Artivate Summit 2020 Art + Healing

Caroline Armijo

Stokes County native Caroline Rutledge Armijo is a mixed-media artist and environmental advocate who lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her work incorporates her concern for environmental issues threatening her home community: coal ash and fracking. Building on her work as a liturgical artist, Caroline's work focuses on personal history, spirituality and the environment. Her graduate work focused on cultural institutions and lifelong learning with a focus on the importance of art and play. She is the director of The Lilies Project, a National Creative Placemaking Fund grant to address coal ash in the Belews Creek community, creating art and accompanying programming in Stokes County, NC, where over 20 million tons of coal ash are stored.

Masi Asare

Dr. Masi Asare is assistant professor of theatre at Northwestern University, and holds degrees from Harvard and NYU. A lyricist, composer, playwright, voice teacher and performance scholar, she has held commissions from Broadway producers and Marvel. She has presented at BroadwayCon, ATHE, ASTR, EdTA, and EMP PopCon. Masi has received the Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award for a woman composer of musicals, and her songs have been heard at venues from Playwrights Horizons to Lincoln Center. Her book Voicing the Possible: Technique, Vocal Sound, and Black Women on the Musical Stage examines the impact of blues singers on Broadway belting and makes the case for the need to feel the racial history in contemporary practices of musical theatre performance.

David J. Brown

As an independent curator and consultant, David J. Brown is a radical optimist, creative instigator and pal of the arts. He has organized hundreds of exhibitions and large-scale community projects for seven nationally recognized arts organizations. A visiting professor at UNCSA, he is also the co-founder of DENT: Creative ReUSE Center, an innovative project involving a wide community in exploring reusing materials creatively rather than sending them to the landfill. Curatorial highlights for David include Lesley Dill's Tongues on Fire: Visions and Ecstasy, based on 700 personal testimonies of spirituality and mysticism, mounted at SECCA in Winston-Salem, and the HOME House Project: the future of affordable housing, a multi-year initiative and book with MIT.

Kelsey Brown

Kelsey Brown is the Inpatient Program Coordinator for Arts For Life at Brenner Children's Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC. She is also a textile artist and teaches weaving and natural dye course at the Sawtooth School for the Visual Arts. She loves seeing how art and connections can transform a hospital room. The team at Arts For Life brighten the lives and healthcare experiences of children and families facing serious illnesses and disabilities. By bringing visual art, music and creative writing education into hospitals and clinics, they help these children and teens remember that they’re not just patients: they’re artists, musicians and poets, with a world of possibility at their fingertips.

Brian Cole

Brian Cole, an innovative, experienced and bilingual arts leader, is the ninth chancellor of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA). UNCSA is the nation’s first public arts conservatory, one of 17 constituent campuses in the University of North Carolina System, and home to some of the top-ranked professional artistic training programs in the world. Cole leads nearly 1,300 students from high school through graduate school, as well as 700 summer and 500 community school students, and more than 600 faculty and staff. The UNC System Board of Governors appointed Cole as chancellor on May 20, 2020. He previously served as interim chancellor at UNCSA since August 2019.

Cole’s strengths include curriculum and program development and collaborative arts initiative development and implementation. In 2016, he joined UNCSA to serve as the dean of the School of Music. Prior to joining UNCSA, Cole served four years as the founding dean of academic affairs at Berklee College of Music’s campus in Valencia, Spain. Before that, he served seven years as associate dean of academic affairs at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.

Antoinette Cooper

Antoinette Cooper is a poet and an adjunct professor at Columbia University and CUNY School of Medicine. Born in Jamaica and raised in New York, she holds a BA from Cornell and an MFA from Columbia University. Her TEDx talk Death by Chocolate Cyst: What If My Illness Had A Voice is an account of her years of struggle with endometriosis, and navigates territories of female biases, racial biases, medicinal biases and the politics of pain, while also embodying the narrative medicine she teaches at CUNY. Antoinette is the founder of Black exhale, a gathering space for release and restoration, created to honor Black lives as sacred while providing a safe space to embody and release show emotions and let out into the world what should not be kept inside.

