Allentza Michel is an artist, urban planner, policy advocate and researcher with a background in community organizing and human service. She has 19 years of diverse experience across community & economic development, education, food security, public health and transportation in local, national and international settings. Her experiences, both professional and societal, inform her current work in civic design, community and organizational development, and social equity. 

Growing up and working in underserved communities in Boston led Allentza to coalition building and community planning, with a particular focus on mobility and neighborhood revitalization. She is the founder and creative director of Powerful Pathways, a social practice and consultancy that works in urban planning, policy, and placekeeping using arts, technology and design thinking methods with a racial justice approach. She currently serves as Program Officer for Arts and Culture with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where she is working with a national arts commission supporting research to promote arts education and the creative workforce development policy.

Allentza has held several volunteer community leadership roles, including founding and co-founding non-profit organizations and civic initiatives. She has served on many boards, civic groups and coalitions including the Network of Arts Administrators of Color Boston, and BAMS Fest, Boston’s premier music, arts and soul festival. Ms. Michel received a Master's in Public Policy.at Tufts University's Department of Urban & Environmental Planning and Policy and studied Civic Media and Art Practice at Emerson College. She has BAs in English and Social and Political Systems from Pine Manor College and holds a graduate certificate in Non-profit Management from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

Asiyah Kurtz is an applied anthropologist and graduate researcher in the field of cultural sustainability. A self-taught quilter, Asiyah is accustomed to taking seemingly disparate items and weaving them together to create solutions that address macro-issues. Originally from Memphis, TN, she earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Memphis where she focused her work on community development and organizing. Asiyah has extensive leadership and fundraising experience from several non-profit organizations, including St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, among others. After relocating to New Jersey in 2016, she launched her political career and became the first Black person in the history of Haddon Heights, NJ to be elected to office. As Executive Director of Camden FireWorks, Asiyah leads the organization using an equity-driven, assets-based approach. She subscribes to Octavia Butler’s school of thought that “There is nothing new under the sun but there are new suns.” Asiyah believes that sustaining a community requires a new constellation of thought + a revisiting of the elemental ways of being and that the arts allow us to imagine those possibilities.

Noreen Scott Garrity, Associate Director for Education, Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts, Camden NJ, has directed arts education and community arts programs since 1990, serving 20,000 participants annually.  Projects include:  A New View – Camden, public art sites funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge; Encore Arts art-making courses for older adults; and the Museum Mentorship Program, focused on teaching museum skills to Camden students.  She serves currently as a Vice Chair of ArtPride New Jersey, and is also on the board of the South Jersey Cultural Alliance.  Garrity previously held positions at the Please Touch Museum and the Chicago Children's Museum.   Garrity has a BFA from the University of Delaware, and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Garrity has received awards for arts education programming and her own artwork, but is most proud of the Hometown Hero Award from the Campbell Soup Foundation for community arts work in Camden, NJ.  

Born and raised in Camden, New Jersey Vedra Chandler graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Government before pursuing a careers in business, music and community development.  After several years working in the private sector, Vedra’s heart led her away from Corporate America and on to the open road when she joined the touring company of the hit Broadway musical Hairspray. From there she performed in various theater projects until in 2010 she ran away with the circus to perform the role of the Soul Singer on Kooza by Cirque Du Soleil. Today Vedra is back in her hometown of Camden,NJ where she worked for two years as Associate Director of The Neighborhood Center, Inc. developing programs to cultivate creativity and stimulate critical thinking in young people before accepting the position of Project Manager at Camden Community Partnership. At CCP Vedra uses the arts as a vehicle to tap into the potential of Camden city and its residents, revitalize underutilized spaces through the Connect the Lots initiative and the A New View -Camden public art project.  Vedra is a proud member of the Camden County Cultural and Heritage Commission, a member of Macedonia A.M.E. Church, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and performs with her musical ensemble CPR: Music Invincible throughout the Delaware Valley. For art is one of the vehicles by which we tap into the potential of Camden and fuel the resurgence of this “City Invincible.” 

