2025 Creative Youth Awards Review Panel

Qualifying + Scoring Panel

Creative Writing

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  • Alan Chazaro is the author of This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), Piñata Theory (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), and Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge (Ghost City Press, 2021). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and a former Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow at the University of San Francisco. His work can be found in KQED, L.A. Times, GQ, NPR, The Guardian, SLAM and more.

Alan Chazaro

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  • Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet & writer based in San Francisco and holds an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (2019) and Fifty Mothers, forthcoming from River River Books (Feb 2026). Her work has been published in AGNI, The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner among other places. Her debut short story won the 2021 Pen/Dau Emerging Writers Prize.Vangani has been a resident at UCross, Djerassi and Ragdale. She has received grants from San Francisco Arts Commission and YBCA.

Eliot Schain

  • I was a high school teacher for twenty-eight years, have been a psychotherapist for twenty, and a poet all along. Publications include poems in APR and Ploughshares, among others, and critical reviews in Fort Da and Poetry Flash. My most recent book, The Distant Sound, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press; I have released two spoken word albums—collaborations with blues guitarist Harrison Flynn—on Apple Music and Spotify.

Preeti Vangani

Dance

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  • Sarah Chou is a freelance dancer based in San Francisco, California. A 2020 Cum Laude graduate of Wellesley College with a B.A. in History, she danced extensively in Boston before completing the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program in 2022. She has performed with SFDanceworks and ODC/Dance Company and channels her passion for creativity and equity through her work on the Finance team at Intersection for the Arts.

James “Bear” Graham

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  • James “Bear” Graham is a San Francisco-based choreographer, performer, and educator. Graham produces DANCE LOVERS...duets by couples, crushes, and comrades, each year around Valentine's Day in San Francisco. He is currently studying Psychology/Drama Therapy at CIIS. He is a certified Gaga teacher and has been on faculty at UC Berkeley since 2015.

Saharla Vetsch

  • Saharla Vetsch is a Somali American multidisciplinary artist based in the Bay Area. With a degree in Performing Arts and Social Justice from the University of San Francisco, her work focuses on the transformative power of movement. Through teaching and performances, she celebrates intersecting identities and fosters connection in queer nightlife, early childhood dance education, and collaborative performances.

Sarah Chou

Film

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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.

Adrian Burrell

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  • Rafael Flores is a Phi Beta Kappa scholar specializing in Directing, Social Justice Film Production, Chicano Cinema, and Third Cinema. He is the Co-founder of Green Eyed Media and Administrative Director of Hidden GEM Creative Studios in Oakland, CA. His work has been recognized by institutions such as The White House, TEDx, the Cannes Film Festival, and the Chicano International Film Festival.

Lex Sloan

  • Adrian Burrell’s practice includes photography, film, installation, and experimental media. Burrell’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions Venus Blues at the Minnesota Street Project Foundation and Sugarcane and Lightning pt 3 at the San José ICA. A third-generation Oakland artist and US Marine Corps veteran, Burrell received his BFA in Film from the San Francisco Art Institute and MFA from Stanford University’s Department of Art & Art History. His works are included in the collections of SFMOMA and Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento.

Rafael Flores

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

  • Dr. Thomas Kurtz is an educator, researcher, cultural arts administrator, and performing artist dedicated to equity-driven initiatives in the arts. His research explores music's role in social justice, with a focus on LGBTQ+ communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a saxophonist, he has performed throughout the Bay Area and as a soloist at Carnegie Hall. He teaches at the University of San Francisco and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Mia Pixley

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  • Mia Pixley, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, mother, and multidisciplinary artist who blends cello, voice, and performance to explore themes of self, community, and nature. Trained at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, she has opened for artists like Fantastic Negrito and Valerie June and collaborates with GRAMMY-nominated musicians such as Barbara Higbie. Known for her whimsical and melancholic music, Mia inspires wonder and reconnection through her artistry.

Thomas Kurtz

Original Music

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  • Christopher Luna-Mega is a composer from Mexico City. Interested in focused listening, performance strategies, audio technology, and interdisciplinary collaboration, his work analyzes sounds and data from natural and urban environments and translates them into notated music for performers and electronics in various forms of media.

Christopher Luna-Mega

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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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  • Beth Custer is a San Francisco based composer, performer, bandleader and recording artist. Beth is a member of the live music-to-silent film ensemble the Club Foot Orchestra, the 4th world music group Trance Mission, and the trip-hop duo Eighty Mile Beach. She leads the clarinet quartet Clarinet Thing and co-leads the funky ensemble Russian Telegraph named after two of San Francisco's hills.