Regyna Curtis

Regyna Curtis created Atmaitri, a soul-centered business, with the goal of supporting individuals on their spiritual journey as a tour guide and translator, using her gifts and experiences as a map. Atmaitri is a combination of two Sanskrit words, atman, meaning soul, and maitri, meaning loving-kindness. Regyna is certified in multiple levels of Reiki, and is trained/experienced in sound healing, art education, the Enneagram, yoga, life coaching and project management. Her approach to healing is to meet people where they are and draw on her pallet of skills, experiences and techniques to craft the experience they need to access the healing within.

Owens Daniels

2019 Duke Energy Grant and Z Smith Reynolds Lead Artist for the Presence Absence Project awardee Owens Daniels is a visual artist/photographer, educator and the face behind ODP Art+Design, where he creates bold and innovative artwork that builds bridges and promotes cultural exchanges. Formally trained in photography and photo printing, Owens worked for several years as a freelance photographer and has extended his photographic career by fine-tuning the art of visual storytelling and developing his craft into a distinctive and decisive style. Buoyed up by his mother’s support and guided by his father’s dictum that everyone has a story to tell, Owens has numerous awards, grants, and exhibitions to his name, including Brown Paper Bag at SECCA in 2019.

Darius Daughtry

Darius V. Daughtry is a poet, playwright, director, educator and Founder/Artistic Director of Art Prevails Project, a performing arts organization dedicated to expanding cultural conversation through theatrical performance, arts education and community engagement. Darius has been commissioned to write, perform and conduct workshops for various organizations: The Poetry Foundation, The U.S. Naval Academy, O, Miami, City of Fort Lauderdale, Miami-Dade Schools, Broward Schools and more. Darius was given a notebook at the age of eight, letting out pain and anger, and launching an identity as a poet and then an actor, director and teaching artist in multiple nonprofits and after-school programs. His book of poetry is titled And the Walls Came Tumbling.

Adam Eckstrom

Adam Eckstrom is half of the artist collaborative Ghost of a Dream. The collaborative’s work embodies the essence of opulence while being constructed of materials that typically end up in the trash. They mine popular culture searching for discarded materials that people use trying to reach their goals. Whether it is a Hollywood film that transports the viewer into a dream reality, a travel poster promising a luxurious vacation, or a lottery ticket that gives the possibility of a future full of rich decadence; they use these remnants to both re-create people’s dreams, and portray the dreamer.

Emily Ensminger

Emily Ensminger is creative director at Elsewhere, in Greensboro, NC, and is a conceptual artist and advocate for independent multi-use live/work organizations. Emily is originally from Durham, NC, and received a BA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her recent work includes simple decorative textiles, made from detritus found during exploratory walks, that reflect on a lost relationship with environmental literacy and solitary, studio-based handwork, and a recent project at Elsewhere was the development of the House(pitality) Department, which uses art to guide participants through collective living, co-production and community collaboration, and produced programs around homesteading, domestic work and life skills.

Allison Gagnon

Allison Gagnon is chair of Collaborative Piano at UNCSA. A dedicated educator and sought-after playing partner, she now mentors college music students in interactive music-making in dementia care, both honoring her parents and elevating the value of students' community engagement. Canadian-born, Allison holds graduate degrees from McGill and Case Western Reserve, and is widely regarded as a pianist and as an educator. Her teaching philosophy is to "figure out where each student is—experience, skill set, personal and professional development—and then bring each student along to become independent and capable professionals with self-respect, respect for others and respect for their work."

Nathan Getzin

Nathan Getzin and Ada Ketchie are the founders of Wakes, creating experiences to facilitate awakening to a more mindful life. They are passionate about using the power of sound, voice and vibration to facilitate greater mindfulness, relaxation, emotional release and healing. While traveling the world with their first business, Northern Flicker, telling stories of inspiring changemakers, they realized that what brought people together and brought them to life was singing. They decided they wanted to make music and create experiences that could help people learn, grow and awaken to the vast landscape of their inner worlds. With the retreats, events and counseling at Wakes, they are pursuing their dream to dig deep into the power of music to help people heal.

