Sharon LaRue always knew she would be working to serve women and girls using art and creativity. As an Art Therapist, she developed a children’s coloring book to be used for child abuse prevention. As the director of a program working to eliminate interpersonal violence at the University of Louisville, she facilitated Arts as Activism projects utilizing the art making process to fuel creativity, generate dialogue between diverse populations, and foster social change. Since 2014, Sharon has served as the Executive Director of the Kentucky Foundation for Women an organization that honors the feminist perspective of collective strength and recognizes art as a powerful catalyst for transformational change through grant making and artist residencies. She places an intentional focus on “learning from the field” by participating in local, regional, and national dialogues on feminist art for social change to strengthen access to resources and celebrate the diversity and complexity of all of our lives. Sharon is honored to have received awards from The Center for Non-Profit Art of Inclusion, The Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs, the Rotary Service above Self Award, the Liberation Award to end Human Trafficking, and the UNA USA Human Rights Civil Rights Award. She serves as a Kentucky Colonel and on the Girls Scouts of Kentuckiana board of directors.

Kentucky Foundation for Women

Amelia Berry served as Executive Director of Yes Arts from 2018 to June 2021 and was a driving force behind the creation of Just Say Yes, the county-wide youth substance use prevention program. She now serves as executive director of Just Say Yes at the Franklin County Health Department.  In 2019, Amelia was selected as one of forty leaders nationally to be part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Culture of Health Leaders program. After beginning her career in social service work with immigrant and refugee women in the US, Amelia has held positions in non-profit management, legal services and consulting. Her clients have included the United Nations Secretariat Office for the Special Adviser on Gender Issues, the Consensus Building Institute, the China Law Society, and Yes Arts. Having previously lived in China, France, and Trinidad & Tobago, Amelia now makes her home in Frankfort, Kentucky, where she is a member of the Frankfort Independent Schools Board of Education. Amelia has played steel drum since adolescence, has played with the Trinidadian band Invaders during Trinidad Carnival’s “Panorama” celebration, and occasionally has the opportunity to teach the instrument to Frankfort youth. Amelia also enjoys creative writing and making things with her hands.

Yes Arts Website

Jackie Gordon Duvall works with Yes Arts to coordinate the Black Woman Artists of Frankfort network. In her full-time profession, she joined the Kentucky State Athletic Department staff as the Associate Director of Athletics and Senior Woman Administrator in January 2020. Duvall previously served as Director of Athletics, Equity, and Extended Learning for Frankfort Independent School District, where she returned to her Alma Mater to provide leadership over Middle and High School Sports and extracurricular activities.  Jackie served 3 years in Shelby County Public Schools as a Family Resource Center Director and prior to that, 10 years working in the Cabinet for Health and Human Services for Kentucky.  Duvall has achieved two master's degrees in Child and Family Studies and Organizational Leadership from Western Kentucky University.  She earned her bachelor's at the University of Kentucky in Communications and Informational Studies, Family Studies. Duvall has a passion for making positive changes in her community; she is a Board Member and Youth and Community Program Coordinator for the Family Circle Inc., a non-profit organization established in 2011.  She is also the founder and head coach of the Frankfort All-Star Track and Field Club, established in 2012.  Jackie and her husband, Nicholas Duvall, reside in Frankfort, Kentucky, and they have three children.

Yes Arts Website

Susannah Laramee Kidd is an ethnographer turned evaluator and arts and culture policy researcher. She is passionate about developing learning processes that enable practitioners to meet their artistic and social change goals. To that end, she wrote a brief guide for evaluators and researchers on the “Aesthetic Perspectives: Attributes of Excellence for Arts for Change” framework published by Animating Democracy in 2017. As an independent consultant, Laramee Kidd works with artists, arts and community development organizations, and community advocates to create frameworks that generate knowledge for action from the ground up. Currently with Sara Daleiden, she has been part of a team at the City of Santa Monica, CA supporting the Art of Recovery initiative. In 2020 and 2021, many of the Art of Recovery projects activated commercial corridors and public spaces hit hard by the pandemic. With Metris Arts Consulting, she led knowledge-building, theory of change, evaluation-planning and capacity-building, and cultural asset mapping projects in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago and for the state of Indiana. Previously, Laramee Kidd was a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow at the LA County Department of Arts and Culture, where she collaborated with artist Sara Daleiden to evaluate public art, social practice, and public engagement projects at parks and libraries in unincorporated LA County neighborhoods. Laramee Kidd holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology of Religion and Literature and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University.