Activating Heritage 2023 – March 6

GRANTS & MAJOR GIFTS

Panelists:

Claire Fassnacht is the Development Manager at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, where she has worked for five years. Her responsibilities range from capital campaign fundraiser to Young Professionals Board liaison to fundraising events to grants.  She is also the founder and director of Chicago Balinese Gamelan and a board member, musician and dancer with Friends of the Gamelan, both nonprofits that perform Indonesian music and dance across Chicago. She earned her master’s degree in arts administration from Boston University and completed a one-year fellowship in Indonesia sponsored by its Ministry of Culture. Claire’s greatest passion is introducing audiences to two niche treasures of the world—outsider art and gamelan.

Ellen Placey Wadey is the Program Director for Chicago Artistic Vitality and Collections at the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation. Before joining the Foundation in 2013, she was an independent fundraising coach, serving many arts organizations including the Chicago Cultural Alliance and Ragdale Foundation. She was executive director of the Guild Complex – a literary arts organization – for seven years and in that time built the Guild’s impressive artistic accomplishments on a firm foundation of organizational development. Before that, Ellen was the director of marketing and development for the Marwen Foundation. She has reviewed arts proposals on behalf of Prince Charitable Trust and served as a jurist or panelist for the likes of the Illinois Arts Council and the Third Coast Festival New Audio Competition. An accomplished writer, Ellen has two advanced degrees in fiction writing, is the recipient of the Scott Turow Fiction Prize, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Eva Silverman Eva Silverman currently serves as Project Director of Art Design Chicago, a collaborative initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art aimed at highlighting Chicago’s rich visual art and design histories and creative communities. Prior to joining the Terra Foundation, Ms. Silverman was the Associate Director of Arts Alliance Illinois, where she was responsible for fundraising, programming, and stakeholder engagement. Previously, Ms. Silverman was the Director of Arts & Community Engagement for the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture (COTC) and Director of Collaborative Programs for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, where she was a staff member for 18 years.

Teresa Davis is a Program Director for the Illinois Arts Council Agency where she has worked for 6 years. She began working in the Grants Office and then moved over to the Program Office. Teresa is responsible for Arts Service Organizations, Community Arts Access, Individual Artist Support, Local Arts Agencies, and Media Arts. She also serves as the Agency’s ADA 504/Access Coordinator. She enjoys helping Illinois artists and arts organizations and often holds grant writing sessions. She has a background in performing arts to include music and dance and enjoys volunteering in her community.

Moderator: Randy Adamsick – Chicago Cultural Alliance Board of Directors

Activating Heritage 2023 – March 6

COLLABORATING WITH INSTITUTIONS ON DEI INITIATIVES

Panelists:

Beatriz Cañas is a youth advocate and urban environmental educator working at the Chicago Botanic Garden as the Director of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility. Her work is centered on creating positive, safe, and culturally relevant environmental experiences for historically marginalized communities. Currently her work is rooted in organizational culture change including creating equitable decision-making frameworks and strategic planning for non-profits. She advises on several equity centered projects and programs in the Chicagoland area including serving on the Illinois Natural Resource Advisory Board and as part of the Board of Directors for Mujeres Latinas en Accion.

Gabrielle Lyon is a nationally recognized nonprofit leader, educator, and public speaker with experience in launching and leading award-winning social impact organizations and initiatives focused on leveling the playing field of educational access and opportunity. Lyon has extensive experience building sustainable cross-sector networks and leveraging data to inform community-centered program design and strategy.  

She joined Illinois Humanities as the Executive Director in June 2019. Prior to that she served as Vice President of Education and Experience at the Chicago Architecture Center and as a senior researcher at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the founding executive director of Project Exploration, a nonprofit dedicated to changing the face of science for youth and girls of color, recognized under her leadership locally and nationally, including with a Presidential Award for Excellence. Among her honors include being named a National After School Champion by the After School Alliance, Chicagoan of the Year by Chicago Magazine, and a Leadership Fellow with the Chicago Community Trust. Her current research and writing focus on the ways in which participatory humanities experiences impact civic identity and social change. Lyon is the author of No Small Plans, and Washington By and By, graphic novels that follow the adventures of teens work together to design the places they want, need and deserve. She is a writer and coeditor for A Simple Justice: The Challenge of Small Schools. @LyonGabrielle

Rob Fojtik is the Vice President for Neighborhood Strategy at Choose Chicago, promoting Chicago’s neighborhoods to visitors. Programs include the Neighborhood Content Creator that leverages resident-made digital content, and Chicago Alfresco, an initiative to transform public spaces into community plazas for outdoor enjoyment.