Tasha Golden

Holding a PhD in Public Health Sciences, Tasha Golden is senior Arts in Health research scientist at the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins Medicine. A singer-songwriter for the critically acclaimed band Ellery, Tasha draws on her transdisciplinary background to develop innovative partnerships and practices that optimize health access, inclusivity and communications. Tasha founded Project Uncaged, a trauma-informed, arts-based program designed for young women in US juvenile detention and rehab facilities. It emphasizes girls’ intersectional experiences, supports girls’ well-being and amplifies young women’s stories, voices, and needs, advancing girls' leadership and meaningful inclusion in research, decision-making and public discourses.

Diana Greene

Diana Greene is a photographer, documentarian, storyteller and teacher focused on the human conditions of community, place, identity and memory. She began as a CNN journalist and producer, earned an MFA in fiction and then studied documentary storytelling at Duke University. In 2008, she founded a visual literacy program, Writing with Light, that combines photography and writing with self-portraiture. Diana teaches classes on Writing as Discovery, Text + Context, documentary filmmaking and visual storytelling. The recipient of numerous grants, residencies and fellowships, Diana co-created the influential documentary Bus Stop Jobs in 2018.

Kristen Haaf

Kristen Haaf is a landscape architect and urban planner with Roots First Design, a design studio focused on repairing the connection between people and nature, building green infrastructure and restoring ecosystems. Kristen works on both design and logistical aspects of project development, including conceptual design, grant writing, community engagement and strategic planning. She graduated with a BA in Environmental Science and Policy from Duke University and received a Master of Landscape Architecture from NC State University and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from UNC Chapel Hill. Kristen also teaches ecological design at Wake Forest University. She is an avid urban gardener and lover of trees.

Justus Harris

Justus Harris is the founder of MedSculp. MedSculp specializes in the development and consultation of data visualization, user experience, and patient communication strategies for healthcare institutions. Justus and MedSculp’s interactive health communication installations have been commissioned by the American Diabetes Association (Chicago, IL), the European Commission (Berlin, Germany), and The Kennedy Center (Washington, DC).

Justus's superpower is his community of peers in healthcare, technology, art, design. Microphones have never scared him and his engagements include speaking at Stanford University (San Francisco, CA), Livongo (Mountain View, CA), The Kennedy Center, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL), and The Economic Club of Chicago (Chicago, IL). Most importantly Justus is a human being. Music is his primary go-to for healing, share your recommendations, please.

In 2019 he was both a Stanford Medicine X ePatient Scholar and Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow.

Krystal Hart

Krystal Hart is a contemporary artist who received her BFA from the New York Institute of Technology, and is a recipient of numerous honors and residencies. She employs regional soils, inks, metals, pigments and minerals intermingled with man-made materials to further explore the dichotomy of our delicate existence. Getting to know people and their stories is as much a part of her process as being in the studio. Krystal travels to slum communities, volunteers with cancer patients and sits under the stories of war veterans, refugees, trauma victims and others. As actions of intercession she paints the joys and sufferings of lives onto various substrates, to cultivate more generative interconnected communities through intimacy and engagement.

Derek Hicks

Derek Hicks is an Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity. He teaches and researches broadly in the areas of African American religion, religion in North America, race, the body, religion and foodways and cultural studies. He serves as the co-chair of theReligion and Food Group steering committee with the American Academy of Religion. He is the author of the book Reclaiming Spirit in the Black Faith Tradition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and currently completing a second book entitled Feeding Flesh and Spirit: Religion, Food, and the Saga of Race in Black America. Dr. Hicks is the founding director of the forthcoming Center for Research, Engagement, and Collaboration in African American Life, which will serve Wake Forest University as an interdisciplinary research hub promoting innovative programming and community engagement.

Jennifer Houlihan

Jennifer is the Vice President of Value Based Care and Population Health for Wake Forest Baptist Health focused on operational and financial performance in value contracts, engagement with community partners, and leveraging best practice from innovation and translating that into the clinical space.

