Image description: Candace is toffee skin colored woman with brownish hair and big dark chocolate eyes. She faces the camera directly with a slight smile. Photo: courtesy of consultant.

Washtáge Moⁿzháⁿ , Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo); Kansas City, KS.

CANDACE [Head Queen In Charge, HQIC at INTERIM] is the proud daughter of a Zimbabwean Father and Hawaiian mother, with 15+ years of experience as a creative producer with a demonstrated history of presenting in the performing arts, entertainment and live television arena. Prior to creating her own company, Feldman was the Managing Director at Kinetic Light, the project-based disability arts ensemble and the first Black Director of Programming at UA Presents in Tucson, Arizona. Before that, she held roles at 651 ARTS in Brooklyn, NY, CBS Corporation in Los Angeles, CA, and The Juilliard School in New York, NY. Candace participated in the 2014 American Express Leadership Academy, selected as one of the Changemakers to attend the 2019 American Express Leadership Academy Global Alumni Summit, recipient of the Joey-Lee Garman Award for Social Justice, Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers Fellowship, a Kennedy Center Gold Medallion Award for Excellence in Theatre. Feldman holds a Bachelor's degree in Theatre Studies from Kansas State University, an MBA from the University of Arizona, and a certificate in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace from the University of South Florida.

ID: A white woman with long brown hair smiles, she wears a black and white polka dot top. Photo Credit: Christopher Duggan

Mariclare Hulbert (she/her; Pittsford, NY) serves as a Marketing & PR Advisor for the DFA program. She has 18+ years of experience in the arts and nonprofit fields, specializing in strategic marketing, communications, public relations, and outreach. She worked at the internationally renowned Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival for nearly 10 years, serving as Director of Marketing & Communication. At the Pillow, she led a team of marketing, PR, and ticket services staff, graphic designers, photographers, and videographers in all matters related to traditional and digital marketing, press and communications, branding, and the sale of $2 million in tickets each year. As a consultant, she supports clients with an array of marketing and communications needs. Recent projects and clients include Dance/NYC, Dance/USA, the National Center for Choreography-Akron, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Kinetic Light/Alice Sheppard, Bridge Live Arts, Portland’s Regional Arts & Culture Council, the Down Syndrome Association of Greater Cincinnati, and others. She is based in Rochester, NY, the ancestral lands of the Onondaga or Seneca people. For more information, visit mariclarehulbert.com.

Image descriptions: Bevin Morgan, a Black woman with shoulder length black hair styled in waves sits on a stool smiling. She wears a multi-colored wrap dress in blue tones topped by a long grey sweater. Photo by Cassie Lopez; https://www.cassielopez.com/.

Muscogee; Decatur, GA

Bevin Morgan (she/her) is a Level 2 Certified Financial Trainer with the Financial Gym with an MBA with a concentration in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from The University of Texas. She has paid off over $200K in debt to become debt-free and has a variety of experiences from working in corporate America, to freelancing, to real estate investing that she uses to help guide her clients.

She specializes in helping Black female and female identifying creators and entrepreneurs gain confidence in their financial futures. She brings a holistic and non-judgmental approach to personal finance, providing space for each of her clients to get in touch with their individual goals and own their unique money stories.

Bevin uses her Certified Life Coach training in the Motivational Interviewing technique to meet her clients where they are and help them find the inner motivation they need to move toward the financial future they desire. She pairs this with her Financial Training to create thorough and simple-to-follow plans to help move her clients from where they are to where they want to be.

Image description: Sophie is a brown-skinned woman with long black dread locks braided with some gray hair in the front. She is standing in a forest, smiling at the camera, and wearing a red and white turtleneck and blue jean dungarees. Photo by Diana Gonzalez-Morett.

Lenape; Forest Hills, NY

Sophie Myrtil-McCourty is the founder and president of Lotus Arts Management, one of the country's premiere boutique dance agencies. With almost 20 years of booking experience, Sophie has supported the professional development of award-winning dance companies such as A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, CONTRA-TIEMPO, Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group, and Seoul-based, Bereishit Dance Company, through consistent domestic and international bookings. Most recently, she welcomed to her roster the critically acclaimed Ronald K. Brown / EVIDENCE and mesmerizing choreographer and performer, Shamel Pitts with his afrofuturistic arts collective, TRIBE.

