DESIGNING FOR EMPATHY® SUMMIT & workshops - 2022

Sahba Aminikia is an independent composer and educator who believes in music to be a catalyst for change. Born in post-revolutionary wartime in Iran, Aminikia has been highly influenced by the poetry of Hafiz, Rumi, and Saadi, as well as traditional, classical and jazz music and the albums of Pink Floyd, Beatles, and Queen. A conscientious soul, due to his upbringing, he attempts at finding a common understanding for communication and dialogue through music. And, as a result, throughout his career, he has composed pieces that express the inevitability and triumph of hope. Aminikia has been trained in musical composition under revered Iranian pianists such as Nikan Milani, Safa Shahidi, and Mehran Rouhani. He later relocated to Russia where he studied at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory under Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko. He received his Bachelor of Music and his Master of Music with honors from San Francisco Conservatory of Music under David Garner and David Conte where he was the proud recipient of Phyllis Wattis Foundation scholarship. He has also received individuals lessons in life and in music from David Harrington, Aleksandra Vrebalov, Conrad Susa, Luciano Chessa, John Corigliano, and Oswaldo Golijov as well. Today, Aminikia collaborates with other artists to create and compose meaningful work. His musical pieces have been widely performed in United States, Canada, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Italy, Poland, China, Greece, Turkey and Israel and at venues such Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Le Poisson Rouge, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF Exploratorium, SFJAZZ and Saint Anne's Warehouse. Aminikia is also the Artistic Director for Flying Carpet Festival, a mobile music festival which serves children in need in war zones. He also serves as the Musical Director for Sirkhane, a non-profit organization based in Mardin, Southern Turkey which serves around 400,000 children through circus arts and music.

Sarah Brenkert (she/hers) is the principal evaluator at the Seattle Aquarium. In addition to her work as a social science researcher, Sarah has a background in informal learning theory, exhibit design and development, and early childhood education. Sarah holds Master of Science in early childhood and elementary education from Bank Street College of Education in New York City, and formerly held leadership positions in education and evaluation at the Children’s Museum of Denver and at Denver Zoo. Sarah is insatiably curious about how and what people learn and feel when they spend time in zoos, aquariums, museums and science centers. Sarah's favorite part of her job is working with others to ask interesting questions and explore stories of impact and transformation in free-choice learning spaces.

Monique currently works as Director for the Center for Art and Public Exchange (CAPE) at the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) and serves as the Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer. CAPE uses artwork, exhibitions, engagement with artists, and programming as a vehicle to have conversations about race and equity. Monique is responsible for creating brave spaces that expand the visitor's perspectives and reveals our shared humanity. Monique is deeply committed to the belief that art has the power to transform and inform us. During the pandemic Monique wrote the CAPE Toolkit which is intended to provide cultural institutions a roadmap that are interesting in centering community voices in their institutions. Monique is a CPA, and a graduate of Howard University. Prior to her tenure at the Museum, Monique served as the Senior Program Manager for Parents for Public Schools of Jackson. Her primary responsibility was to teach parents how to be effective advocates for their children. This was accomplished by creating workshops that helped parents navigate bureaucratic, and often dehumanizing systems. Her career has been a winding path that has resulted in her owning and operating a restaurant, advocating for homeless veterans at the federal level, and creating safe spaces for nursing mothers.

Originally a photographer, cinematographer and a visual artist, she is born in Konya, Turkey in 1983 and has studied at Fine Arts University of Istanbul. She has worked and has studied in several countries as an artist and a social worker. In 2008 she discovered circus and found it as an empowering tool for children of the world. In 2011 she moved to Mardin in southeastern Turkey and made the first social circus project engaging young children of the region. She sees the power of circus as a tool for social change. She met the other co-founder of Sirkhane, Serdal Adam they established the Art Anywhere Association and Sirkhane social circus school together. Since 

then, she lives and works in Mardin as the co-director of Art Anywhere Association.