Previous to joining Wake Forest Jennifer was responsible for leading the University of Vermont (UVM) Health Network’s transformation to value through improving quality and lowering costs. With 20+ years as an experienced healthcare leader in both payer and provider environments, Jennifer’s role is to understand and connect the health care continuum, data and operations which includes the development of organizational capabilities needed to implement and sustain population health management along with community engagement to minimize care fragmentation and reduce costs.

Jennifer earned a Master's in Planning from Florida State University with an emphasis in Health
Policy and a Master’s Certificate of Population Health from Thomas Jefferson University.

Christina Hugenschmidt

Christina Hugenschmidt, PhD, is an associate professor of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine. She is a neuroscientist who investigates how age-related changes in movement and metabolism interact with the brain and cognition, and the potential of behavioral interventions to support healthy brain and body function in aging. She has partnered with Prof. Soriano for the past two years to begin understanding how dance and improvisational movement might benefit emotional and physical well-being in older adults.

Charlene Hunt

As a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, or the people of the dark water, Charlene Hunt’s passion lies within celebrating and connecting resources related to her Lumbee roots. Since the age of five, when a neighbor called her a racial epithet, Charlene knew she was different. But as an adult, she knows that her childhood experiences have made her resilient and being able to “walk in two different places” is a gift. While working towards a BA in Education at Salem College, she wrote a children’s book, “You Don’t Look Indian to Me,” with a message that you don’t have to let anyone put you in a box.

Early in her career, Charlene was a preschool teacher but now serves as Program Manager for the North Carolina American Indian Health Board which is housed within the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity at Wake Forest School of Medicine. She also works with multidisciplinary research teams to design and implement community-engaged health promotion programs and serves as a liaison to community partners. She was part of the inaugural cohort for the 2013 North Carolina Native Leadership Institute. She serves on the American Indian Heritage and Guilford Native American Associate planning committees and has worked on various projects including the Healthy Native North Carolinians Garden video. Charlene was accepted and began her studies at the University of North Dakota’s Indigenous MPH program in the Fall of 2019.

Sareh Imani

Sareh Imani is an Iranian-born artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Imani received an MFA in Painting from the University of Tehran and an MFA from the Parsons School of Design in New York. Her interdisciplinary work incorporates video installation, sculpture, and performance, through which she explores the reparative potentials of art and science, intimacy and distance, instructions and poetics.

Ada Ketchie

Ada Ketchie and Nathan Getzin are the founders of Wakes, creating experiences to facilitate awakening to a more mindful life. They are passionate about using the power of sound, voice and vibration to facilitate greater mindfulness, relaxation, emotional release and healing. While traveling the world with their first business, Northern Flicker, telling stories of inspiring changemakers, they realized that what brought people together and brought them to life was singing. They decided they wanted to make music and create experiences that could help people learn, grow and awaken to the vast landscape of their inner worlds. With the retreats, events and counseling at Wakes, they are pursuing their dream to dig deep into the power of music to help people heal.

Mona King

Mona King is an interior architect, designer, artist and entrepreneur, and the founder of Mona + Associates Design. She holds degrees from Indiana University and UNCG, CIDA accreditation and the Kenan Institute for the Arts’ Creative Catalyst Certificate. Prior to launching M+A Design, she spent more than three decades as a corporate executive, working on complex high-profile and commercial projects. Mona created her business to provide strategic, functional, creative and affordable holistic design solutions that energize people rather than drain them. A leader in the Winston-Salem creative community, Mona also creates, exhibits and sells Living Aura biophilic art, that brings natural substances and nature-centered design into people lives.

Maia Knispel

Maia Knispel is the program director of Humorology Atlanta, a.k.a. HA!, an Atlanta based non-profit organization dedicated to empowering hospitalized children through playful distraction. Their professional Clown Doctors offer therapeutic fun by bringing relief and joy to patients, families and staff through the art of clowning. Maia holds a BA in Theater Studies from Emory University, and an MFA in Theater Practice and Intercultural Actor Training from the University of Exeter, UK. She says that medical clowning "has made me pay greater and more empathetic attention to all people and has helped me continually find totally unexpected moments of levity, fun and laughter in all sorts of tough life situations."

