The Cultural City
State of the City Presenter and Community Panelist:
Clyde Valentín is the co-founder and former Executive Director of Hi-ARTS (formerly known as the Hip-Hop Theater Festival). Clyde is the inaugural Director of Ignite/Arts Dallas: A Center for People, Purpose + Place, an initiative within SMU Meadows School of the Arts.
Response Panel:
Moderator: Lauren Smart leads Storytellers Without Borders, a Dallas Public Library initiative, in collaboration with the Dallas Morning News. As an arts writer and educator based in Dallas, Lauren’s work has appeared in publications such as the Dallas Morning News, Arts + Culture Texas, Cowboys & Indians, CultureMap, and more.
Panelists:
Erica Felicella is an artist focusing on performance, installation, photography, and new media. Erica is also the Executive Director of Art Conspiracy (Art Con) and a community activist for creativity and the artists that live within it.
Amy Lewis Hofland is the Executive Director of the Crow Collection of Asian Art. During her tenure, Amy has recruited and hired leading Asian art scholars, launched the Crow Collection as the first “wellness museum” in the United States, shaped the museum’s award-winning education programs, and helped draw over 100,000 museum visitors a year.
Darryl Ratcliff is a social practice artist and poet based in Dallas whose work engages communities and mobilizes social issues. With artist Fred Villanueva, Darryl started Ash Studios, a DIY cultural center that serves communities of color near Fair Park. In 2014, he also initiated Creating Our Future, a project that combines civic engagement and the arts.
Harold Steward is the Manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center and Southern Regional Envoy for the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture. Harold is also a founding member and Director of Marketing for the Next Gen National Arts Network and Director of Creative Development for Steward Cultural Development Group.
Community Panel: A Conversation on Cultural Legitimacy: Who Decides What is Art?
Zenetta S. Drew is Executive Director of the Dallas Black Dance Theatre. She has been with the Theatre since 1987 and has seen the company grew dramatically over her tenure. To date, the company has performed in 31 states, 15 countries, and on 5 continents, and boasts annual audiences of more than 150,000 people annually.
The Educated City
State of the City Presenter and Community Panelist:
Susan Hoff is the Chief Impact, Strategy and Operations Officer for the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas. She has a degree in bilingual/bicultural education, early childhood education, and public administration and policy analysis.
Response Panel:
Moderator: George Tang co-leads Educate Texas, a public-private initiative of Communities Foundation of Texas. Since George joined the organization in 2010, Educate Texas has accelerated its impact through focused strategies that connect the needs of high school students with the support they need to have great opportunities in their postsecondary pursuits.
Panelists:
Ivan Duran is the Deputy Superintendent for Dallas ISD. Ivan came to Dallas in 2016 after serving as assistant superintendent for Elementary Education for Denver Public Schools. He has worked in public education for 26 years as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and superintendent.
Darius Ajai Frasure is a Professor of English at Mountain View College and 2016 Minnie Stephens Piper/DCCCD Excellence in Teaching award winner. He is also a proud graduate of Paul Quinn College.
Peter Goldstein is a licensed architect and a veteran educator. Peter is the co-founder of CityLab High School, a new Dallas ISD Public School Choice, open enrollment high school focusing on architecture, urban planning, and environmental design that will open in downtown Dallas in fall 2017.
Community Panel: The Path Forward: Separate but Equal or Integrated?
Moderator: Dianne Solis is a senior writer at The Dallas Morning News. Her work at The News has focused on people who break barriers and cross borders, searching for humanity in complex stories.
Eva-Marie Ayala is an education reporter for The Dallas Morning News who has spent more than a decade covering achievement gaps and inequities in schools. She has mentored students through the Hispanic Communicators DFW and trained mothers to advocate for early childhood education as part of the Hispanic Families Network, a community initiative by The News. She is among the team of reporters involved in the Storytellers Without Borders project.
Nakia Douglas is currently the Executive Director of the South Oak Cliff Feeder Pattern and was the Founding Principal of Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy at B.F. Darrell in Dallas ISD. Nakia has also served as an elementary teacher and elementary, middle, and high school administrator in Winston-Salem (N.C.), Plugerville, Georgetown, and Dallas ISD’s.
Mike Koprowski served as Dallas ISD’s Chief of Transformation and Innovation from 2014 to early 2017. While in the district, Mike designed and led the creation of the district’s Public School Choice initiative and became an important voice on the connection between housing policy and school policy.
