Administrators of Color Fellows
Meet the 2021 CAC Administrators of Color Fellowship cohort
The California Arts Council Administrators of Color Fellowship is a partnership between the California Arts Council and the administering organization the School of Arts and Culture at the Mexican Heritage Plaza.
CAC-ACF pairs 10 arts administrators, reflecting the breadth of expertise from arts leaders of color statewide, with an equal number of arts and culture organizations dedicated to equity and community engagement for a nine- to 12- month paid fellowship. The pilot fellowship program is made possible by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation and a one-time increase in state arts funding.
To learn more about the California Arts Council Administrators of Color Fellowship, visit the SOAC program page at www.schoolofartsandculture.org/fellowship.
Khalil Bleux (he/him)
Inland Empire - Host Organization: Riverside Art Museum
Dairrick Khalil Hodges, “Khalil Bleux“, is an artist, activist, and educator from Southeast San Diego. He is the founder of The SOULcial Workers, a creative development collective supporting youth and communities through social education and emotional development, and the producing artistic director for Agency 515; The Social Education Theatre, a local non-profit that focuses on mental health, social education, and emotional development through the arts. Khalil is a sought-after playwright, poet, and performer. He has been featured on stages across the country, television, and print publications and has credits in theatre and independent film. Khalil is passionate about using the stage as a platform for education and healing. His works serve to amplify the stories and experiences of marginalized bodies and to raise community consciousness around trauma and relationships. He has had a 13-year career in the social services field serving transition-aged youth across the county. Khalil is a member of the San Diego Suicide Prevention Council and serves as a QPR trainer for the county. He serves on the Create CA statewide initiative for arts education and is also a consultant and director with the San Diego Creative Youth Development Network. Khalil serves as an organizer with Black Lives Matter and the co-founder of The Sit In San Diego: A Black Healing space.
About the Fellow’s Host Organization
Riverside Art Museum, located in the Inland Empire community of Riverside, integrates art into the lives of people in a way that engages, inspires, and builds community by providing high-quality exhibits and art education programs that instill a lifelong love of the arts.
Theodore Davis (he/him)
Central Valley - Host Organization: Arte Américas: The Mexican Arts Center
Theodore Davis is an artist-philosopher born and raised in the Central Valley. Theodore studied modern western philosophy at the University of San Diego for his undergraduate degree and received his M.A. in Philosophy at San Francisco State University. Currently, he is pursuing his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, where his research focuses on the intersection of philosophy and art.
About the Fellow’s Host Organization
Arte Américas: The Mexican Arts Center is a Downtown Fresno-based arts organization with a mission to make the valley a flourishing place for Latino arts.
Sarah Guerra (she/her)
Bay Area (Oakland/Richmond) - Host Organization: Richmond Art Center
Sarah Guerra is a queer native Tejana who has dedicated her life to supporting and leveraging the arts as a tool for education and political and social justice. A Bay Area resident since 2001, Sarah is a seasoned program manager that has overseen the creation, implementation, and evolution of commissioning programs and artist residencies focused on uplifting Black and Brown queer and trans people for Brava! For Women in the Arts, Queer Cultural Center, and La Peña Cultural Center. She participated in the Ford Foundation’s inaugural Future Aesthetic cohort and has served as a liaison and conference organizer for the National Performance Network. As the Production Manager for the Queer Cultural Center, Sarah has supported the presentation of eight National Queer Arts Festivals, providing direct support and feedback to artists as well as implementing Festival logistics. She has served as a grant reviewer for San Francisco Arts Commission, Galería de la Raza, and Live Arts Boston; and recently completed the Executive Program in Arts & Culture Strategy with National Arts Strategies in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice.
About the Fellow’s Host Organization
Richmond Art Center is a arts and culture organization with a mission to be a catalyst in Richmond for learning and living through art.
Nanette Kelley (she/her)
Greater Northern Region (Upstate) - Host Organization: Ink People Center for the Arts
A lifelong traveler, Nanette Kelley divides her time between her Osage and Cherokee homelands in Oklahoma and California’s Redwood Coast. As a first daughter of the Wahzhazhe Nikashe (Osage Nation) Eagle Clan, she was named Hxutha Doin (Looking at the Eagle), and simply put, her birth role is to learn from seeing and make a plan of action for the people. To ensure access to regional culture, language, and traditional arts, Nanette builds cultural bridges among peoples and organizations. Both a professional artist and a journalist, she comes from generations of hidecrafters and metalsmiths; a professional member of the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), she is a contributing writer to Indigenous publications including First American Art Magazine. She earned a B.A. in Art from Humboldt State University, CA and a B.A. in Corporate Communications from Rogers State University, OK. Currently, she is pursuing an M.A. in Indigenous Education & Policy through Arizona State University with an emphasis in regional art, cultural, and natural history community-based curriculum.
About the Fellow’s Host Organization
Started in 1979, Ink People Center for the Arts changes lives by connecting the community with resources for cultural development, encouraging people to exercise their humanity, build civic discourse, and engage their creative potential. They are actively weaving the arts into the fabric of community in Eureka.
