Gail Sehlhorst
Gail Sehlhorst is the Visual and Performing Arts Manager for Seattle Public Schools. In the 9 years she has served in this role, she’s closed arts access gaps across the district doubling the number of music and visual arts programs, collaborated with over 250 arts teachers to create curriculum that activates 21st century skills, is culturally responsive and antiracist, and has partnered with multiple stakeholders on The Creative Advantage, a city-wide initiative to establish equitable access to arts education for every student in Seattle Public Schools. Prior to this role she was the Director of Education for Book-It Repertory Theatre’s Arts & Education Program and worked as a teaching artist in K-12 classrooms with ACT, Arts Impact, Book-It, Seattle Children’s Theatre and Seattle Repertory Theatre. She has been a consultant for arts-based program evaluation and curriculum design such as the WA State Teaching Artist Training Lab and the University of Washington’s Arts for Learning Project. Her focus as a teaching artist and educator have been to develop curricula and programs that integrate theatre and literacy, as well as teacher professional development to incorporate arts into the classroom. Gail has been a commissioner for ArtsWA, has a BFA in Acting from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, and an M.Ed. from the University of Washington in Curriculum and Instruction: Language, Literacy, and Culture.

Greg Thornton
Greg Thornton is a teaching artist, small business owner, visual artist and screen printing instructor who has a great passion for teaching youth. Greg was a restaurant manager and had been for many years when he was asked in the fall of 2013 by a local school district to present a curriculum for an art program in the district’s middle schools. From the first minute of his first class, Greg knew he had found the job that he wanted to do for the rest of his life – teaching and engaging students with art. At the beginning of his teaching artist career, Greg also had an opportunity to teach teens at an inpatient drug/alcohol treatment facility and at programs involving court-involved youth. Those experiences solidified Greg’s desire not only to teach students in a public school setting, but also to work closely as a teacher and mentor at-risk youth and youth in need. Greg engages students in the creative process by focusing on them as individuals, helping them to express their fears and their dreams, to set goals, and to develop the desire to succeed despite possible difficulties. Greg’s main goal is that each of his students learn to express their own voices in a creative and positive way. Greg’s lessons also teach skills that translate to other areas of the students’ lives – collaboration, leadership, acceptance, empathy, public speaking. Greg realizes that not every youth will become a great artist during his courses – but that truly is not the goal. Greg simply asks each student to embrace the journey of discovery and hopes that creating art helps build confidence in his students and that they have fun.

Hilary Cherner
Treasurer
Hilary is a silo-buster, dot-connecter and philanthropy geek. She has spent the past 15 years shepherding philanthropic consulting firm, Arabella Advisors, from start-up to leader in the social sector. Hilary has a passion for effective giving and, in particular, deploying equitable practices, advocacy, and cross- sector partnerships to achieve greater good. She holds a BA in sociology from the University of Colorado and an MA in public affairs with a concentration in nonprofit and public management from Indiana University. Hilary lives in West Seattle with her husband and rescue pup. When she is not working, you can find Hilary trying out new recipes in the kitchen, enjoying live music and adventuring around the PNW.

Keenan Peery
Keenan is a 4th-year at Seattle University majoring in Public Affairs with a focus on Urban Development and Equitable Community Sustainability as well as minoring in Philosophy. He believes that, at any age, a connection to the arts is an invaluable resource that not only builds but emotionally fortifies communities through the intimate connections art brings. In his own life, he follows and supports Asian and Asian- American artists that use their work to build a noncentralized community through shared socio-cultural experiences.

Kim Hasegawa Darcy
Kim Hasegawa Darcy is the daughter of two amazing educators. She grew up on two coasts as her father was a professor in upstate NY and her mother, a Professor in Seattle. She racially identifies as Japanese American and has embraced her Japanese culture and heritage into her and her family’s lifestyle. She visited Japan every year and eventually lived there while her father was a professor at Hokkaido University. As a graduate of WSU, she currently serves students in the Shoreline School District as the District’s Equity Specialist centering BIPOC voices and student outcomes. She is passionate about racial equity work and is honored to serve on the Arts Corps Board.

Kris Evans Bien
Board Chair
After graduating with a B.A. in Communications/Broadcast Journalism, Kris spent the first part of her career working in live, network television production in LA and NY. Transitioning to the tech sector was a natural progression to combine a love of content creation and storytelling with creative writing, UX design, and TV programming while envisioning the future of television by creating interactive television prototypes at Microsoft. Kris’ work was published in two books. Once she had children, she transitioned to teaching K6 visual arts as an art docent in the Northshore School District, working for the Northshore Schools Foundation, and then as an art docent trainer for parents. Kris connected with Arts Corps to develop a new docent curriculum for the district, after partnering with the Museum of Women in the Arts, focusing on equity, diversity, and gender parity. She worked on Arts Corps’ Learning Immersive Technology pilot by recruiting an advisory board and trained as a teaching artist at ArtsWA’s TAT Lab. Kris served as Lead Ambassador for Arts Ed Washington, advocating for arts education across Washington state. She sees an education as incomplete without the arts and thinks districts must create more arts equity in schools. She misses her time with students in the classroom and has three children: one in college and twins finishing high school.

Maria Guillen Valdovinos
Maria Luisa Guillen Valdovinos (Poesia Mariarte) is a visual creative thinker/artist, educator/art therapist and Indigenous Rights observer in environmental, food, and social justice movements; based in occupied Coast Salish Territories. Art ingrained in cultural experience, she graduated in 2010 from the University of Washington in Bio-Cultural Anthropology with a minor in Gender & Sexuality Studies. She was born in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero Mexico and after studying graffiti in Lima, PERU IN 2009 with Jorge Miyagi and drawing flowers in Biology projects begun building creatively in cultural political movements, traveling with the National Indigenous Congress, parents of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa, and visited Autonomous Zapatista communities as a human rights observer with FRAYBA, an indigenous human rights organization based in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas Mexico. Featured as a performer in BBC’s 100 Womxn in Mexico City 2016 and A Published Writer featured in “Chapter 9: Travels of a Diaspora Community: From La Sierra Madre Y Tierra Caliente to the Pacific Northwest” MEXICAN-ORIGIN FOODS, FOODWAYS, AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A DECOLONIAL PRESPECTIVES, The University of Arkansas Press 2017; Publication “Xin Fronteras”, Seattle Journal for Social Justice Seattle University School of Law. Overall she is a lover of all things creatively expressive.