Omar is the host of The Museum J.E.D.I. Show podcast that host discussions on the intersections of museums and social justice. Currently, he leads the Prince George’s County Historical Resources which include historical house museums, an aviation museum, the Black History Program and archaeological parks. He oversees the programming of those sites with an emphasis placed on preserving, sustaining and enhancing these resources as well as engaging and building communities through education, outreach and innovation. He hasrecently worked at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, National Park Service,the Office of the National Museum of the American Latino Commission, NASA and he also was a K-12teacher in NYC and DC.He has had a leading roles in racial equity organizations like Museums and Race: Transformation andJustice, Museum Hue as well as a part of 

the Museum as Site for Social Action project. His research interests are Afro Latinx identity in museum exhibitions, Diversity and Inclusion in museums and cultural institutions; and Hip Hop history, culture, and education. Moreover, he has supported public history projects centering on blackness in Puerto Rico. In 2019, Omar was selected to be an American Alliance of Museums Diversity. Equity. Accessibility.Inclusion (DEAI) Senior Fellow, which is dedicated to diversifying museum boards and is a gubernatorial appointee to the Maryland Lynching Truth & Reconciliation Commission. In 2020, he was elected to the Board of Directors for the Association of African American Museums. In 2021, he was elected to be the Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Association of African American Museums, where he has served on the board since 2020. In January 2022, he began a multiple-year term on the Executive Council for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. 

Elif (she/her) is the founding president of ONE - Organization of Networks for Empathy, and the editor of Fostering Empathy Through Museums (2016), and Designing for Empathy (2019), which are reference books in empathy-building through museums, a new field of inquiry she pioneered in 2014. Elif Gokcigdem developed Designing for Empathy® as an intellectual framework, and an international platform for multidisciplinary, multisector, and multicultural collaborations to deepen our understanding of empathy, and to develop strategies, scholarship, and empathy-building experiences that consider the wellbeing of the whole —all of humanity and our planet. In 2018, Elif curated and co-chaired the world’s first summit on Fostering Universal Ethics and Compassion through Museums with HH The 14th Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, India. Elif grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, studying history of art, Islamic art and mysticism, and later, museum studies in the U.S.. Elif’s 30 years of professional experience includes academia, museums, and a  corporation where she established and led major strategic international partnerships in arts, culture, museums, and biodiversity conservation around the world.

Ivel Gontan (she/they) is an informal science education professional with a background in research, evaluation, and program management, currently serving as the Director of Empathy Initiatives at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington. In this role they help guide a team of brilliant individuals working building a social movement around conservation and empathy for animals (both human and non). Ivel holds an M.A. in Museum Studies with a focus in Education (STEM focus thesis) from John F. Kennedy University, and a B.A. in Philosophy and Anthropology from SUNY Purchase. She is particularly interested in learning ways people from the Global Majority become engaged and succeed in STEM fields and ways that science can be a catalyst for communities to advance their own priorities. She is passionate about organizational culture, developing strategy and vision, and social/environmental justice. She is curious about ways to strengthen networks and how to better support professionals and organizations to develop strong collaborative relationships. In her most previous role Ivel served as a Civic/Community Science Fellow with the Rita Allen Foundation/Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC)’s Community Science Initiative. There, she co-developed a framework for community science in informal science learning spaces, focusing on attributes and outcomes of successful collaborations that prioritize community led initiatives. She cares about humanity and the globe deeply and is excited to be working in spaces where conservation is a priority. 

In her spare time, Ivel likes to be in nature (hiking or at the beach), reading (recent favorites include The Island of Sea Women, current read is Running Towards Mystery), watching Netflix, and cuddling her partner and two pups (Coco & Chubbs). She is a first generation Cuban-American, grew up in Southern Florida and is fluent in Spanish.

Philippa Pham Hughes is a Social Sculptor and Cultural Strategist who designs relational spaces for honest conversations across political, social, and cultural differences. She has produced hundreds of creative activations since 2007 for people who might not normally meet to engage with one another in unconventional and meaningful ways. These relational experiences build social capital, social cohesion, and social discourse. Her multi-disciplinary practice is informed by sociology, psychology, philosophy, political science, history, community organizing, design thinking, creative placemaking, art, and humanities. Philippa has spoken internationally, including TEDxAmericanUniversity, Placemaking Week Amsterdam, University of Michigan's Penny Stamps Speaker Series, Fort Worth Women's Policy Forum. Her work has been featured by CNN, PBS Newshour, CityLab, The Washington Post, among other media outlets. Philippa’s mission: to create a society in which all humans flourish.

