2016 - 2017 Panelists
Dance:
Allyson Esposito
Scott Fraser
Elsa Mosquera-Sterenberg
Elizabeth Pabon
Allyson Esposito
Ms. Esposito, a recent transplant to Boston, currently serves as the Director of Arts and Culture for The Boston Foundation, where she is responsible for all aspects of giving, policy advocacy and civic leadership work related to the arts. Prior to this role, she gained more than ten years of experience in the philanthropic sector, serving as the Director of Cultural Grants for the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and the Program Officer for the Mayer & Morris Kaplan Family Foundation in Chicago. Separately, Allyson is a lifelong dance artist with more than 15 years of professional choreographic experience. Presently, Allyson is working as a company member with The Space Movement Project, her ten-year-old, Chicago-based nonprofit dance organization and, locally, Peter DiMuro’s Public Displays of Motion, along with several independent dancemakers.
Scott Fraser
Scott Fraser is Managing Director of Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre and is responsible for overseeing the entire administrative staff, capital fundraising initiatives and facility management. Scott has been a staff member since 1987. During his tenure with the organization, he has worn many hats. He has served the organization as studio manager, company manager, general manager, development associate, and managing director. Scott focuses on capital fundraising and organizational advancement initiatives. Currently he serves as a Board member of OrigiNation, Inc.
Elsa Mosquera-Sterenberg
As the Director of the Arts Program at Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), Elsa oversees a number of IBA's offerings that include programming for the gallery, dance and art studios, and the main hall. She has over 20 years of experience as manager in communications and publishing, and as consultant for the creative industries. Past projects include designing a portfolio of cultural programs for a small city, executing sales strategies for independent authors and implementing communications campaigns for colleges and universities. Her educational background is in Literature and Business Administration and she holds a Professional Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Harvard University.
Elizabeth Pabon
A multi-talented dancer, singer, lyricist, educator, arts events producer and percussionist, Elizabeth “Lady” Pabon-Szebeda believes she finds divinity within herself and others through artistic expression. Born and raised in Boston to a family of performers and educators she grew up learning the importance of music and dance in education and community building. She learned to play percussion instruments, sing and dance Afro Puerto Rican Bomba and Plena, Hip Hop and Salsa, amongst other traditional, folkloric and modern genres from a young age. Having created with and/or performed alongside greats like Giovanni Hidalgo, Don Omar, Marc Anthony, Tito Rojas, Larry Harlow, Millie Quesada, Roberto Cepeda, Tito Ayala, Jorge Arce, The Last Poets, Dead Prez, Nice & Smooth, Medusa and La Bruja, she shares her experiences and love through teaching dance, percussion and song to others, as well as performing locally, nationally and internationally. With a Bachelors in Communications Studies & Theater Arts from Bridgewater State University, she has been an integral part of the development of local nonprofits and artist collectives like Reflect & Strengthen, MetaMovements, Kilombo Novo Capoeria Angola, Critical Breakdown and Bomba Sankofa to name a few. Since 2000, she has hosted and produced small and large scale events in dance and performance bringing together people of all ages and backgrounds. In 2016 she completed her Expressing Boston artist fellowship through the Boston Foundation and DS4SI and has been selected as a 2017 We Create Artist Fellow. At present she is also a teaching artist at various Boston and Cambridge schools including the Amigos School. In addition, she is an integral part of MetaMovements' Youth Ambassadors Program that serves the Cambridge community every summer through dance classes, performances and outdoor dance events like the Cambridge Salsa In The Park.
Visual Arts, Film & Video:
Susan Cohen
David De Celis
Dhonyale Jones
Stephanie Rabins
Katherine Shozawa
Susan Cohen
Ms. Cohen works in the field of Arts Administration and has served as director of the Council for the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1996 - 2016. A dedicated and resourceful leader, she is a trustee of the Massachusetts State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and a founding member of Arts Administrators in Higher Education. She also is a former board president of the Mobius Artists Group. Over the span of her career, she has organized and led a dozen exclusive excursions, bringing groups of up to fifty people to cities around the world to experience "behind-the-scenes" tours of arts and culture. In addition to travel planning, she ran the MIT arts grant program, which awarded $150,000 annually in support of all types of projects and endeavors. She credits the arts community at MIT with sparking her passionate interest in contemporary visual art.
David De Celis
Mr. De Cleis is a registered Architect in the state of MA and a founding Principal of DCVL Design –an interdisciplinary Architecture & Design firm he cofounded with his colleague, and former thesis student, Amy Van Lauwe.
Before moving to Cambridge, David graduated from the Univ. of Miami’s SoA in 1994, where he earned his B-Arch degree with a Minor in Theater Arts. Soon after, he attended Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He received his M-Arch form Harvard in 1998, and started working with architecture firms in the Boston area, most notably Kallmann, McKinnell & Wood, then Bruner/Cott. In 1997, he also established the firm DCM Design with his wife, Emily Mueller De Celis.