Martha Lanaghen

Martha Lanaghen has worked around the world with universities and non-profits to help design engaging experiences that engender loyalty and improve learning. She’s an author and accomplished small business leader with four startup companies under her belt including a non-profit focused on science and arts education and an edtech company that achieved the fabled “unicorn” status in under 3 years. Her presentations, even virtually, are engaging and packed with practical tools you can put to use right away.

Cheryl Ann Lipstreu

Cheryl Ann Lipstreu is a fine artist, creative entrepreneur, muralist, illustrator, sculptor and award-winning international bodypainting champion. As a bodypainter she starred in Skin Wars Season 2 and Skin Wars Fresh Paint. Cheryl Ann holds degrees, certifications and apprenticeships in several fine art fields. Raised with a large family on a working horse farm in Belews Creek, NC, she fell in love with art at an early age, and always knew that art would be her path through the world. She works in a studio in downtown Winston-Salem, NC, exhibits collections in national galleries and welcomes commissions from around the world.

Lynda Summerlin Lotich

Lynda Summerlin Lotich is the Interim Executive Director of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC. Educated in the performing arts in music, she brings to her position over 30 years of experience around leadership roles in arts administration collaborating with artists, effectively achieving fundraising goals and developing and implementing strategic plans. Previously, Lotich was the Associate Director for the Kenan Institute for 17 years, serving as Interim Director from 2011-13. She has also served as Director of Development and Special Projects for the Eastern Music Festival, Program Director of the A+ Schools Program and Administrator in the development of Pack Place Education, Arts and Science Center, a cultural complex of museums and performance and exhibition spaces. She has also held several positions as board member and president of non-profit arts organizations.

Krisha Marcano

Krisha Marcano is assistant professor of Theatre Dance and assistant dean for Student Affairs and Entrepreneurial Studies at UNCSA’s School of Drama. Krisha spent her first eight years in modern dance companies like Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey, and then seventeen years on Broadway as a dancer/actor/singer in shows such as Fosse and The Color Purple. She volunteered for seven years as the co-chair of the Business Group at Career Transition for Dancers and realized she could continue to be of service teaching entrepreneurial and artistic wellness to her community of performing artists by creating The Artistry Center, where she nurtures the dancers as whole persons who need mentoring in their lives and their wellness as well as their artistry.

Mandy Goodwin Noa

Mandy Goodwin Noa is a licensed clinical social worker in Atlanta, Georgia, who works in three different Title 1 schools in Cobb County. Mandy is passionate about trauma-informed practices and utilizing art to create safe spaces for individuals. She believes all the best things in life are little messy—hands covered in paint, legs in dirt and faces in pizza sauce. She is also a certified children’s yoga instructor. Mandy is the program director for Paint Love, an Atlanta-based non-profit agency that partners with organizations and Title 1 schools who do not have the capacity or budget to expose their students to artistic opportunities, to reach at-risk and underserved youth who could most benefit from artistic and creative programming, yet have the least access to it.

Emily Ortiz Badalamente

Emily Ortiz Badalamente is an art therapist in Winston-Salem, NC. Emily received a MA in Art Therapy from the George Washington University and serves as the director of Art + Wellness at the Sawtooth School for Visual Arts. She has provided art therapy in mental health treatment centers, community outreach programs, with adults and children with intellectual and developmental disabilities and with cancer patients and survivors. As an artist, Emily primarily uses textiles, mixed media and found ephemera to explore topics that interest her visually and emotionally. She also enjoys textile processes such as knitting, weaving and sewing. As an art therapist, she believes strongly in the power of the creative process to allow for personal inquiry, healing and increased wellbeing for all individuals.

Piero Passacantando

Piero Passacantando (b. 1979 in Rome, Italy) is an interdisciplinary artist. His work combines painting, food, music, photography and participatory workshops focusing on dialogue, conviviality, and empathy. In addition, for the past 8 years, while he has been actively working as an artist, Piero has also delivering training and elbow-to-elbow support for healthcare software, specializing in electronic medical records for inpatient, emergency room, and operating room systems.