Aisha Imam is the founder and executive director of Reed Society for the Sacred Arts, a 501c3 organization that promotes sacred art and music. Under her direction, in May 2022, Reed Society presented an Arabic calligraphy exhibition and symposium titled Living Line, Living Legacy at the Qatar Institute for Culture in Dupont Circle. She has served on the Islamic Art Advisory Committee at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, consulted with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and collaborated with The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage and numerous universities to promote Islamic art and music. 

She is also an aspiring calligrapher, working under the guidance of Mohamed Zakariya for over a decade. Due to the nature of her work and her own spiritual practices, she travels extensively throughout the Muslim world including Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Kashmir. She is currently working on a series of projects including Sufi Sama Sundays featuring a qawwali artist as well as curating a project tying Islamic calligraphy to the oral poetry of West Africa. Aisha lives in Bethesda with her husband and four daughters.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Dr. Ivcevic studies the role of emotion and emotional intelligence in creativity and well-being, as well as how to use the arts (and art-related institutions) to promote emotion and creativity skills. She has served as Associate Editor of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving, and Creativity Research Journal, as well as a founding Board member of the International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation. She collaborated with colleagues from Denmark, Spain, China, France, Germany, Poland, and Croatia and published her research in journals such as Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Personality, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Creativity Research Journal, Journal of Creative Behavior and others. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, ArtNet, US News, Education Week, Science Daily, El Pais, and others, and she is a regular blogger for Psychology Today and Creativity Post. Dr. Ivcevic received the Award for Excellence in Research from the Mensa Education and Research Foundation and the Berlyne Award for Outstanding Early Career Achievement in psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts from the American Psychological Association.

Donna Jonte, Head of Experiential Learning at The Phillips Collection, is especially interested in integrating mindful looking into museum experiences. She works with all audiences, from PreK to older adults, developing and implementing programs that link art and wellness and combine viewing art, talking about art, and making art.  

Donna was named the DC Art Educator of the Year in 2019 by the DC affiliate of the National Art Education Association.  Before becoming a museum educator, Donna wrote and edited for Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women and taught K-8 art for ten years at Friends Community School in College Park, Maryland. She has a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in English Literature from Mills College and a Master’s in Teaching from George Mason University. As well as exploring artful-thinking strategies and making artist books, she loves to hike in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains with her two adult children and her five sisters.

Yuliia Kravchenko, a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Department of Arts and Humanities, Teachers College, Columbia University 2021-2022, is also Head of the Critical Thinking Development Lab in the National Center “Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine” (JASU), and a Trainer in the Program “Philosophy for Children” (P4c) developed by Matthew Lipman. She completed a BA degree, MA and PhD in Philosophy with specialization in the history of Ukrainian Philosophy. All three degrees were from Kyiv National Shevchenko University. Since 2016 she worked at the National Center JASU where she organized camps for teenagers (at the national and international levels) in the following subjects: “Philosophy,” “Ukrainian Culture,” “Religion and Diplomacy,” and “Cultural Diplomacy.” In the years 2016-2021 thirty educational camps as extracurricular events were held with the participation of approximately 400 students. Dr. Kravchenko is founder and organizer of “The 1960s and the Dissident Movement: A Festival for Young People" (2017-2022), an annual event that brings together students and teachers. She initiated and organized the Philosophy Education Project for Ukrainian children and teachers “Color of Peace” (March, 2022). 

Alison Jane Martingano, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay. Her research focuses on empathy and perspective-taking. She is interested in how modern technology, social interactions, and general life experiences shape peoples’ ability to understand each other. Alison Jane defended her Ph.D. in Cognitive, Social and Developmental Psychology in 2020 at the New School for Social Research. Alison Jane also holds an M.Phil. and M.A. in psychology from the New School for Social Research and a B.Sc. (hons) from the University of York. Alison Jane’s research has been published in academic journals such as Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences, PLoS One, and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence as well as being featured in programs such as BBC Radio 4, The Digital Human. She is also a passionate educator, with a particular interest in helping first-generation students access higher education.

Cheryl Montalvo is a director, producer, documentary filmmaker as well as the founder and CEO of Insite Media Network. Insite is a minority woman-owned company offering affordable, engaging, and high quality video solutions. Boasting an innovative team of videographers, photographers, animators, and editors, Montalvo’s leadership has helped secure the company’s place as a trusted content creator for local and national brands, NGOs, and agencies through distinctive campaigns that resonate with key stakeholders. 