Luisa Martínez (we/she/they)
San Diego Area - Host Organization: Museum of Us
Luisa Martínez is a transfronteriza cultural organizer, artist, and educator. Their practice develops from the trans-border context of so-called Tijuana-San Diego, but looks to understand borders, and their imminent destruction, beyond geographical parameters. Much of her work focuses on tenderness, intimacy, and radical imagination as strategies of resistance and solidarity. She investigates the ways our bodies can disrupt and transform space physically, emotionally, and politically; and assembles creative spaces (ephemeral, recurring, and permanent) and centers underrepresented creators and their communities. Luisa, in collaboration with others, assembles spaces that center communities – past co-conspirators include IMPERFECTU, Out Here, Nett Nett, Las Fotos Project, Casa Tamarindo, Burn All Books, Teros Gallery, Ruidosón artists, among others. She currently collaborates with Tijuana Zine Fest, Homegrown Youth Collaborative, Otros Dreams en Acción (ODA), and The Aja Project.
About the Fellow’s Host Organization
The Museum of Us (formerly known as the San Diego Museum of Man), located in the Balboa Park district of San Diego, is a cultural institution created to inspire human connections by exploring the human experience.
Eric Mora (he/him)
Central Coast - Host Organization: Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
Eric Mora was born in Salinas, CA and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University. He is currently a Master of Public Administration candidate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), where he is specializing in Monitoring, Evaluation, and Design. Prior to enrolling at MIIS, Eric worked for several nonprofit organizations in marketing, development, and community engagement roles. Passionate about the arts, LGBTQ+ issues, and community building, Eric has served on the board of directors of Salinas Valley Pride Celebrations since 2018 and the Arts Council for Monterey County since 2017. In his spare time, he enjoys reading poetry, creative nonfiction, and contemporary literature.
About the Fellow’s Host Organization
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, also known as the Museum of Art & History at the McPherson Center, is a cultural institution with a mission to share experiences and unexpected connections located in Downtown Santa Cruz.
Betty Nguyễn (she/her)
Bay Area (San Jose) - Host Organization: Red Ladder Theatre Company
Betty Nguyễn plays with any available mediums as she reckons with discomfort and displacement. Carrying memories of her mother’s motherland (Việt Nam), she moves with acknowledgment of the borrowed Ohlone land that is her hometown (San José). She received her B.S. in Biology at Stanford University, where she studied how organisms survive and currently works towards an M.A. in Arts in Medicine from the University of Florida, where she insists on art as a practice of survival for communities of color. This insistence is infused into her prior work as an arts administrator at Cocoroom, a project coordinator at a community health center, and a lead with Santa Clara County’s pandemic response. She dreams of invertebrates, mosaic kneecaps, pipes connecting endless bodies of water, and making a collaborative film with her community.
About the Fellow’s Host Organization
Red Ladder Theatre Company was founded on the understanding that the most essential component of a healthy individual is the creative spirit. The theater company, located in the Japantown neighborhood of San Jose, exists to connect our most vulnerable community members with their own creativity – igniting their imaginations and amplifying their voices — empowering them to tell their own stories.
Jade Puga (she/her)
Greater Los Angeles - Host Organization: Avenue 50 Studio, Inc.
Jade Puga grew up a stone’s throw away from the US/MX border. With only two television channels available, the environment was ripe for creativity and imagination. A graduate of USC School of Theater, she co-founded Safada Y Sano Productions, a film and media company that combines Jade’s passion for arts and social justice.
About the Fellow’s Host Organization
Avenue 50 Studio, Inc., located in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, is an arts presentation organization grounded in Latinx/Chicanx culture, visual arts, and the Northeast Los Angeles area that seeks to bridge cultures through artistic expressions, using content-driven art to educate and to stimulate intercultural understanding.
Javier Stell-Frésquez (fluid pronouns)
Bay Area (San Francisco) - Host Organization: World Arts West
Javier Stell-Frésquez, a Piru & Tigua Native American from El Paso, TX, serves Indigenous communities of the San Francisco Bay, with the BAAIT-S Two-Spirits Powwow. As a House Artist at Counterpulse SF, she co-presented Weaving Spirits Two-Spirit Performance Festival, the first festival of its kind, and co-authored the two grants that supported it (Rainin New Works, and SF Arts Commission OPG). She has life-long experience in many dance forms, including, more recently, Indigenous contemporary, vogue, and performance art. He consults for various arts organizations and creative projects with skills amplified by a B.S. in Environmental Science with honors in Chican@ Studies from Stanford University. She advocated for greater diversity, inclusion, equity, and accessibility on the Isadora Duncan Bay Area Dance Awards Committee for 2 years. She also tours Mother the Verb internationally, and recently completed a multimedia dance-and-video-based performance project called Chaac & Yum.
About the Fellow’s Host Organization
World Arts West (WAW), a San Francisco-based arts organization, supports local artists sustaining diverse world dance and music traditions by providing needed services and performance opportunities while deepening the public’s support of and engagement with these inspiring culture bearers.
Beatrice Thomas (she/they)
Greater Northern Region (Capital) - Host Organization: Sol Collective
Beatrice Thomas, star and creator of Black Benatar’s Black Magic Cabaret and principal of Authentic Arts & Media, is a national multi-disciplinary artist, cultural strategist, social justice drag queen, and creative producer. Whether through creative production; consulting; or equity, diversity, and inclusion workshops, Mx. Thomas’ focus is on uplifting and centering queer, transgender, and POC voices, with special attention to creating queer-inclusive family programming. They also serve on the national board of directors for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals and have been named a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist for 2020.
About the Fellow’s Host Organization
Sol Collective is a Sacramento-based community partnership organization whose mission is to provide artistic, cultural, and educational programming; promote social justice; empower youth of color, marginalized, and underserved communities through art, activism, music, and media.