Stacey Peterson-Carmichael

Dr. Peterson-Carmichael is the Vice Chair of Clinical Operations for the Department of Pediatrics and Section Head for the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology at Brenner Children’s Hospital Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. She now serves as a Telehealth champion for Pediatrics and aims to incorporate virtual visits into her day to day patient care model. Her clinical and academic interests include: Flexible Bronchoscopy; Multispecialty Models of Care in Pediatrics; Sickle Cell lung disease.

Shyra Peyton

Shyra Peyton develops and manages community-based folk arts in education programs throughout the state of Maryland. Shyra holds an MA in Folklore Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill, and her areas of expertise are cultural festivals and African American traditions revitalization projects. She is currently working towards developing a national Juneteenth festival in Washington, DC.

Nadiyah Dorsey Quander

Nadiyah Dorsey Quander is the Program Manager for the Creative Catalyst Initiative at the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and MC for Artivate Summit 2020.

Irania Macias Reymann

Irania Macias Reymann is a dynamic speaker, author and educator who specializes in arts integration in multicultural/bilingual populations, and the connections with literacy, mental health and expressive arts. An award-winning author of children’s literature, Irania is the cofounder of Criss Cross Mangosauce, an edutainment company that fosters children’s love for languages and music. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, she came to the US in 1993 and worked as reporter for NBC news. She holds a Master of Literature from La Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain, and Teaching Artist Certifications from Wolf Trap and The John F. Kennedy Center. She is a certified poetry therapy facilitator and the diversity chair of NAPT.

Anna Rooney

Anna Rooney, a UNC School of the Arts alum, was in the Kenan Institute's first Arts Enterprise Lab and on their 2015 Strategic Planning Steering Committee. She co-founded Peppercorn Theater in 2010, and is now the Chief of Staff for Jessamyn Stanley and The Underbelly. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Ellen Rosenberg

Ellen Rosenberg is a theater professional and professor of Liberal Arts at UNCSA, where she has received the Excellence in Teaching award. Holding degrees from Long Island University, New York University, the University of South Carolina and Indiana University, Ellen pursues research interests including creative process, psychobiography, gender and ethnic issues, as well as Jewish and Yiddish theater. She has run workshops for educational, community and theatre professional groups centered on devised performance and the use of ritual in theater. Specializing in creative process, Ellen promotes the arts for enhancing personal identity and community connection through workshops and courses in narrative medicine, creative writing and the humanities.

Ryan Schmaltz

Ryan Schmaltz is an entrepreneur, technology executive, and startup advisor from San Francisco, California and based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He is the founding Director of the Media and Emerging Technology Lab at University of North Carolina School of the Arts which harnesses technology for the purposes of storytelling and content creation. Previously, Ryan was Executive Vice President at Blippar, a world leading augmented reality and computer vision company. Ryan was also an early leader at Uber where he led strategic initiatives focused on growth, strategic partnerships, and scaling global operations. He has also held roles at Microsoft, Adobe, and Deloitte where he designed and managed intellectual property and licensing programs. Ryan holds a Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems and Supply Chain Management from California State University, Chico and an MBA from Johns Hopkins University.

Lindsey Schwab

Lindsey Schwab is the Director of Community Relations at the Innovation Quarter, a mixed-use innovation district in Winston-Salem. In this role, Lindsey’s responsible for supporting the growth of the Innovation Quarter through targeted sector and community partner development. As the primary community liaison, Lindsey directs and manages Innovation Quarter interactions though impactful engagements with the surrounding community.

Most recently Lindsey has had the pleasure of working on the launch of iQ Community Labs, a virtual and physical partnership hub with the goal of creating a “community of solutions” aimed at health and social equity. She currently serves on the board of directors for the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership.

Lani Scozzari

Lani Scozzari is an educator and consultant, as well as a ballet dancer. A former UNCSA student, she holds a BFA from Emerson College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Among her award-winning educational initiatives, Lani has studied and implemented The Harkness Method of Education through Exeter Academy in New Hampshire as well as Project Based Learning via High Tech High Institute in San Diego, CA. Lani is the author of Sheath, Erosion: A Memoir of Marriage, and the co-creator of Ballet’s Child, a contemporary ballet documenting recovery of an eating disorder. Founder of Fostering Resilience, Lani also co-created Transformation Parenting, bringing expertise on social and emotional learning to parents as well as teachers.