Montalvo began her unique journey in broadcast media with the first Arabic television and radio network in North America, ANA Television & Radio Network, where she served as Vice President of Finance and Administration for over a decade. She went on to become part of MBC Group’s North America team that launched Al Arabiya News Group, which resulted in a high-profile co-production of Michael Jackson’s first televised Arabic language special. Throughout these endeavors, Montalvo has trained and managed award-winning journalists and has produced original content and programming for CNN, HuffPost, Fusion, Now This News, The Hill, MiSK, and numerous broadcast channels in the MENA region.

Mentored by Gregory Hines, Andrew Nemr is an international artist, teacher and speaker. His work has spanned the music, dance, theatre, and visual arts worlds, exploring art as a vehicle for storytelling and community building. Described as “A masterly tapper” by the New York Times, Andrew has played with Grammy Award winning musicians across multiple genres and co-founded the Tap LegacyTM Foundation, Inc. (along with his mentor Gregory Hines). The recipient of a TED Fellowship, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and commissions from Google, Andrew is recorded on the Grammy nominated recording Itsbynne Reel by Dave Eggar, Tuesdays at Mona’s by Mona’s Hot Four, and narrates the DanceTime Publications DVD, Tap Dance History: From Vaudeville to Film. He is the topic of the documentary short film Identity: The Andrew Nemr Story, and hosts a weekly podcast entitled Talking Notes exploring the intersection of what we believe, what we do, and who we become. 

Anita Nowak, PhD is passionate about leveraging empathy for personal, organizational and social transformation. She is also dedicated to teaching and mentoring the next generation of changemakers. 

She is a two-time TEDx speaker and author of Purposeful Empathy: Tapping Our Hidden Superpower for Personal, Organizational, and Social Change (Broadleaf Books, April 2023). She hosts a podcast and YouTube series by the same name (100+ episodes), dedicated to amplifying the voices of people from around the globe who understand the world needs more empathy – and are doing something about it. For the past fifteen years, Anita has held various leadership roles in higher education at McGill University dedicated to social innovation. She teaches Leadership, Ethics in Management and Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the Desautels Faculty of Management. She was named Professor of the Year in 2014 and 2019 and recipient of the David Johnston Faculty & Staff Award in 2021. 

As a certified personal and professional coach, she helps purpose-driven leaders and organizations create cultures of empathy through her boutique advisory firm, Purposeful Empathy by Design. Anita also advises HNW families to translate their philanthropic goals into social impact.

Aparna comes to mindfulness practice from a science background. She holds a Ph.D. in cellular neuroscience from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. With more than 7,000 hours of teaching experience, she is a senior teacher and trainer in Yoga District's teacher training in Washington DC. Her current projects include art-based meditation projects for The Phillips Collection and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art. She also leads evidence-based meditation practices every Monday at https://www.innerstillnesswithaparna.com/.  

Inspired by her own journey as an evolving yogi, toddler's mom, neuroscience researcher, and visual artist, her classes emphasize strengthening the mind-breath-body connection. Her mission is to empower all people of all ages through practices of fitness and creativity.

Mary Hall Surface is an award-winning artist, educator and advocate specializing in multidisciplinary collaborations that expand perspective, uncover complexity, and deepen understanding. She is a 30+ year National Kennedy Center teaching artist, a six-summer faculty member of Harvard’s Project Zero Classroom, the founding instructor of the National Gallery of Art’s Writing Salon, and a popular facilitator of creative and reflective writing experiences inspired by visual art through the Smithsonian Associates. Her plays have been produced at major professional theatres, museums, and festivals throughout the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Canada, including 19 productions at the Kennedy Center. She is the 2022 Corey Medallion Award Recipient which honors life-time achievement for creating nurturing artistic work for young audiences. Her emotion-centered professional development for educators has been featured at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Gallery of Art and at national conferences, museums and arts centers across the US, as well as in London and Pamplona, Spain. She was the founding artistic director of DC’s Atlas INTERSECTIONS Festival from 2009 – 2015, an all-arts festival that fosters connection across boundaries of age, perspective and community. Her work is currently featured at DC’s Arena Stage Play title TBA.