Beth Custer

Photography

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  • Charles Lee is a Cleveland-based interdisciplinary artist and photographer. His work has been exhibited widely, including solo shows at SF Camerawork and the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. His photos have been published in the British Journal of Photography and Mother Jones Magazine. Lee received his MFA degree, with honors, from California College of the Arts in 2023.

Charles Lee

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  • Alex Landry, a New Orleans native, earned a BA in art history and sculpture and an MA from Tulane University. She has held curatorial roles at Newcomb Art Museum and Asheville Art Museum and now works as a curatorial assistant in photography at SFMOMA, focusing on queer narratives and sustainable art-making.

Alex Landry

  • Andrew Owen is a photographer living and working in San Francisco. His current project, In Light Years, is an exploration of the California landscape in the era of extreme weather. Andrew was formerly the Managing Director of the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph, a National Geographic Young Explorer, Creative Editor at Instagram, and community-builder for tech startups. His newest obsession is crafting handmade photo books.

Andrew Owen

Visual Art

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  • Narges Poursadeqi, born and raised in Tehran, Iran, began her artistic journey in photography and video at the Iranian Youth Cinema Society before studying Fine Art at UC Berkeley and California College of the Arts. Her work explores culture, memory, and narrative, drawing on political events, cultural history, and religion. Through archived media, Poursadeqi creates pieces reflecting political movements, cultural shifts, and religious discourse. Poursadeqi's pieces have been exhibited at venues such as Hamzianpour & Kia Gallery, Artists' Television Access, and Kala Art Gallery. She is a recipient of the Artist Residence Award at the Kala Art Institute and the Alumnx Residency at California College of the Arts

Narges Poursadequi

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  • Fred Noland is a visual storyteller and Adjunct Professor in the Comics Program at CCA. His comics have appeared in The New Yorker, and he created San Francisco Black History, a public art series for the San Francisco Arts Commission. His memoir comics collection, Steady Rollin', was released in 2023. He is currently working on Major Taylor, a biographical comic about the first Black World Champion in road cycling. Noland lives in Oakland, California, and is an avid cyclist.

Simon Tran

  • 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.

Frederick Noland

Feedback Panel

Creative Writing

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  • J. K. Fowler is a current fellow in the CA for the Arts Grassroots Artists Advocacy Program (GAAP), current Executive Director of the Bay Area Book Festival, Policy Analyst and Special Programs/Community Outreach with BAMBD, CDC, and Operations Support for APEN and APEN Action. Previously, he founded and ran Nomadic Press, a community rooted publishing house headquartered in Oakland and sat on Oakland's Cultural Affairs Commission, during which time he helped launch the Oakland Poet Laureate Program.

J.K. Fowler

  • Jaime Cortez 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

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  • Claudia is an author and scholar from Chiapas, Mexico. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative writing at Dominican University of California. And she also is the author of two novels No habra retorno (2015), winner of the Rosario Castellanos National Novel Award 2015, and Cálao Bicorne (2023). Recently, her short fiction book Lacandona Speed was recognized in the First International Intergenre Writing Contest in Spanish in Canada and the United States, Literal, Latin American Voices

Claudia Morales

Dance

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  • Ronnie Reddick is a San Francisco-based choreographer known for blending hip-hop, jazz, fashion, and theatrics to create a very dynamic and explosoive style of dance. His innovative approach has made him one of the most sought-after choreographers andn dancers in the Bay Area and beyond, working with artists, designers, and fashion brands worldwide.

Ronnie Reddick

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  • Nadia Adame is a Spanish award-winning multidisciplinary artist and performer. Trained at the Royal Dance Conservatory of Madrid, she holds a BA in Theatre from the University of Colorado. She has worked with renowned choreographers like Stephen Petronio, Bill T. Jones, Asun Noales, and Rafael Bonachela across the UK, Spain, the US, and Canada. Nadia is the Artistic Director and Choreographer at AXIS Dance Company.

Nadia Adame

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Raissa Simpson

  • Raissa Simpson is an award-winning choreographer, artistic director of PUSH Dance Company, and an arts educator at Stanford University. Her choreography has toured to over 50 venues across the United States including Ferst Center for the Arts, Aspen Fringe Festival, Joyce SoHo and many more. As an administrator, Raissa operates the Sanctuary, a dance studio in downtown San Francisco.

Film

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  • Matthew Silas 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 18 years making "funny pictures with friends," including WALL-E, Inside Out, and Turning Red, among others.