Jane Shen

Jane M. Shen, Pharm.D. is Head of Innovation Sector Development, Innovation Quarter. Dr. Shen will work to establish, build and guide critical focus around specific areas of innovation within the Innovation Quarter ecosystem, including Advanced Digital Analytics, Population Health, Clinical Research Innovation, Regenerative & Precision Medicine, and more. As the Innovation Quarter continues to grow, focus in these specific lanes of innovation driving application in technology advancement, healthy aging, community health, virtual and personalized care will be crucial to attracting scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, startups, investors and established companies to converge here.

Dr. Shen, who comes most recently from Wake Forest Healthcare Ventures, was responsible for driving business strategy and initiatives focused on digital health technologies and data science. Since 2017, Dr. Shen has served as a Mentor within the Winston-Salem innovation ecosystem at the Winston Starts and the Center for Creative Economy. Also, served as the Board Member of Venture Café and Piedmont Renewal Network. Dr. Shen will continue to work closely with Wake Forest School of Medicine Departments and Centers – including Wake Forest Innovations, Center for Biomedical Informatics, Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine and the Center for Healthcare Innovation – to identify and map assets internally to build and drive strategic relationships in these critical Sector areas that can be leveraged toward long-term growth strategy of the Innovation Quarter.

With a career spanning more than 20 years in clinical research, innovation, technology and strategic engagement, Dr. Shen has held positions of responsibility and leadership involving program design and development, strategic planning, and corporate operations. Prior to joining Wake Forest Healthcare Ventures, Dr. Shen served as the Head of Innovation and Technology at PMG Research and Senior Vice President of Clinical Operations at TransTech. Dr. Shen earned her Pharm.D. at the University of Southern California in 1998. Dr. Shen completed her post- doctoral research fellowship with Rutgers University, New Jersey. During her post-doctoral fellowship, she completed her clinical training at the National Cancer Institute, NIH.

Christina Soriano

Christina Soriano is the Associate Provost for the Arts and Interdisciplinary Initiatives at Wake Forest University and an associate professor of dance. At Wake, she teaches courses that focus on improvisation, dance composition and dance and interdisciplinary studies. Since 2012, Christina has regularly taught a community dance class in Winston-Salem, NC to people living with Parkinson’s Disease and their carepartners, and has been involved in three scientific studies that look at the ways improvisational dance can help the mobility and balance of people living with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. She has received funding from the National Parkinson Foundation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC, and most recently the NIH to conduct a randomized clinical trial, testing her improvisational dance method in a community of adults living with Mild Cognitive Impairment and their carepartners.

Alisa Starbuck

Dr. Alisa L. Starbuck is Vice President of Women’s and Children’s Health Services and President of Brenner Children’s Hospital. She is responsible for strategies, facilities, operations and quality of care for all women’s and children’s related patient care services at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, affiliates and outreach sites. Dr. Starbuck completed her Doctorate of Nursing Practice at East Carolina University, earned a Master of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she also received her BSN, and completed a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner certificate from Georgetown University. Prior to her current position, she served as the CNO, Winston-Salem Campus. Dr. Starbuck has also overseen numerous successful clinical program site visits including the inaugural verification of the Pediatric Trauma Center, which marked the first program in NC to be verified by the American College of Surgeons. She is board certified as a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner from the National Certification Corporation and also as a Nurse Executive Advanced from the American Nurses Credentialing Center. She is adjunct faculty at George Washington University School of Medicine. She is married, has two adult children and four grandchildren.

Josh Tan

Joshua C. Tan is a Systems Manager for the Department of Radiology and the Translational Imaging Program (part of the CTSI) at Wake Forest Baptist Health. In addition, he is a computer programmer with computer hardware expertise and an imaging informatics specialist. He interfaces with clinicians from various departments, as well as research faculty, staff, and students for software/hardware support, and 2D/3D/4D reconstruction, visualization, image analysis, and 3D printing. Specialties include: conversion of medical images (CT, MRI, PET) into 3D CAD for 3D printing, advanced visualization and analysis of medical images, 3D medical modeling/animation, AR/VR/Mixed Reality, DICOM validation, management of large research medical imaging archives, and testing of alpha/beta software and hardware.

