2024 Creative Youth Awards Review Panel

Qualifying + Scoring Panel

Creative Writing

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  • Rebecca is a poet, former professor, and believer in the power of art in our communities. Her book, Cottonlandia, won a Juniper Prize in Poetry, and she has received NEA, Fulbright, and Stegner Fellowships. Originally from Albany, Georgia, she served a double term as the Poet Laureate of her adopted hometown of Albany, CA from 2016-2020.

Rebecca Black

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  • Meilani is a writer, mama, and educator from Oakland, CA. Her debut poetry collection, and the creek don't rise, won the 2021 Michael Rubin Book Award from San Francisco State University's Fourteen Hills Press. A graduate of Howard University, the University of San Francisco's Urban Education and Social Justice program, and a current MFA Poetry candidate at SFSU, Meilani aspires to be in school forever, to bridge worlds with her words, and to one day build forts out of books written by Black folks.

Meilani Clay

  • Maw is a poet and educator who teaches poetry in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA and her most recent poetry collection, Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn) was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for CALIBA's Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. Win’s full-length collection Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn) is forthcoming in 2024.

Maw Shein Win

Dance

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  • Maxine is an award-winning poet, choreographer and former US-UK Fulbright candidate from Northern California, holding recent residencies from Djerassi Resident Artist Program and The Center at Eagle Hill. She was a finalist for 92NY’s Future Dance Festival (New York) and a featured choreographer for World Stage Design (Canada). She currently directs Roco Dance’s youth modern dance company, BodyLanguage and dances for eMotion Arts under the direction of Mariana Sobral.

Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş

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  • Rama is a professional dancer based out of the Bay Area, California. He’s been studying street dance styles for the last 15 years, House Dance being his main style. Rama has been a core member of the acclaimed Bay Area dance theater company Embodiment Project for 14 years and a staple teacher of dance in the Bay Area for both adults and youth for over 10 years. He is currently a Co-Director of the youth dance theater company “Seeds” based out of ODC Dance Commons.

Rama Hall

  • Clare is a freelance dance a film professional based in Oakland, CA. She graduated in 2012 from Mount Holyoke College with a B.A. in Dance and Mathematics cum laude with high honors and moved to London to complete an M.A. in contemporary dance in 2014. She has performed as a dancer around the SF Bay Area and her films have screened at festivals worldwide. Clare currently works as a Programming Associate with Dance Film SF (which presents the annual San Francisco Dance Fim Festival), as a videographer/editor for Rapt Productions, and is a co-host on the podcast Frameform.

Clare Schweitzer

Film

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  • Amanda is a filmmaker who earned a BFA from California College of the Arts with a duel focus on jewelry/metal arts and textiles. Multifaceted and always exploring new mediums, Amanda began her career as a production designer before becoming a director. In 2013 she made film her career, and has become known for her innovative style and ability to coordinate ambitious visions into reality.

Amanda Beane

  • Matthew is an animation layout artist and cinematographer at Pixar. He studied film directing in UCLA's graduate program, which eventually led to an internship with Pixar. Matthew returned to Pixar after graduating from school and has spent the last 17 years making "funny pictures with friends," including WALL-E, Inside Out, and Turning Red, among others.

Matthew Silas

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  • Lex is the Executive Director at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, one of the founders of the Bay Area Media Maker Summit, and serves on the Board of the Art House Convergence. They graduated with an MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University and a BA in Social Change Media from Western Washington University. Lex is a devoted member of the LGBTQ+ filmmaking community and is committed to ensuring that queer history is preserved and shared through the power of cinema.

Lex Sloan

Music Performance

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  • Amelie Anna is a percussionist, vocalist, composer, bandleader, and and Assistant Director of the Roots, Jazz and American Music Program (RJAM) at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She graduated from the inaugural class of the RJAM program and studied with SFJAZZ Collective artists and jazz greats. Her studies brought her to the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Jazz Education Network Conference in New Orleans. Amelie has performed at major venues throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including SFJAZZ, The Black Cat and The Chapel, as well as in venues across Europe.