Rob has an M.A. from Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies. He was Senior Advisor to Mayor Lightfoot on economic development, international relations, and LGBTQ+ affairs.

Moderator: Dr. Nitha Nagubadi – Mango Networx

Activating Heritage 2023 – March 6

CAREERS IN NONPROFITS

Panelists:

Phoebe Yates is the Curator at the Swedish American Museum. She has BAs in Anthropology and Mathematics from DePaul University and an MA in Mediterranean Archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology at University College London (UCL). For her Masters dissertation she studied trade interactions between Crete and the Aegean Islands in the Bronze Age through evidence of the adoption of the potter’s wheel at six different sites. Her background in anthropology and interest in material culture is what eventually led her to museum work! She has been working in museums for the past six years and in that time have worked at the National Hellenic Museum, Collections at the Institute of Archaeology (UCL), and Field Museum.

Klára Moldová serves as the vice-president and teacher at the T. G. Masaryk School, a century-old community-based Czech language and cultural center in Cicero, Illinois. Besides teaching Czech to children and adults, Klára enjoys organizing cultural projects and utilizes her musical background to work as a Czech diction coach at various opera houses in the US.

Josee Starr is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes from Fort Berthold, North Dakota. She is also Omaha from Macy, NE and Odawa from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Reserve on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. Currently, she is the Director of Operations at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian.

Josee has years of experience working with her community both as a participant in programming and as a facilitator. She has worked as an independent artist and her background is in cultural education. She grew up in the Chicago Native community and has a passion for Native arts.

Leah Rauch (she/her) is the Director of Education at Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, whose mission is to preserve the legacy of the Holocaust by honoring the memories of those who were lost and by teaching universal lessons that combat hatred, prejudice, and indifference. She previously worked as an adjunct professor, teaching history and Holocaust courses at the Council on International Educational Exchange in Berlin. She also worked as an educator at Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum. She has presented at international academic conferences in France and Germany and published her work in The Journal for Holocaust Research.

Moderator: Sarah Cameron – Chicago Cultural Alliance

Activating Heritage 2023 – March 6

IMPACTFUL PROGRAMMING AND SERVICES TO ADDRESS COMMUNITY-BASED TRAUMA

Panelists:

Kaoru Watanabe is a nurse by training and has worked in various multidisciplinary environments throughout her professional career in Japan, Egypt, and the United States. She is currently the Associate Director at the National Cambodian Heritage Museum & Killing Fields Memorial, where she integrates understanding of holistic approach to health; knowledge of intergenerational transmission of culture, history, and trauma; and strong belief in the power of the arts in healing into the museum practice and programs. She was one of the project members, who developed the museum’s permanent exhibition, “Remembering the Killing Fields.” The exhibit was a collaborative work among the community, academics (NIU), artists and filmmakers, museum professionals, and many other supporters. The exhibition, which opened in 2011, continues to provide a forum for intergenerational dialogues among Cambodians and a unique environment for students from local and regional schools and universities to learn Cambodian history and culture.    

Maria Klimchak,  a philologist, author, and educator, has been the curator and creative force of Chicago’s Ukrainian National Museum (UNM) for two decades. Born and raised in Lviv, Ukraine, she was always fascinated by art and storytelling. Maria decided to study languages and literature, and she holds a Master’s Degree in French Philology from Lviv University, Ukraine, and speaks Ukrainian, Russian, French, Polish, and English. In 1993, Maria started a new chapter by immigrating to the United States. Maria received her Artifact Collection Care Certificate from the University of Chicago. Her work as a curator of the Ukrainian National Museum is multidisciplinary, she manages exhibitions, writes museums newsletters, plans, and hosts most museum events. Ms. Klimchak is highly knowledgeable in Ukrainian folk art, history, and the vast museum collections of historical artifacts. Maria is also in charge of the museum’s social media presence.

She and her husband have hosted the Ukrainian Wave Radio program on WSBC Chicago since 1993. She co-produced with Motria Melnyk four documentary films on the history of the parish of St. Volodymyr and Olha in Chicago, the film “Shevchenko and the Maidan” (2021), as well as produced the films “Museum’s Pathway” and “From the Museum Chest” (17,096 views), dedicated to the history of the Ukrainian National Museum in Chicago.