He has been an Adjunct Faculty member of the RISD community (starting in 2005 to 2012), in both their Landscape Architecture and the Interior Architecture departments. As a testament to his ongoing dedication to balancing Teaching and Practice, David has also been involved in various capacities with the Boston Architectural College, both in the Thesis Committee and the Architecture curriculum –teaching history, theory and design over the course of the past nineteen years.
David currently lives in Cambridge, MA, with his wife and three children. He has been a member of the CAC’s Public Art Commission since the spring of 2013, and currently serves as Chairman.
Dhonyale Jones
Ms. Jones is both a Producer & Author and currently the Associate Producer for 22-CityView, the municipal television channel for the City of Cambridge. She conceived and produces one of the channel's premiere series, Behind The Pages, a showcase platform for both local, and nationally recognized authors. Arts Uncut, another series that Jones has helmed, takes a look behind the curtain to learn about the seminal moments and motivations from the featured artistic makers. She has also Line Produced a number of local films, and was on the production team for the award-winning, nationally broadcast PBS docudrama, REBEL: Secret Soldier of the American Civil War.
Jones is currently in the initial research stage of a memoir, Moments: A Journey Through Life and Love, that will explore how families and caregivers react and respond when faced with the myriad challenges associated with the care and comfort for an Alzheimer’s patient. The book will be drawn from the author’s experiences as the primary caregiver for her maternal grandmother throughout her illness.
Dhonyale also serves as a Trustee at Union Baptist Church in Cambridge, and operates one of the Church’s programs, Project Uplift, that provides weekly meals for the local homeless population.
Stephanie Rabins
Ms. Rabins is a video producer, documentarian and educator who works at the intersection of the arts, education and community-building throughout New York and New England. She has worked on award-winning documentaries and commercial video projects and has led media workshops for children, university students and adults in schools, non-profits and cable access stations. Stephanie has lived in Cambridge since 2014, where she currently produces animations, motion graphics and post-production projects at a firm in Boston (and plays music when she has time!).
Katherine Shozawa
Ms. Shozawa is the Director of Community Engagement at Lesley University College of Art and Design (LUCAD) at the Lunder Arts Center located in Porter Square, Cambridge where she fosters community building through innovative, socially engaging programs, and develops community partnerships and collaborative art + design initiatives that extend beyond the walls of the school. She has built a roster of over 24 community partners since arriving to LUCAD in the Fall of 2015. Katherine is also a practicing visual artist and educator with an emphasis in social practice and public participation. She comes from a range of large scale museum and educational institutions and smaller grassroots community organizations in Seattle, Philadelphia and New York, where she has curated, juried and developed exhibitions and public programs that aim to stimulate social change and empower marginalized and underserved communities in particular.
Music:
Kat Bondi
Nathaniel Butler
Sun young Moc
Catherine T. Morris
Kat Bondi
Singer, songwriter, actress, and voice over artist in the greater Boston area, Bondi holds an MFA from Lesley University, and is a Berklee College of Music graduate. She is a member of the Boston Rock Opera, sits on the events committee for the Girls Rock Campaign, and has been performing with the Boston-based rock band, Alchemilla, for 15 years. Bondi has a deep commitment to furthering local music and arts in the community, and is honored to be a part of the Cambridge Arts Council grant panel.
Nathaniel Butler
Nathaniel Butler has been active in the Greater Boston arts scene for over a decade. As a performer he has collaborated with Boston Opera Collaborative, Juventas New Music Ensemble, The New England Repertory Orchestra, and others. In addition to being a musician, Nathaniel also has a vast array of experience in large scale event production, including working as an orchestral stage manager, photographer, and audio technician for a wide variety of clients including the Grant Park Music Festival, Grand Harmonie, the Boston Conservatory, New York University, Harvard University, Suffolk University, the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Classical Kids Live!, the New York Historical Society, Google, the TriBeCa Film Festival, and many others. He is currently very happy to call Cambridge home and is looking forward to engaging with the arts in the Cambridge community.
Sun young Moc
Known as Sunny to her friends and colleagues, Ms. Moc is an oboist and composer. She received a bachelor’s degree in Classical Music Composition at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea and a master’s degree and performance diploma in Music Performance at USC (Univ. of Southern California, LA), studying with Dr. Allan Vogel and Dr. Joel Timm. She is now a candidate for DMA (Doctor of Music and Arts) in Music Performance at Boston University, studying with Robert Sheena, Oboe player of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
She has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards, including Phi Kappa Lambda honor, 1st prize at the Seoul Music Educational Post Competition and the finalist of Padova International Music Competition in Italy 2006. Ms. Moc also has actively performed as a guest musician with ensembles such as Gyung-gi Philharmonic Orchestra and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra under Myung-Whun Chung and participated as a guest principal oboe of Los Angeles Doctor’s Orchestra. She joined DG (Deutsche Grammophon) Label recording session of Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra “Beethoven Symphony No.5” in 2014. She held a recital as a special recital performer of the IDRS (International Double Reed Society) in Tokyo, Japan in 2015. Now Sunny is the principal oboe player of Nomadic Ensemble and Boston Korean Orchestra.