Heather Theresa Clark utilizes art, architecture and public interventions to catalyze built environments that power themselves, cleanse themselves, transform waste, provide wildlife habitat, produce food, and enhance the lives of people. Clark comes from a background immersed in art, making, and managing large-scale projects that benefit people and the environment.  She interweaves her passion for art, building science, making, ecology, social justice, green development and planning to create projects that challenge present reality and attempt to make life more fulfilling. She has transformed a burned building shell into an open-air theater with a living sculpture; co-created the Busycle, a 15 person-pedal powered bus; and shown her artwork internationally.   Clark has been a Hamiltonian Fellow in Washington DC; the 2017 artist-in-residence at the Woods Hole Research Center, a leading climate change think tank; and the 2016 recipient of the Virginia Commission for the Arts Sculpture Fellowship Award.  She holds a Master of Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, and a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University, summa cum laude, in Environmental Science and Community Planning, a self-designed major.

Rosa Lowinger is Principal and Chief Conservator of RLA Conservation of Art + Architecture, and a practitioner with 30+ years of experience. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation and the ASsociation for Preservation Technology and was the 2009 Rome Prize Fellow in Conservation at the American Academy in Rome. She holds an M.A. in art history and conservation from NYU's Institute of Fine Arts and has worked in public art conservation for major programs since the 1990s.

Website: www.rlaconservation.com

Twitter: @RLAconservation

Christina Varvi is Principal Conservator at RLA Conservation of ARt + Architecture, Inc. and a Professional Associate of AIC. She holds an M.S. in historic preservation and materials conservation from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and has been with RLA since 2011. She serves as an ongoing consultant to dozens of public art programs and agencies, including the GSA, San Diego International Airport, the Huntington, Hawaii State Foundation for Culture and the Arts, and the cities of Honolulu, HI, Sioux Falls, SD, Kansas City, MO, Fort Worth, TX, Tucson, AZ, Charlotte, NC, Cedar Rapids, IA, and the California cities of Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Berkeley, Inglewood, Culver City, Long Beach, and Pasadena, CA. She is known for expertise in mosaics and integral architectural artworks, and was lead conservator for the team that conserved and restored the 1930’s façade of the former May Company Building in Los Angeles, recently awarded a 2019 California Preservation Foundation Award for Craftsmanship.  Prior to joining RLA, she worked for New York’s Central Park Conservancy and at Jablonski Building Conservation, where she helped conserve hand-made subway ceramic relief tile murals rescued from the World Trade Center site following the September 11^th attacks. 

Kelly Ciociola is a Conservator at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens and a Professional Associate, AIC.She holds a 2010 M.S. in historic preservation and conservation from the jointClemson University and College of Charleston graduate program in Charleston,SC. Kelly served as Principal Conservator for RLA's Miami office from2014-2021, and managed public art conservation for numerous Florida cities, andthe Jacksonville, Palm Beach, and Indianapolis International Airports. Prior to joining RLA, Kelly managed conservation treatmentson high-profile Federal projects for Kreilick Conservation, LLC, including theweathervane at Independence Hall, and the Jeanne D’Arc Memorial atMeridian Hill Park in Washington, DC. 

Email: Kelly.ciociola@vizcaya.org

Rosa Lowinger is Principal and Chief Conservator of RLA Conservation of Art + Architecture, and a practitioner with 30+ years of experience. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation and the ASsociation for Preservation Technology and was the 2009 Rome Prize Fellow in Conservation at the American Academy in Rome. She holds an M.A. in art history and conservation from NYU's Institute of Fine Arts and has worked in public art conservation for major programs since the 1990s.

Website: www.rlaconservation.com

Twitter: @RLAconservation

Bob holds a graduate degree in conservation and has been a conservator in Oberlin, Ohio for the past 36 years. He founded his company 31 years ago and now with a staff of 11 full-time employees is largely engaged in the conservation of outdoor sculpture and public art of diverse media. Because media is so diverse, many of the 7 conservator employees, including himself, has a material specialty, such as metals; casting; stone, mortars and cements; mosaics; electronics, electronic lighting and computers; FRP; industrial coatings; shop and location painting; and automotive finishes. The company operates The Ohio Conservation Center, a complex of three dedicated buildings and grounds with spaces and equipment necessary for rigging, craning, moving and working on the most monumental of artworks.

Bob’s specialties have been industrial coatings on metals (specifications and inspections/failure analyses); relocation of endangered mosaics; and collection condition information management.

For the past 22 years he and his company have been continuously in contract with the U.S. General Services Administration for the nation-wide conservation of government public sculptural fine art and significant architectural ornamentations (commissions dating back into the 19^th century) as well as the public art commissions of the GSA Art-in-Architecture program.    

Website: https://mckaylodge.com/

Twitter: @ohioconcenter