Amelie Anna

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  • Mateo is an East Bay born-and-raised educator, audio engineer, musician, and lifelong learner. He earned his BA in Broadcast and Electronic Communications Arts from San Francisco State University, and more recently completed a Master's program in Library and Information Science through San Jose State University. Mateo previously worked with Women's Audio Mission managing their youth education program, exposing the SF Bay Area's young people of marginalized gender identities to the world of audio technology and production.

Mateo Campos-Seligman

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  • Justin is a driven arts administrator with a passion for programs that encourage transformative experiences and cultivate personal growth through a commitment to artistic excellence. He received his Bachelor’s in Percussion Performance from California State University, Long Beach, and his Master’s in Percussion Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Justin currently serves as the Associate Dean & Executive Director of the Pre-College & Continuing Education Divisions at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and is a freelance percussionist and educator with over 15 years of experience working with students of all ages.

Justin Sun

Original Music

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  • June has been teaching in the pre-college division at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) for over 20 years since graduating with a master's degree in composition from the SFCM in the late 90s. Their specialty is working with very young students, teaching them musicianship and composition in an age-appropriate manner. June is also the composer in residence at the Oakland-based Community Women's Orchestra and teaches locally.

June Bonacich

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  • Giacomo is an Italian-born guitarist and musicologist who teaches a wide range of historical and practical music courses at the University of San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz. He has premiered more than two dozen new works for justly-tuned, electric, and classical guitars, and released several recordings for Populist, Cold Blue, Pinna, Spectropol, Paper Garden Records, and his own impressum. Giacomo is a member of Ninth Planet New Music (the chamber group formerly known as Wild Rumpus), and an occasional performer for New Music Works, sfSound, and other Bay Area ensembles.

Giacomo Fiore

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  • Dylan is a composer who creates music which offers ecstatic, transformative experience and provides an opportunity to alter the way we see our world and place within it. His music has been described as “a historic triumph of aspiration” by the SF Chronicle and “the most poignantly entrancing passages of beautiful music in recent memory” by LA Weekly. As Executive Director of the ensemble Contemporaneous, Dylan’s work creates an opportunity for other composers to follow their own wildest dreams. He holds a B.A. in Classics from Bard College, a B.M. in Music Composition from the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and an M.M. from the Yale School of Music.

Dylan Mattingly

Photography

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  • Rohan DaCosta is a multidisciplinary artist from Chicago and based in Oakland. He is a published author, photographer, and arts curator. Rohan currently produces an interview series title, Playdate, spotlighting artists and entrepreneurs in the Bay Area.

Rohan DaCosta

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  • Lucy is a photographer and educator who coordinates commissions in the editorial and publishing realms alongside her self-initiated, fine art projects. She also runs workshops that focus on creativity and awareness and coaches photographers privately. Lucy's passion lies ever-rooted in the desire to capture the unseen, the overlooked and the fundamentally forgotten in all aspects of life, both literally and metaphorically.

Lucy Goodhart

  • Aneeta is a visual artist using photography, film, and new media to interrogate concepts of identity, visibility, and political complacency. They have been an artist resident at More Art and a fellow at Brooklyn Community Pride Center. Their work has been exhibited at Flux Gallery, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, as well as, film festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Currently, they are the Public Programs and Digital Strategies Manager for First Exposures, a San Francisco youth photography mentoring program.

Aneeta Mitha

Visual Art

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  • Annie makes paintings and ceramic sculptures that explore femininity, symbolism, and art historical references. She received a BA from Vassar College in 2019 and an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2023. Leaning into her affinity for collecting, sorting, and obsessing over objects, her work finds humor, heartbreak, joy, and meaning in the jumbled world we inhabit.