Dr. Pablo P.L. Tinio is Chair of the Department of Educational Foundations at Montclair State University where he also heads the Creativity and Aesthetics Lab. His work is focused on the psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts; arts and aesthetics in education; and learning and engagement in cultural institutions. He has conducted research in, and published scholarly works with, schools as well as museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Queens Museum, Contemporary Art Centre Andratx Spain, and Belvedere Museum of Vienna, among other institutions. He co-edited the Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Aesthetics and the Arts and was past Editor of the APA journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Dr. Tinio has been awarded the Frank X. Barron Award and the Daniel E. Berlyne Award for Outstanding Early Career Achievement in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts by the APA and the Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field by an Early Career Scientist from the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics. Dr. Tinio is also Fellow of the APA. The public impact of his work may be seen through coverage in popular media such as The New Yorker, Psychology Today, and Scientific American Mind. 

Tenzin Topdhen, Director of The Tibet Museum in India, with the keen interest in Digital innovation in Museum to bring positive impact on wellbeing of society. With little hand on Digital Marketing in last 8 years of Corporate Experience, would surely contribute for the betterment of The Tibet Museum in particular and protecting and preserving Culture in general. With this interest, he single handedly, voluntarily took thousands of footages of Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), render it and brings a comprehensive Virtual tour of CTA. Work across all departments of museum and spearhead the New Museum Project from scratch as a core member of New Museum Development and Production. With vast experience in managing project, people, product & services, he has extensively manage all the stake holders of New museum even at the thick of Covid and successfully inaugurated the museum on 9th February 2022. Prior to that, he was Assistant Manager in Perfetti Van Melle and Mother Dairy Pvt. Ltd. where he served in different capacities as Trade Marketing and Area Sales Manager. Completed MBA from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, with a graduation in Pharmaceutical Engineering.

Susie Wilkening (she/her) has over 20 years of experience in museums, including 15 years leading custom projects for museums as well as fielding groundbreaking national research on the role of museums in American society. Susie enjoys sharing her findings at various annual meetings, including the American Alliance of Museums, American Association of State and Local History, Association of Science-Technology Centers, Association of Children’s Museums, and state and regional museum meetings. Susie is a go-to expert on museums for the media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, NPR, and others.  Additionally, she is the author of Audiences and Inclusion: A Primer for Cultivating More Inclusive Attitudes Among the Public and is the primary author of Life Stages of the Museum Visitor. Susie earned a BS in History, Technology, and Society from Georgia Tech and an MA from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the University of Delaware. She resides in Seattle, and her husband and curious children often accompany her as she travels to various museums and historic sites.

Amy J. Wilson is a change leader, community builder, movement maker, and an empathy advocate. She is the author of Empathy for Change: How to Build a More Understanding World, a guide to create positive, compassionate change where we work, live, and play. Through the  Empathy for Change Collaborative she cocreates approaches to today’s challenges to reverse our growing empathy deficit by learning about ourselves & understanding others. Members of the Collaborative study the impact of empathy on innovation and change, and empathy’s importance in a more technologically-advanced, volatile, and complex world. Amy was a 2020 Tech Policy Fellow at the Aspen Institute Tech Policy Hub, a policy entrepreneur developing outside-of-the-box approaches to society’s problems such as our empathy deficit, homelessness, and systemic racism. She served for three years as a Presidential Innovation Fellow (PIF), an entrepreneur-in-residence in the White House, to tackle the nation's biggest challenges across two Administrations. Amy pioneered Booz Allen Hamilton’s Innovation Blueprint, Playbook and Ecosystem, which defined innovation in the context of consulting, made innovation accessible to all, and created virtual and in-person places to incubate ideas. She has challenged the status quo at 12+ organizations and can both set and implement the vision. Amy holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, with a concentration in Public Relations, and a minor in British and American Literature, from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has two certificates from Stanford University: Innovation/Entrepreneurship and Design Thinking; two from General Assembly: Product Management and Front-End Web Development; and one in Documentary Filmmaking through Docs In Progress. 