Regina Nippert is the Executive Director of The Budd Center: Engaging Communities in Education at Southern Methodist University. Regina has more than thirty years of experience in a variety of community development settings including the practice of architecture and micro-lending.
Michael J. Sorrell is the 34th President of Paul Quinn College. Under his leadership, the school has become nationally acclaimed for its innovative approach to using higher education to address societal problems.
The Entrepreneurial City
State of the City Presenter and Community Panelist:
Duane Dankesreiter is the Senior Vice President of Research and Innovation at the Dallas Regional Chamber. Duane oversees the Research team and leads the Chamber’s activities around supporting and growing the innovation ecosystem in DFW.
Response Panel:
Moderator: James Ragland is a veteran reporter, editor, columnist and editorial writer for The Dallas Morning News. He has amassed a diverse body of work that has appeared in numerous national publications and anthologies.
Panelists:
Sejal Desai is the Program Director for Entrepreneurs For North Texas (EFNT), a Program of the Communities Foundation of Texas. Sejal is also the founder of SevaYatra, a social venture that offers short-term service project opportunities at NGOs in India.
Mark Haidar, CEO of Vinli, has been heavily involved in the emerging technology scene, starting his first company at the age of 17. A serial entrepreneur who combines advanced technological skills with astute business knowledge, Mark has created over 42 notable products and led many other technology-based businesses through major growth from inception.
Gary Lindner became President and CEO of PeopleFund in 2010. Since then, PeopleFund, a non-profit 501 (c) (3) has grown from a 5-county central Texas service area to a statewide lender (254 counties) with enormous social and economic impact. He hired a high energy staff, successfully opened seven PeopleFund offices across the state, and tripled outstanding loans.
Rick Ortiz is the president and CEO of the award-winning Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which was unanimously chosen to lead by the GDHCC Board of Directors in 2012. Before heading the GDHCC, Rick worked as an attorney, specializing in business and tort litigation and managing cases up through the trial stage in state and federal courts.
Community Panel: Equitable Pathways to Becoming an Entrepreneur
Moderator: Jeff Whittington is executive producer of KERA’s Think and host of Anything You Ever Wanted to Know on KERA 90.1. He also created and launched the KXT Live Sessions for KXT 91.7. From 2009 to 2015, Jeff moderated the State of the Arts conversation series at the Dallas Museum of Art. He has served on the Press Club of Dallas Board of Directors and is an alumnus of the FBI Dallas Citizens Academy.
Panelists:
Tisha Crear is a Program Coordinator for the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs. Tisha is also the lead of the Susu Cultural Business Incubator, an organization on a mission to launch creative and cultural business in southern Dallas.
Salah Boukadoum is the founder of Impact City, an initiative to transform Dallas into the center of the world for solving humanity’s greatest challenges. Salah was founder and CEO of Atrana Solutions, a technology company that he grew to over $14 million in revenue and sold to publicly traded Alliance Data. He now develops and deploys business models that are designed to solve world-scale human problems.
Justin Nygren is co-founder of The Grove, Dallas, a social-impact focused collaborative workspace in Downtown Dallas. He is also the co-founder of Unreasonable Labs North Texas, a local partner with the global social enterprise accelerator, Unreasonable Institute.
Michelle Williams is a self-proclaimed equity advocate. She oversees the southern sector expansion for The Dallas Entrepreneur Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping entrepreneurs start, build and grow their businesses through education, mentorship and access to an entrepreneurial community.
The Healthy City
State of the City Presenter and Community Panelist:
Dr. Andy Keller is a licensed clinical psychologist and President and CEO of the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute. He has more than 20 years of experience in behavioral health policy and is a recognized leader in health and human services integration, behavioral health financing, and implementation of empirically supported practices for adults and children.
Response Panel:
Moderator: Lauren Silverman is the Health, Science & Technology reporter at KERA News. She is also the primary backup host for KERA’s Think and the statewide newsmagazine Texas Standard. In 2016, Lauren was recognized as Texas Health Journalist of the Year by the Texas Medical Association. She was part of the Peabody Award-winning team that covered Ebola for NPR in 2014.
Panelists:
Meredith Baughman is a legal mental health advocate for the Institutional Reform & Civil Liberties Team of Disability Rights Texas. Her clients include children and adults who are impacted by mental illness; whether they live in the community or reside in institutions, such as psychiatric hospitals, juvenile correctional facilities, and jails.