Sophie has served on several panels both nationally and internationally. In the US, she was on the committee of the 2015 Wassaic Festival; sat on the board of Tennessee Presenters; and was an Advisory Council Member of the Field Leadership Fund, which is based on the premise that advancements in diversity among leadership will lead to a more equitable arts sector in New York City and beyond. Most recently, Sophie was invited to participate in the Performing Arts Market Seoul program of Korea Arts Management Service; the Project NEXT program of the Korean Foundation for International Exchange; and Ottawa’s National Arts Centre’s Producers Gathering, where she shared her expertise in the booking field. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Dance/USA.

Image description: James Scruggs a dark skinned man wears a black mock turtle neck and glasses with his arms crossed. Photo by Ben Esner.

Lenni Lanape; Plainfield, NJ.

James Scruggs (he/him) is a writer, performer, producer, who creates large scale topical, theatrical, multi-media and virtual work, usually focused on social justice and issues of inequity. In January 2023 he was awarded the “Adding Justice Through The Arts Award” from the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In 2022 he was awarded a National Performance Network Creation Fund Grant and commissioned by 3 theaters to create OFF THE RECORD: Acts of Restorative Justice. This piece is theatrical AND actual activism, the effects of mass incarceration are confronted head on in 3 cities, where we will produce Expungement and Criminal Record Sealing Clinics in NYC, Boston, and Tampa, Fl. For the theatrical piece BIPOC with criminal records will be identified, paired with an attorney and have their records expunged or sealed, and their stories shared theatrically. He was awarded a MAP FUND Grant in December 2022 for THE COMMISSION, where The American Experiment itself is put on trial in a Truth and Reconciliation Commission theatrically held in one evening. In May 2018, he created a site specific immersive, interactive, satirical work commissioned by The High Line… MELT!, “It’s May 17, 2060, it’s the annual Post Racial America Day Rally. White people in America have been a minority for 17 years. The mixed race, gender fluid president of America, who refuses to disclose birth gender or race speaks.” His November 2017, 3/Fifths Trapped in a Traveling Minstrel Show, an historically accurate, deconstructed black-face minstrel show was about how he felt like he was “Being Dark-Skinned ‘AT’ people” and how unarmed black men are still feared and legally killed. It received an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Fringe Production in Boston. He was awarded a MAP FUND Grant in 2017 to create A Voluptuary Life, a piece about a polyamorous homosexual looking for love. He was awarded a 2015 MAP FUND Grant and a 2016 Creative Capital Award, to create 3/Fifths SuprmacyLand. Performed in May 2017, it was a fully immersive, interactive ethno-theme park, exploring race and racism.

James Scruggs has a BFA in Film from School of Visual Arts.

Image description: A white woman with blue eyes and short brown hair, wearing a black top and silver earrings, smiling. Photo by Kim Carson Photography.

Lenapehoking; Philadelphia, PA

Amy Smith (she/her) is a dance and theater artist, educator, and facilitator based in Lenapehoking/Philadelphia. She is white, middle class, and non-disabled, and is committed to racial justice, economic justice, and disability justice. She works on these issues by threading them through all the work she does: leading financial well-being workshops, one-on-one sessions with artist clients giving financial advice and doing tax preparation, consulting with arts organizations, co-facilitating anti-racism sessions with co-facilitators of color, and as a dance and theater educator. Amy co-founded, co-directed, and performed with Headlong, a dance theater non-profit that transformed into a community arts organization over 25 years. While there she co-created an education program and an artist incubation program, and invested heavily in community resource-sharing efforts. She left Headlong in 2019 to pursue her freelance work. She has led financial well-being workshops through Creative Capital, Assets for Artists, at the Sundance Institute, for many funders, and in many other settings. She has been greatly affected by her learning as part of artEquity’s National Facilitator Training and other anti-oppression trainings, and used those experiences to help develop and facilitate the Accomplices Leadership Institute for the Arts Administrators of Color Network. For more about Amy’s values and background, please visit www.amyelainesmith.com