Nathan Wiltshire is a Fox International Fellow at Yale, PhD scholar at Australian National University, academic, and empathy activist. His efforts are aimed at better understanding empathy, the role of culture, and diverse cultural settings. Nathan’s interest in empathy was seeded in 2005, when race-riots erupted in his hometown in Australia, a saddening reflection of the community’s deep cultural prejudices. Eventually, his passion was ignited when encountering empathy at the heart of creative ‘human-centred’ problem solving. This provided impetus for Nathan to embark on independent research in India, seeking a deeper insight into empathy at the grassroots with communities, social activists, and academics. Subsequently, in 2014, Nathan founded a non-profit enterprise along with Ashoka Fellow, Satyan Mishra of Drishtee, aimed at fostering cross-cultural empathy in Australia, India, and Japan. Additionally, he has developed empathy-focused programs at the University of Technology Sydney, taught to 15,000+ students across faculties including Business, Innovation, Health, and in International Leadership programs. Currently, Nathan is researching empathy across disciplinary boundaries at Australian National University’s Centre for Social Research and Methods and at Yale’s MacMillian Centre for International and Area Studies. Nathan’s hope is to contribute towards a richer understanding of the nature of empathy, beyond the limitations of Western-cultural ideals, to support efforts aimed at promoting empathy globally. 

Amelia Winger-Bearskin is an artist who innovates with artificial intelligence in ways that make a positive impact on our community and the environment. She is a Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts, at the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida.  She is the founder of the UF AI Climate Justice Lab and the Talk To Me About Water Collective.  She founded Wampum.Codes which is both an award-winning podcast and an ethical framework for software development based on indigenous values of co-creation.  Wampum.codes was awarded a Mozilla Fellowship embedded at the MIT Co-Creation Studio from 2019-2020 and was featured at the 2021 imagineNative festival. She continued her research in 2021 at Stanford University as their artist and technologist in residence made possible by the Stanford Visiting Artist Fund in Honor of Roberta Bowman Denning (VAF) .  In 2022 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Award as part of the Sundance AOP Fellowship cohort for her project CLOUD WORLD / SKYWORLD which will be part of the Whitney’s Sunrise/Sunset series in late fall 2022. In 2019 she was a delegate at the Summit on Fostering Universal Ethics and Compassion for His Holiness, The 14th Dalai Lama,  at his World  Headquarters in Dharmsala India.The non-profit she founded IDEA New Rochelle, in partnership with the New Rochelle Mayor’s Office, won the 2018 $1 Million Dollar Bloomberg Mayor’s Challenge for their VR/AR Citizen toolkit to help the community co-design their city.  In 2018 she was awarded the 100k Alternative Realities Prize for her Virtual Reality Project: Your Hands Are Feet from Engadget and Verizon Media. Amelia is Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma, Deer Clan on her mother’s side and her late father was Jewish/Baha’i.

In 1960, Mohamed Zakariya began working as a machinist in a small Los Angeles factory catering to the aerospace industry. During this period, he refined his interest in the Islamic religion’s art and culture and began informal studies of the Arabic language and Islamic calligraphy. A man of varied interests, his work and studies took him to Morocco, Europe, and England, where he studied Islamic manuscripts at the British Museum. At the same time, he was performing slapstick comedy with the zany British group Bruce Lacy and the Alberts, a precursor of Monty Python. His interest in music, which involved making musical instruments, was profoundly affected by his many long stays in London. Zakariya returned to the United States in 1967 and worked with the antiquarian impresario Oscar Meyer, for whom he crafted a variety of instruments from the history of science, as well as other artistic constructs. In the early 1970s, he moved to Virginia, where he found a wife, some cats, and a home. In 1984 Zakariya went to Istanbul at the invitation of the Research Center for Islamic History, Art, and Culture to study Arabic-script calligraphy with two Turkish masters. He subsequently received icazets in Sulus/Nesih scripts from Hasan Celebi, in 1988, and in Talik script from the late Ali Alparslan, in 1997. Since then, he has pursued the calligraphic life at home and abroad, concentrating primarily on calligraphy in classical Arabic and Ottoman Turkish. He has had numerous exhibitions and fulfilled many commissions and teaches the art to a circle of serious students. From 2004 to 2012, Zakariya was a member of the Joint Advisory Board, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by the university in 2012. Zakariya is represented by Suleyman Cooke, Salon D’Art. His work may be seen at www.MohamedZakariya.com.