Alex R. Piquero is Ashbel Smith Professor of Criminology and Associate Dean for Graduate Programs in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is also Adjunct Professor Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice, and Governance at Griffith University, Life Course Centre Fellow at University of Queensland, Faculty Affiliate in the Center for Violence and Injury Prevention George Warren Brown School of Social Work Washington University in St. Louis.
Joe Powell is in long term recovery with twenty seven year’s free of alcohol and other drugs. Joe is the Executive Director/CEO of Association of Persons Affected by Addiction in Dallas, a recovery community organization for people seeking or in Recovery, family members, peers with mental health challenges and the community.
Dr. John Z. Sadler, M.D. is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical Sciences and The Daniel W. Foster, M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics at UT Southwestern Medical Center. John directs the Division of Ethics in the Department of Psychiatry and is the institution-wide Director of the Program in Ethics in Science & Medicine at UT Southwestern. He is a UT Southwestern Distinguished Teaching Professor, and a member of the University of Texas Health Science System’s Shine Academy of Health Education.
Community Panel: Big Goals for Texas: The Vision for a Healthy City
Moderator: Rodney Teague works at the Dallas VA Medical Center to promote a highly contextual and personalized approach to mental wellness among military veterans and their families.
Panelists:
Vanita Halliburton is co-founder and president of the Grant Halliburton Foundation, which was established in 2006 following the suicide death of her son Grant Halliburton. The foundation’s mission is to help prevent suicide, promote better mental health, and strengthen the network of mental health resources for teens and young adults.
Connie Trinh graduated from Texas Woman’s University with a B.A. in Sociology. She was an A.V.I.D (Advanced Via Individual Determination) tutor for first-generation college students for several years serving Richardson and Garland independent school districts and an intern with Child Protective Services.
Ella Williams. M.D. has over 15 years of experience working in various aspects of psychiatry including community mental health, nursing homes, private practice and academic medicine. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry for the UT at Southwestern Medical Center and Medical Director of Parkland Health and Hospital System psychiatric emergency service.
The Physical City
State of the City Presenter and Community Panelist:
Kate Holliday is an architectural historian whose research and teaching focuses on the built environment in American cities. Since joining UT Arlington in fall of 2007, she has published two books, Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age (W. W. Norton, 2008) and Ralph Walker: Architect of the Century (Rizzoli, 2012).
Response Panel:
Moderator: Mark Lamster is the architecture critic of The Dallas Morning News and a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. Mark is currently a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design studying urban planning. He has degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Tufts University.
Panelists:
Lizzie MacWillie is an Associate Director at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, where she heads up PeopleOrganizing Place (POP), the participatory city shaping initiative of [bc] that positions local stakeholders as experts to proactively shape their neighborhood’s future.
Theresa O’Donnell serves as the Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Dallas. In this role, Ms. O’Donnell leads the development and implementation of a robust Resilience Strategy for the City of Dallas within the policy framework of the 100 Resilient Cities Program, pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Community Panel: How equitable is access to public space?
Moderator: Bill Holston has been the Executive Director of Human Rights Initiative of North Texas since 2012. Prior to that he practiced law with Sullivan and Holston. Since the 1980’s, Bill has provided pro bono legal representation for political and religious asylum applicants.
Panelists:
Rev. Gerald Britt is the Vice President of External Affairs at CitySquare. Since joining the organization, Gerald has worked to develop living wage job strategies, which focus on training for jobs in construction, environmental remediation, culinary arts, and technology based soft skills training.
Peer Chacko is the Director of Planning and Urban Design for the City of Dallas since 2015. He is responsible for developing and facilitating implementation of City plans and policies to build a connected city, enhance neighborhood quality of life for all citizens, and to increase the tax base.
Jo Giudice has been with the Dallas Public Library (DPL) for 14 years, four of which she has served as its Director. As director, she has initiated a homeless engagement initiative, ESL/GED classes, a GED Testing Center, Small Business Entrepreneur Center and a reinvigorated Dallas Book Festival.
Robert Kent is the North Texas Area Director for The Trust for Public Land, a national non-profit organization that creates parks and protects land for people, ensuring healthy, livable communities.
Jessie Zarazaga is a landscape-urbanist and architect who lives and practices in Dallas. Jessie directs the new Initiative for Spatial Literacy at Southern Methodist University and teaches Sustainability & Development in the Lyle school of Engineering, integrating Dallas community research into project based learning.