Annie Duncan

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  • Adrianne is an independent curator who has organized exhibitions and programming for Berkeley Art Center, Root Division, and USC Roski Galleries, and is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of GIRLS. She holds both a B.A. in Art History and an M.A. in Curatorial Practices from the University of Southern California. Adrianne's recent achievements include being a 2023 Alternative Exposure Grantee (GIRLS); the Inaugural Artist Power Center Artist of the Month (July 2022); and a 2020 YBCA 100 Honoree.

Adrianne Ramsey

  • Simon is a visual artist and educator who manages the Artists in Education program at Southern Exposure, an artist centered non-profit, in San Francisco, CA. He works with Bay Area youth and teaching artists to create exhibitions for Southern Exposure through various art enrichment programing. Simon is also on the Berkeley Art Center program committee. He has created large scale painted murals and installations for Meta, Chapter 510, and Montage Health.

Simon Tran

Feedback Panel

Creative Writing

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  • Jaime is an author and visual artist based in Watsonville and the San Francisco Bay Area. He has exhibited his art across the Bay Area in venues that include the Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Galeria de la Raza, and Southern Exposure. Jaime's debut short story collection Gordo, was published by Grove Atlantic Press in 2021 and received national acclaim.

Jaime Cortez

  • Judy is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged). She is a recipient of the New Issues Poetry Prize and a Graves Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Humanities, and has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, Millay, the Vermont Studio Center. Judy directs the MFA Creative Writing program at Dominican University of California.

Judy Halebsky

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  • Jenny Odell is an Oakland-based artist and the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock (2023) and How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019). From 2013 to 2021, she taught digital art at Stanford University. Her visual work has been exhibited internationally, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Sierra Magazine.

Jenny Odell

Dance

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  • Kim has been an artist and educator in the Bay Area for over 40 years. She has performed and taught all over the world with Epiphany Dance Theater and founded the free San Francisco Trolley Dances 20 years ago. Kim has been awarded artist residencies including the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, Space 124 Theater Artaud and the Air Residency at Intersection for the Arts. This is her 12th year as artist in residence at Bessie Carmichael Elementary School through Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Kim received her MFA in Choreography Arts from UC Davis.

Kim Epifano

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  • Carma is the Executive Director of ODC/Dance. She has been providing leadership for organizations and projects, working with dynamic community groups, artists and entrepreneurs, philanthropists, businesses, and academic programs for the last 35 years. Carma was previously the Director of Institutional Advancement for The Walt Disney Family Museum.

Carma Zisman

Film

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  • Kate is the Associate Film Curator, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Through her work as a curator, programmer, and projectionist she has cultivated and shared her expansive appreciation of cinema from around the globe. Kate has organized scores of film series and special screenings, including; Hippie Modernism: Cinema and Counterculture 1964-1974; Samurai Rebellion: Toshiro Mifune, Screen Icon; Reflection and Resistance: James Baldwin and Cinema; Life Goes On: The Films of Mia Hansen-Love; Next Door to Darkness: The Films of David Lynch; Forever Kinuyo Tanaka; Joel Coen in Person; and, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cinema of Now.

Kate MacKay

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  • Nicole is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary producer and director, five-time Sundance Film Festival alumnus, and seven-time Emmy nominee. She most recently directed The Disappearance of Shere Hite, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and two episodes of the Emmy-nominated ESPN landmark Title-1X series 37 Words. Nicole co-directed and produced the 2021 Academy Award-nominated documentary Crip Camp with Jim LeBrecht, which won the 2020 Sundance Audience Award, the IDA Best Feature Documentary Award, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature, and a Peabody.

Nicole Newnham

  • Joanne is the Director of Education at the California Film Institute, providing year-round programs to youth and community members to learn about themselves and the world through film. Joanne is a media education specialist and film festival programmer specializing in children’s and documentary films, with 25+ years of experience with film festivals and film arts organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationwide, including a five-year stint as the first Director of Education at the San Francisco Film Society (now SFFILM). She served on the Board of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) from 2015-2020.