Matthew Silas

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  • Australian-born Michele Turnure-Salleo is the Principal/Producer at San Francisco-based Feracious Entertainment. Her recent Executive Producer/Co-Executive Producer credits include Blueback (TIFF 2022/Sundance 2023), Farewell Amor (Sundance 2020), and Buoyancy (Berlinale 2019). Michele also works internationally as a script editor and mentor for screenwriting labs, including Stowe Story Lab and Biennale College Cinema. She has taught in the film department at California College of the Arts for over a decade.

Michele Turnure-Salleo

  • Film Director, Jody Stillwater, has been nominated for two Emmy’s and created work featured at the MoMA, de Young Museum, YBCA, Mutek, Transfer Gallery, and ISEA. He co-founded Yanasa Creative Group, whose mission is to employ storytelling that prioritizes equity and inclusion, allowing for diverse stories from underrepresented communities to thrive. To Jody, making films and telling stories feels like taking imagery and symbolism from culture, breaking it down to its most base elements and building it back up for the present and future.

Jody Stillwater

Music Performance

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  • Valérie Sainte-Agathe has prepared and conducted the San Francisco Girls Chorus since 2013. Through transformative choral music training, education, and performance, Ms. Sainte-Agathe empowers young women and champions the music of today throughout the choral world. A native of Martinique, Ms. Sainte-Agathe received her Bachelor of Music degree in Choral Conducting from Universite Paul Valery in Montpellier, and her Diplome d’Etudes Musicales in Piano, Chamber Music and Theory from the Montpellier Conservatory.

Valérie Sainte-Agathe

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  • Ruby Ibarra 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

  • Crystal Pascucci-Clifford is a passionate member of the Bay Area music community. As a conservatory-trained cellist and composer, she's worked toward balancing a career in arts administration alongside curation, composing, performing and learning. Crystal is the Executive Director of InterMusic SF, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustaining and nourishing the Bay Area creative environment for musicians and audience members.

Crystal Pascucci-Clifford

Original Music

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  • John Loose is the Director of Audio Production at Dolby and helped kick-start the computer game industry's adoption of Dolby audio. Since 1999, he has worked as a composer, surround mixer, and mastering engineer on hundreds of DVDs, Blu-rays, and media demos, as well as serving as a re-recording mixer for feature films. Among the first to mix music in Dolby Atmos, he is also a trained classical percussionist and Mannes College of Music graduate who has toured globally and appeared on 40 CDs across various genres.

John Loose

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  • Sarah Cahill is a pianist, radio show host, lecturer, and new music advocate. She has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano, and recent performances include The Barbican Centre in London, The National Gallery of Art, and an NPR Tiny Desk concert. Sarah’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening on KALW in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Sarah Cahill

  • Zachary Watkins is an Oakland based composer, electronic musician and educator. He holds degrees in Composition and Electronic Music from Cornnish College of the Arts and Mills College where he studied with practicing composers and musicians from aronud the world. Recent Kronos String Quartet commissions "Peace Be Till" and "Black Body Radiance" are regulary performed by the renowned quartet. His 2024 album "Affirmative Action" is released by Sige Records and documents three concerns: social practice / collaboration, notation and tuning.

Zachary James Watkins

Photography

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  • J. John Priola is a contemporary visual artist specializing in photography and video, known for his refined presentation and print quality. His work has been featured in exhibitions like In A Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice at the Berkeley Art Museum and Picturing Eden, a five-year traveling show. His pieces are held in major collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ron Moultrie Saunders

  • The Executive Director of SF Camerawork, Renaikha Cruz Fermin is a first generation Latinx Artist-Administrator. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for Visual Arts under a Merit Scholarship and has worked for the Tacoma Art Museum, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and SFMOMA. She is deeply involved with the vibrant art community in the Bay Area as an avid supporter and cultivator of social-creative events, with a focus on the historic Bayview-Hunter's Point neighborhood where she resides.

J. John Priola

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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.

Renaikha Cruz Fermin

Visual Art

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  • Lawrence Rinder 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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  • Kota Ezawa visually transforms imagery he mines from the news, the history of art, photography, film, and popular culture in his acclaimed video animations, lightboxes, murals, sculptures, watercolors, and other artworks. By translating iconic images from one visual form to another, his work invites both the artist and viewers to reflect on how images shape our cultural consciousness.

Kota Ezawa

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  • Daisy Nam is a curator, writer and lecturer. Currently serving as the Director and Chief Curator of The Wattis Institute at CCA, she has over 15 years of experience organizing exhibitions and programs for arts institutions and universities including Ballroom Marfa; the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Harvard; the New Museum; and Columbia University. She holds an M.A. in Modern Art Curatorial and Critical Studies from Columbia University and a B.A. in Art History with a Cinema Studies minor from New York University.

Daisy Nam