Speakers are listed in order of appearance on the schedule.

Steven J. Tepper, Dean of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Steven J. Tepper is dean of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University.  He is also research director of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). Previously, he served as associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy and associate professor in the department of sociology at Vanderbilt University. Prior to Vanderbilt, Steven served as deputy director of the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. Steven Tepper’s research and teaching focuses on creativity in education and work; conflict over art and culture; and cultural participation.

Linda Essig, Director of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Programs, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Linda Essig is Director of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Programs in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, including the Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship, which has helped over 30 student teams develop arts-based ventures for Arizona and beyond since its inception in 2006 and publishes the only research journal in the field, Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts. She was the first director of the ASU School of Theatre and Film, now the School of Film, Dance and Theatre. She currently holds the Evelyn Smith Professorship in the School of Film, Dance and Theatre.

Liz Lerman, Herberger Institute Professor, School of Film, Dance and Theatre

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, educator and speaker. From a piece about her days as a go-go dancer in 1974 to a recent investigation of origins that included putting dancers in the tunnels of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, she has spent the past four decades making her artistic research personal, funny, intellectually vivid, and up to the minute. A key aspect of her artistry is opening her process to various publics from shipbuilders to physicists, construction workers to ballerinas, resulting in both research and outcomes that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others. She is 2002 recipient of the McArthur Fellowship.

John Borstel, Director of Critical Response Initiatives, Liz Lerman LLC

John Borstel is as an artist working at the crossroads of photography, performance, and text. He is co-author and illustrator of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process and has traveled widely to teach and facilitate this unique feedback system, which emphasizes the values of dialogue and active involvement by the artist. At other points in his checkered career John has been a puppet-maker, the art director of two veterinary journals, and a singing usher. John is an active blogger and published writer on arts practice and has served on numerous governing and advisory groups. 

Carlton Turner, Executive Director of Alternate Roots

Carlton Turner is the Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS, a regional non-profit arts organization based in the South supporting artists working at the intersection of arts and social justice. In 2011 Carlton was awarded the M. Edgar Rosenblum award for outstanding contribution to Ensemble Theater by Irondale Ensemble Project in Brooklyn, NY.  In 2013 Carlton was named to the Kennedy Center Honors Artist Advisory Board.

Greg Esser, Associate Director, Dean's Office, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Greg Esser is an artist and currently serves as Associate Director for the Dean's Office, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. His current work is focused on exploring the roles of higher education in field-building for creative placemaking. He has directed three of the largest municipal public art programs in the United States: the City and County of Denver (1991-1996), the City of Phoenix (1996-2004) and Los Angeles County (2009-2011). He also worked at the national level as Public Art Manager for Americans for the Arts in Washington, D.C. (2004-2006). He is the founder and former executive director of the Roosevelt Row Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization focused on community revitalization through the arts and culture in downtown Phoenix.

Sherry Wagner-Henry, Director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration

Sherry Wagner-Henry is the director for the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MBA degree program that connects artists and other creatives to business students and curriculum, fostering inquiry and collaborative practice around the processes for making a living, spaces and places where the arts are central to learning and leading. Sherry and the Bolz Center team are currently experimenting with different pedagogies of facilitated, shared learning through creative practices such as design thinking, social listening and graphing, strategic decision-making, rapid prototyping and placemaking.

Pam Korza, co-director, Animating Democracy

Pam Korza co-directs Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts that inspires, informs, promotes, and connects arts and culture as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change.  Animating Democracy’s current work includes the Arts & Civic Engagement IMPACT Initiative which works to advance understanding among practitioners, funders, and other stakeholders of the social impact of arts-based civic engagement and social change.  Her writing and editing on assessing arts and social change work includes:  Evaluating Impact/Appreciating Evaluation, a chapter in the 2015 book, Arts and Community Change (Routledge), and Critical Perspectives: Writings on Art & Civic Dialogue.  She co-leads the Assessing Practices in Public Scholarship research group of Imagining America and is on the leadership team of the Arts, Culture, and Social Justice Network. 

Barbara Schaffer Bacon, co-director, Animating Democracy

Barbara Schaffer Bacon co-directs Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts (AFTA) Over that last 15 years, Animating Democracy has conducted national research, documented and supported a wide range of artists and cultural organizations doing compelling civic engagement work.  Animating Democracy’s seminal field resources have propelled field building, policy and funding support for arts for change work. Barbara is a contributing writer and editor for Civic Dialogue, Arts & Culture: Findings from Animating Democracy; The Artistic Imagination as a Force for Civic Dialogue; and the Arts & Civic Engagement Tool Kit. Previously, as executive director of the Arts Extension Service at the University of Massachusetts, Barbara led a robust community arts management education program. Currently she is a board member of WomenArts and serves as a member of the Massachusetts Cultural Council. 

Maria Rosario Jackson, Institute Professor, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and College of Public Service and Community Solutions

Maria Rosario Jackson’s expertise is in comprehensive community revitalization, systems change, dynamics of race and ethnicity and the roles of and arts and culture in communities. Jackson is Senior Advisor to the Kresge Foundation Arts and Culture Program. In 2013, President Obama appointed Jackson to the National Council on the Arts. She is on the advisory boards of the Lambent Foundation and L.A. Commons and on the boards of directors of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts and The Music Center of Los Angeles County. Previously, for almost 20 years, Jackson was based at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. There she was a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center and founding director of UI’s Culture, Creativity and Communities Program. 

Michael Rohd, Herberger Institute Professor, School of Film, Dance and Theatre

Michael Rohd is founding director of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice (CPCP) and the Sojourn Theatre company. Rohd has worked around the nation to design and lead theatre-based community engaged, participatory projects and processes focused on social practice, civic practice and local capacity-building. He is a former faculty member at Northwestern University and held the Doris Duke artist residency at Chicago’s Lookingglass Theater Company.

Cindy Ornstein, Director of Mesa Department of Arts and Culture, Executive Director of the Mesa Arts Center

Cindy Ornstein joined the City of Mesa as Director of Arts and Culture and Executive Director of the Mesa Arts Center (MAC) in July, 2010. In addition to leading the MAC, Arizona’s largest arts center encompassing four theaters, 14 performing and visual arts studios and the five galleries of Mesa Contemporary Arts, she oversees the i.d.e.a. Museum and the Arizona Museum of Natural History. Prior to coming to Mesa, Cindy was President & CEO of the Flint Cultural Center Corporation in Flint, Michigan, Associate Director of the Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA and Executive Director of Mayfair Festival of the Arts, Allentown, PA.