Joanne Parsont

Music Performance / Original Music

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  • Jessica is the Founder and Music Director of the San Francisco Philharmonic, Curator and Scholar in Residence with the San Francisco Opera, Cover Conductor with San Francisco Symphony and serves as board member of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras (ACSO). She has been featured on NBC's The Today Show, PBS News Hour Weekend, and KQED. More recently, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) named Jessica 1 of 100 Honorees for 2023 for her contribution to the arts in the Bay Area. She is publishing her first bilingual children's book with Lil' Libros (book company) in Winter 2024.

Jessica Bejarano

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  • Costas is a Greek-American composer, director and sound designer based in San Francisco. Costas has had the opportunity to support youth creativity in film, theater and music through his work at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Art Institute, Young People's Symphony Orchestra, University of the Redlands, Festival Napa Valley, The Bay School of San Francisco, and the Berkeley Symphony.

Costas Dafnis

  • Ruby is a rapper, songwriter, and spoken word artist from the Bay Area, CA. Her latest single, "Switch," featured on the new NBA2K24 video game and soundtrack. She was a songwriter on Seasons 1 and 2 of the Fox Network's hit show, The Cleaning Lady. In 2018, Ruby co-founded the Pinays Rising Scholarship program aimed to uplift Filipina American youth in the arts, education and activism, and in October 2023, she launched a new record label, Bolo Music Group, where she serves as co-founder and CEO.

Ruby Ibarra

Photography

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  • John received his B.F.A. in Photography from the University of Utah, and his M.F.A. in Photography from the California College of the Arts. The Pilara Foundation in San Francisco commissioned his work included in group exhibitions at Pier 24 Photography. John's work is in the permanent collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. John Chiara: California, a monographic publication of his work, was published by Aperture Books in 2017.

John Chiara

  • Aspen is an Associate Professor and Chair of Photography at the California College of the Arts. She received her B.A. in Anthropology and Spanish from The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Aspen is represented by Higher Pictures in New York, and recent honors include a 2021 Purchase Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was also a Fulbright Scholar in Santiago, Chile, where she spent time with astrophysicists using the world's most advanced telescopes to look at the sky, an experience that has made a lasting impact on her work.

Aspen Mays

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  • Ron is a San Francisco-based photographic artist, public artist, landscape architect and teacher. His work is in the San Francisco Arts Commission Civic Art Collection and he completed two commissions for BART in 2023. Ron's work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the US. He is currently on the board for First Exposures, which strives to empower youth through photography, and Black [Space] Residency located in the Minnesota Street Projects in San Francisco.

Ron Moultrie Saunders

Visual Art

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  • Demetri is the Senior Director of Education at Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, CA. He is also an independent curator and practicing artist, and his artwork has been exhibited internationally and most recently at the de Young Museum, Crocker Art Museum and Art Gallery of Alberta. Demetri's artwork is held in several private and public collections and was recently acquired by the Monterey Art Museum, the de Young Museum, and Crocker Art Museum. He is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

Demetri Broxton

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  • Lawrence has been an educator at MoMA, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Walker Art Center, and curator and director at BAMPFA. He previously served as Dean of the College at the California College of the Arts. Lawrence is currently working independently as a curator and writer, exploring his own creativity by working on several novels.

Lawrence Rinder

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  • Kathryn is the Director of Artist Relations at Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. In her former role as assistant curator at the San José Museum of Art (SJMA), she organized Hito Steyerl: Factory of the Sun; Jean Conner: Collage; as well as solo exhibitions of artists including Sonya Rapoport, Jay DeFeo, Catherine Wagner, and Louise Nevelson. Kathryn was the author of SJMA’s digital collection catalogue 50x50: Stories of Visionary Artists from the Collection. She has worked for private collections in San Francisco and curated exhibitions for the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco and the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. She earned an MA in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts and BA at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN.

Kathryn Wade