Cameron Wade

Cameron Wade is a drama therapist and therapeutic theatre practitioner originally from Durham, NC. An alumna of NYU's MA program in Drama Therapy, she serves as a resident drama therapist for Playmakers Repertory Company at UNC-Chapel Hill. She has served as a drama therapist in outpatient clinics, schools, acute and long-term inpatient settings with children, adolescent and adult patients. Cameron’s clinical and creative work is based on mutuality and informed by a model of intentional peer support in treatment with groups, families, partnerships and individuals. Cameron is a co-founder of Carolina Creative Wellness, providing drama therapy services, using play, embodiment, projection, role, story, metaphor, empathy, distancing, witnessing and improvisation to help people make meaningful change.

Jacinta White

Jacinta White is a published poet, facilitator and coach who focuses on art and healing. With a BA in Speech Communications from UNCG and an MPA in Nonprofit Management from Georgia State University, she decided to redirect her love for art and community by starting The Word Project, a company that offers writing and creative workshops to help groups and individuals come to terms with tough issues, using poetry and art as catalysts for healing. Under her editorship, The Word Project also publishes Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing. Jacinta holds numerous certifications and is also a corporate trainer, and founded Deeper Dive Consulting. Jacinta's latest collection of poems, Resurrecting the Bones, was published in 2019.

Christopher Whitlow

Dr. Christopher Whitlow is an endowed and tenured physician-scientist, holding the “I. Meschan Distinguished Professorship” at Wake Forest, with numerous leadership roles in medical/scientific societies at the national level. As Chief of Neuroradiology and Vice Chair of Imaging Informatics, he leads a team of talented physicians in a high volume clinical practice. Dr. Whitlow also serves as Director of the Translational Imaging Program (TIP) and Founder/Director of the Radiology Informatics and Image Processing Laboratory (RIIPL), where he leverages big data image processing, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to improve health through research. As a physician-scientist, Dr. Whitlow has more than 20 million dollars of active research funding as lead/principal investigator and over 350 peer-reviewed publications that have resulted from his highly sited work.

Katrin Windsor

Katrin Windsor is a certified team and executive coach, and president of Fujoli PlayLabs. A former Silicon Valley VP, general manager in London and Paris and stressed-out executive, she knows that fun and play are powerful and under-appreciated antidotes to stress, and help teams stay positive, creative and productive. Kat is fluent in five languages and has coached teams in 40+ countries. She has a reputation for creating deeply connecting and uplifting learning events for professionals through Fujoli PlayLabs, virtual and in-person experiences designed to immerse your teams in creativity, positivity and connection, in an optimal amount of time. Based in neuroscience, Kat’s work brings together creativity, science and human thriving.

Vijay Gupta

2018 MacArthur Fellow VIJAY GUPTA is a violinist and educator whose efforts to merge music with mental health are changing the world, note by note. He is the founder of Street Symphony—a musical advocacy program that empowers citizen-musicians to engage with communities experiencing extreme poverty, incarceration and homelessness, with extraordinary results.

Called “a riveting speaker” by The New Yorker, “at once jovial and intense,” Vijay Gupta is a violinist and passionate advocate for artistic voices at the center of social justice. Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007 at age 19, after having completed an undergraduate degree in biology from Marist College and a Master’s degree in violin performance from the Yale School of Music.

Donovan Livingston

Donovan Livingston is an award-winning educator, spoken word poet, and public speaker. In 2016, his Harvard Graduate School of Education convocation address “Lift Off” went viral, reaching over thirteen million views and prompting Hillary Clinton to praise, “It’s young graduates like [Livingston] who make it clear that America’s best days are still ahead.” Since his pivotal speech, Livingston has been featured on CNN, NPR, BBC, Good Morning America, and in news outlets across Europe, Australia, India, and South Africa. His convocation address was published as a book by Spiegel & Grau in 2017.