Hatuey Ramos-Fermín is an artist. He has organized projects at sites ranging from small businesses and community centers to churches, streets, galleries, and museums. He has worked at the Center for Urban Pedagogy, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and The Laundromat Project. He has participated in the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts' Shift Residency and The Laundromat Project’s Create Change Artist Residency. Ramos-Fermín received his BA from the University of Puerto Rico and his MFA from the St. Joost School of Art and Design.

Valéria (“Val”) Miranda is the executive director of the Santa Cruz Art League, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2019, and of Pajaro Valley Arts in Watsonville. She is passionate about the power of the arts and culture to change individuals, communities, and society. Val was the Director of Education at the San Jose Museum of Art and at the Monterey Museum of Art. Val taught graduate art and museum education at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco for 7 years. She also consults in equity and diversity, nonprofit administration, education, strategic planning, and fundraising.

Val is a 2019 Americans for the Arts’ Leaders of Color Forum Fellow, a 2013 graduate of the Multicultural Artists Leadership Institute at the School of Arts & Culture @ Mexican Heritage Plaza, and a 2001 graduate of Packard-funded Arts Leadership for the Future. She holds an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco.

Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Val’s artistic practice is in dance, and she was a member of amateur and semi-professional dance companies from middle school to college. She still takes lots of dance classes where she continues to explore and honor her Afro-Latinidad. Her work in and with art organizations has given her opportunities to not only develop audience-centered programming but to also to develop relationships with San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area artists and art organization leaders.

Communities are central to the existence of any cultural organization and an extremely important part of Val’s professional and personal life. She is passionately committed to the sustainable power of collaborations and partnerships in leveraging cultural resources. Since 1992 she has worked with an extensive number of community groups including artists, business leaders, schools, neighborhood associations, artists, professional organizations, universities, city officials, and cultural advocacy groups.

In Santa Cruz, CA, for the last twenty years, Valéria is also an avid urban homesteader, and spends lots of time in the local art spaces, beaches and woods with her spunky 17-year-old son and many friends.