Maria is a member of the Ukrainian Heritage Consortium of North America Ukrainian National Women’s League of America and is in charge of the cultural connections of the Chicago City Sisters Chicago-Kyiv Committee. She is an active volunteer and community fundraiser and has collaborated with volunteer organizations in Ukraine to help the Ukrainian Army and orphanages. She was awarded a commemorative medal for the 100th anniversary of the Ukrainian Navy from the Ukrainian Volunteers Organization.

Moderator: Briana Thomas – Abrahamic Center for Cultural Education

Activating Heritage 2023 – March 6

VOLUNTEERISM AS ACTIVISM

Panelists:

Jill Glenn is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Illinois. She spent seventeen years of her career working with Kids Above All, a nonprofit child welfare agency. She is known as a tireless advocate for underserved populations and youth living in out-of-home placements. As the Executive Director of Community Partnerships at The Chicago School for the last sixteen years, Jill continues to spend much of her time building community relationships. Her energy and enthusiasm for building community partnerships comes from her first-hand understanding of how The Chicago School can impact, as well as benefit, from connecting with the community. She lives out her commitment to service having spent several years volunteering in the community as a basketball coach, tutor/mentor, and summer camp counselor. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Kids Rank, an organization that provides support to children of military families. In addition, she spent fifteen years serving as a weekly volunteer at the Sue Duncan Children’s Center, tutoring and mentoring youth from Chicago’s south side. She currently co-leads a weekly teen boys’ workout group at Oakley Square Apartments on the west side. She received a Master of Arts Degree in Social Work from Aurora University. ​​

Khitam Masoud is a first-generation Palestinian immigrant with a unique background in nonprofit management and philanthropy. As the Executive Director at MALA: Muslim American Leadership Alliance, she is working to build a nation-wide community to amplify the legacy and impact of Muslim American cultural heritage and intersectional identity. 

For more than 10 years, she has been on a mission to build compassionate networks of support through mentorship for women and other marginalized communities in the city of Chicago.  Khit’s passion for philanthropy and community building has inspired her to a lifetime of service.  In 2016, she founded her own nonprofit, Blessons for Women, a nonprofit dedicated to providing scholarships towards skilled trades and resources for women. Khitam’s mission has always been to empower others and educate her community in volunteerism.

Youngwoon Han is Senior Organizing Manager at HANA Center. As a community organizer, he helps build power among Korean and Asian American communities and immigrants of color through civic engagement, policy advocacy, and racial and social justice education and training. He previously worked at National Korean American Service and Education Consortium as a policy and organizing coordinator and is a licensed social worker. HANA means one in Korean and he believes that we will be stronger as one.

Moderator: Sarah Cameron – Chicago Cultural Alliance

Activating Heritage 2023 – March 6

CONNECTING YOUR CULTURAL CONTENT WITH CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Panelists:

Katia Marzolf Borione is a born and raised Chicago kid who is a first generation American of Viking descent. Katia is a K-12 CPS educated student, a former ballerina, and a Butler University graduate with a B.A. in Dance Education & Pedagogy.

Katia began her Dance Teaching Artist career with the Chicago Park District in 1996 and after leaving the Parks in 2002 she taught dance with the Jewish Community Centers of Chicago, the Wilmette Park District, Dancercise Kids of Fun Kids, Inc., and then spent 14 years at Alphonsus Academy & Center for the Arts Elementary School. There she pioneered and developed the Dance Arts Integration program and curriculum as the Dance Teaching Artist-in-Residence and as then supported bringing Arts into the classroom as the Director of Arts, Culture & Integration. From 2017-2020 Katia worked with Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater, in Residence at Northeastern Illinois University, as their Education and Outreach Director before joining Communities In Schools of Chicago in May 2020.

CIS of Chicago has provided Katia the opportunity to fully achieve her personal mission to bring the Arts to as many CPS students as possible. As a CPS Arts Magnet school student, she experienced first-hand how the arts impacted her and her classmates. As a Teaching Artist she was able to provide a safe and creative space for self-expression and student voice to her many students. Katia is proud to call CIS of Chicago her professional family and looks forward to continuing being #AllinforKids.

Ahmad Bracey is the Manager of Learning School and Youth Communities Programming for the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA). Ahmad is a native of Chicago’s Bronzeville community. He received his B.A. from Chicago State University in 2010 majoring in Biology and Philosophy, with a research focus on medical access in African American communities.

In addition to managing a suite of programs in the MCA’s learning department he teaches photography with Early Exposures.

Ahmad had specialized in documenting, through photographs and essays,  elements of Chicago life, including urban framing, pedicabbing, and landmark restoration.

