, the Journal of Asian American Studies, The Asian American Literary Review, Amerasia Journal, and Michigan Quaterly Review among others.  She is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN.org).

Maggie Tokuda-Hall is the author Also an Octopus, illustrated by Benji Davies, The Mermaid, The Witch and The Sea, Squad, illustrated by Lisa Sterle, and Love in the Library illustrated by Yas Imamura with more books forthcoming. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband, son, and objectively perfect dog.

Edit Trautwein’s Fish Juice is a multimedia zine and video project by artist Edie Trautwein (they/she). Since starting Fish Juice in 2022, Trautwein has published over 30 zines in a variety of styles and content. They previously led zine workshops at UC Santa Cruz, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, and ICA San Francisco, and have exhibited at the San Francisco Art Book Fair, LA and SF Zine Fest, and Off Register Santa Barbara. Fish Juice zines can be found at independent bookstores in Los Angeles, Arizona, and throughout San Francisco. Instagram: @fshjuice

Connor Ishiguro Turnbull is the owner of Connor Turnbull, Preservation Consulting, an independent preservation practice founded in 2019. She has worked in preservation since 1995 and her focus is on the complex relationship between preservation and contemporary architecture. From 2011 to 2019 she and her family lived in Toronto, Canada where she founded and co-chaired Leaside Matters, a neighborhood group advocating for the built environment. She also served on multiple municipal boards including the Canada Ireland Foundation, Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, North York Community Preservation Panel, and the City of Toronto Heritage Survey Technical Expert Panel, amongst others. In San Francisco, she previously worked as an architectural historian and on architectural design for Carey & Co., Inc. She holds an AB History from Brown University, and a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. Connor was born in San Francisco but has lived in and out of the US throughout her life. Her familial roots in San Francisco began in 1848.

As Deputy Director and Chief Experience Officer at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Emiko Usui oversees the shaping of museum experiences and public engagement across in-person and digital platforms. She leads cross-functional teams spanning Curatorial, Education, Experience Design, Experience Production, Digital Content, Marketing and Communications, and Project Management teams with a focus on creative and strategic program planning. Her extensive museum career includes past roles as Chief Content Officer and Publisher at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Director of Publishing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Micah Van der Ryn (Ph.D), son of Sim Van der Ryn, is an anthropologist and filmmaker, whose main regional work has been in the islands of Oceania, in particular, in the Samoan Islands, and has done in depth research and filmmaking on transnationalization of indigenous institutions, Samoan tattooing, traditional Samoan architecture, and cultural identity within changing social, economic, and environmental contexts.

Mike G. Vann is a Professor of World History at California State University Sacramento and the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam and contributed to I Am Oum Ry: A Champion Kickboxer’s Story of Surviving the Cambodian Genocide and Discovering Peace. His current research is on the memory of Cold War era mass violence in Southeast Asia. He is a frequent contributor to Jacobin.

Catherine is a multi-talented Tech Executive who is on the Advisory Board of Villa Albertine San Francisco. She puts her strategic skills and broad experience at the service of her favorite causes. She is an explorer at heart with a very large field of interests.

Kim Voss arrived at Berkeley in 1986 with a Ph.D. from Stanford. She studies social movements, labor, inequality, higher education, and comparative-historical sociology. Her current research examines immigrants and social movements in historical and comparative perspective, analyzes dilemmas facing the U.S. labor movement, and investigates the shifting terrain of U.S. higher education. She has written or edited six books, including Rallying for Immigrant Rights; Hard Work: Remaking the American Labour Movement; and Rebuilding Labor: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement.

Cécile Wajsbrot was born in Paris in 1954. She writes novels, sometimes essays, radio dramas. In her five novels cycle about art the last one, Destruction, evokes a dystopic dictature in France forbidding all kind of arts except entertainment. Nevermore (2021 translated into English by Tess Lewis in 2024), deals with the process of translation. Plein Ciel (2024) with a personal inquiry about an unsolved air crash. She translates from English (Virginia Woolf) and German (Peter Kurzeck).

Zachary James Watkins studied composition at Cornish College, and received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College in 2006. Zachary has received commissions from The Empyrean Ensemble, Splinter Reeds, The Switch Ensemble, Density512, sfsound, The Living Earth Show, Kronos Quartet and the Seattle Chamber Players among others. Zachary has performed in numerous festivals across the United States, Mexico and Europe and his band Black Spirituals opened for pioneering Minimal Metal band Earth during their 2015 European tour. Zachary completed Documentado /Undocumentado a multimedia interactive book in collaboration with Guillermo Gómez Peña, Gustavo Vasquez, Jennifer Gonzalez and Felicia Rice. Zachary has been an artist-in-resident at the Espy Foundation, Djerassi, the Headlands Center for The Arts and the Amant Foundation Siena, Italy.

Scott Wiener is an American politician who has served in the California State Senate since 2016. A Democrat, he represents the 11th district, encompassing San Francisco and parts of San Mateo County. He is also the co-chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus. 

Versatile multi-instrumentalist Mark Yee began on piano and saxophone at a young age. As a former member of the Louisiana Love Act horn section, Mark has had the pleasure of sharing the stage with local luminaries such as Melvin Seals (Jerry Garcia Band), Pete Sears (Jefferson Starship), Greg Anton (Zero), Matt Malley (Counting Crows), as well as Jimmy Vivino (Conan O’Brien band leader). A Bay Area native, Mark currently lives in San Francisco.

Emily Zhang is a Postdoctoral Fellow in theoretical condensed matter physics at Stanford University, where she uses advanced computational techniques to delve into the intricate world of quantum materials. Prior to their postdoc, they obtained their PhD degree at the University of Toronto, Canada, where they investigated material candidates for topological quantum computers. Through every stage in her academic career, she has participated in advocacy work involving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), emphasizing its role in facilitating collaborative research and scientific discovery.