Ms. Moc has been a volunteer production member of “Fishes and Loaves in Cambridge” a meal program for homeless people around Cambridge and a volunteer principal player of FKCC (First Korean Church in Cambridge) Chamber Orchestra.
Catherine T. Morris
Jamaica Plain & Roxbury native, grew up with just a brush and paint bucket in her hands working alongside her father; all while listening to her mother's cassette tapes, 8-tracks and wax records of Soul, Funk & R&B music. Early on, Ms. Morris learned from her parents about the role and importance of the arts, perseverance, humility, and advocacy.
Over the course of her career, Ms. Morris produced her first talent show at the Blue Hill Boys & Girls Club; started her own social movement, Universal Rhythm, which mobilized her peers to address stereotypes, racial prejudice, and forms of bigotry towards students of color; and organized a first-time, high endurance sports competition called “Campus Olympics: Bring the Noise, Bring the Funk." Since 2011, Ms. Morris had worked with her team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to produce and support 15,000+ events for students, faculty, staff and community groups in Cambridge, MA.
Today, Ms. Morris is the Founder and Artistic Curator of the Boston Art & Music Soul Fest, Inc. (BAMS Fest, Inc). This is a fiscally-sponsored organization that aims to breakdown racial and social barriers to arts, music and culture for underserved communities of color across Greater Boston. Since 2015, the organization has produced and co-presented a traveling live arts and music education series called “The Prelude.” This program ‘edu-tains’ and helps audiences of color reimage how they experience with all forms of artistic expression in underutilized spaces across Greater Boston neighborhoods. So far, the organization has presented over (50+) local and independent musicians and artists, curated in (8) local venues and has attracted over 1,500 attendees. It is Ms. Morris’ hope that the Boston Art & Music Soul Fest becomes a pipeline to Boston’s arts and culture ecosystems that can permeate the streets of where we live, and positively impact the livelihoods of our youth, families, and future generations.
Theatre, Literature, & Multidisciplinary
Eryn Johnson
Scratch
Shaina Semiatin
Vincent Siders
Diane Quinn
Eryn Johnson
Ms. Johnson has served as the Executive Director of the Community Art Center, located in the Port neighborhood of Cambridge, for close to 10 years. She has over 20 years of experience as a youth advocate and leader in youth serving arts organizations including ZUMIX, Inc. and the Education Department of the Boch Performing Arts Center. Eryn helped to develop the Youth Development in the Arts Youth Worker Training curriculum. She is a steering committee member of the Cambridge Non-Profit Coalition, co-founder of the Port Providers Group and served on the board of MassCreative. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Theater from Oberlin College and her Masters in Performance Studies from New York University.
Scratch
A well-known figure on the Boston theatre scene, Scratch is the proprietor of the newly-opened Thalia Theatre in Central Square. A strong supporter of the performing arts he is an active member of StageSource, the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston, ArtsBoston, and others. Best known as the producer and director of the award-winning burlesque troupe The Boston BeauTease (formerly ‘The Boston Babydolls’), he has also recently directed Woman in Black (Rockwell Theatre) and performed at Story Club Boston.
Shaina Semiatin
Ms. Semiatin graduated with a Master's in International Relations from the University of Chicago and currently works in the Boston Tech Sector. In her free time, she is an avid art lover, and can frequently be found haunting the ICA or roaming Boston's city streets looking for the latest mural additions. She studied poetry under Tim Skeen at Fresno State, and is a frequenter of the Cantab Poetry Slam.
Vincent Siders
Vincent Ernest Siders has been a theater director, producer, performer and educator in the Boston area for over 20 years. Included amongst his many recognitions are an Elliot Norton Award for acting, two IRNE awards for acting and an IRNE nomination for directing. For the past eight years, he has been the Lead Teaching Artist for Youth Underground at Central Square Theater.
Diane Quinn
Diane Quinn is the Executive Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard. Prior to joining the A.R.T. she most recently served as the Senior Vice-President of Creative and Artistic operations at Cirque du Soleil, where she was responsible for managing the artistic quality of the shows globally. An arts manager with more than 25 years of professional experience in the performing arts, she was the founding producer of Soulpepper Theatre Company, the coordinator of the arts administration program at the University of Toronto, and executive director of Toronto Women in Film and Television. She has sat on numerous arts panels and juries including the World Performing Arts Championships, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Awards and the Fringe. Quinn is a graduate of the University of Toronto Honors Arts Specialist degree program with a concentration in arts management and drama.