Briana Thomas is the Programs Associate at the Abrahamic Center for Cultural Education (a core member of the Chicago Cultural Alliance). She wears many hats including developing exhibition content, facilitating community programs (children and adults), liaising with visitor artists, and other responsibilities. Her previous experience in the nonprofit space includes her tenure as the Financial Empowerment Coordinator at Sharing Life Center, cultural and linguistic education, as well as engaging with the public at the Dallas Arboretum. Her past professional experience has remained rooted in marginalized communities. It is their needs, discourse, and histories that she has routinely been tasked with protecting and showcasing in the face of poor infrastructure, and willing ignorance. Creating safe spaces is an ancestral practice she has inherited.

Moderator: Cairo Dye – Chicago Architecture Center

Activating Heritage 2023 – March 6

START YOUR OWN ORAL HISTORY PROJECTS

Panelists:
Liliana Macias is a DACAmented queer Mexican cultural worker, scholar, and educator raised in Chicago. As a scholar she is currently a PhD student in History at UIC, with a BA in Latinx and Latin American Studies with a minor in Women, Gender and Sexuality, and a master’s in Latin American Studies. Her research interest is in gender and sexuality with a focus on queer latinidades of Chicago. As a cultural worker, she has worked in museum education, curation and public engagement while also engaging in contract work to structurally support local cultural institutions.  As an educator she lectured in the women, gender, and sexuality department at Northeastern Illinois university, led workshops on oral histories and the archives with various K-12 youth, and shared her knowledge of queer Latinx cultural histories of Chicago for various audiences. In 2020, Liliana published her master’s thesis “Transformismo: A Spatial, Cultural, and Racial Intervention in Chicago’s Queer and Latinx Communities” in the anthology Queer Sites in Global Contexts: Technologies, Spaces, and Otherness. When not enveloped in her work Liliana enjoys writing poems and has been working on a collection of short stories based on her

Abdul Basheer is a current graduate student in the Department of History at UIC. His research interests include Muslim American history, Islam in the West, Islamic intellectual history, modern U.S. religious history, and transnationalism related to religious, cultural, and intellectual exchange. He has worked on projects such as “Dis/Placements: A People’s History of Uptown,” a collaborative digital public history project which traces the history of the northside neighborhood intentionally shaped by multiple forms of displacement, urban renewal, and active resistance, as well as “American Medina: Stories of Muslim Chicago,” an oral history exhibition at the Chicago History Museum.

Moderator: Mónica Félix

Activating Heritage 2023 – March 6

LOW COST SOLUTIONS FOR COLLECTIONS
Panelists:
Andrea Stamm is the Chair of Collections and Research at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago. In this role, she documents the donation process of objects, documents, photographs, etc., then determines the best method of permanently storing them using best practices for their preservation, including photographing the object, and cataloging it in our online database. She has given lectures on the Chinese participation in the two Chicago World Fairs, lessons learned from the 2008 CAMOC fire, as well as on Chinese jade.
Andrea has Master’s degrees in library science as well as in the French language. Before coming to the Museum in 2004, she worked as a librarian in several university libraries, retiring from Northwestern University in 2013.

Julie Wroblewski is the Director of Collections at the Chicago History Museum, with over 10 years of library and archives experience. In addition to an archival certification from the Academy of Certified Archives and is also certified as a Digital Archivist by the Society of American Archivists. She received her Master of Library and Information Science from Dominican University and a Master of Arts in Digital Humanities from Loyola University. Her professional experience includes work with both archival and rare book collections at Benedictine University, the Chicago Academy of Sciences and its Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, and the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society.

Sara Chapman has been executive director of Media Burn since 2009, and has been an integral part of the organization since its founding in 2003. You can catch her online at Media Burn’s biweekly Virtual Talks with Video Activists series on Thursdays. A scholar of early video and television, her article “Guerrilla Television in the Digital Archive” was published in the Journal of Film and Video. She was the producer of the feature-length experimental film, Ghosts in the Machine, which toured internationally. She’s also an avid swimmer and former co-chair of her Masters swim team, the Chicago Smelts.

Emma Saito Lincoln (she/her) is the Legacy Center Director for the Japanese American Service Committee in Chicago, Illinois. She manages the JASC Legacy Center’s library and archives, which document the history of the Japanese American community in Chicago and the Midwest. Ms. Lincoln completed her graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a Master of Science in Information Studies and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Preservation Administration. She has fifteen years of experience in libraries and archives of all sizes, scaling solutions up or down to fit the available budget, staffing, and infrastructure. Her work at the JASC Legacy Center combines her passion for libraries and archives with her personal identity as a mixed-race Japanese American.

Moderator: Andrew Leith