Flavia Zuñiga-West (she/her) is the founder of Adding Voices. She is an artist, art educator and consultant who works full time as Middle School Visual Arts Teacher at Harvard-Westlake Middle School on Tongva land (what is known as Los Angeles).

She holds her MA in Museum Studies from New York University and her BFA in Fiber and Material Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently serves on the CAEA ED+I Commissioner for the California Art Education Association.

Flavia is the recipient of the 2022 National Art Education Association’s Committee of Multiethnic Affairs In Service Teacher Award and the 2022 National Art Education Association’s Independent School Art Teacher of the Year Award.

Candy Alexandra González is a Little Havana-born and raised, NYC and Philadelphia-based, multidisciplinary visual artist, poet, activist and trauma-informed art educator.

Candy received their MFA in Book Arts + Printmaking from the University of the Arts in 2017. Since graduating, they have been a 40th Street Artist-in-Residence in West Philadelphia, a West Bay View Fellow at Dieu Donné in Brooklyn, NY, Leeway Art and Change Grant Recipient and the 2021 Linda Lee Alter Fellow for the DaVinci Art Alliance. Candy is currently an Art + Art Education doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Candy is a graduate of the Bartol Foundation’s training in Trauma-Informed Practice for Teaching Artists and Trauma-Informed Teaching Artist Practices and Identity. They are also certified as a Trauma-Competent Professional through the Lakeside Global Institute.

Glynnis Reed-Conway (she/her, they/them) is an accomplished professional visual artist, art educator, and emerging scholar. She has two decades of experience as an art educator, working with diverse students as a teaching artist, K-12 art teacher, museum educator, and as a university instructor. She is a co-editor and contributor to the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group volume BIPOC Alliances: Building Communities and Curricula and author of James Baldwin: Novelist and Critic for young adults. Reed-Conway has exhibited her artwork widely in the U.S. and internationally. She is a recipient of the Visions of a New California Award and numerous other grants and awards. She is currently a dual title doctoral degree candidate in Art Education and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University and was selected as a member of the Phi Kappa Phi Society for excellence in her doctoral work. She recently served as the Blockson Graduate Assistant at Penn State University Libraries in the Charles L. Blockson Collection of African Americana and the African Diaspora. In that position she curated the exhibits “Haiti: Liberation of the First Black Republic” and “Black Feminist Embodiments of Self-Love and Self- Recovery,” featuring books and other materials from the Blockson Collection. She is motivated by the capacity of art to build worlds and act as a potential healing and liberating force. Her scholarly activities weave multiple strands of study that include artmaking practices, African spirituality, disability studies, and autoethnography to bring greater awareness of the value of the lives and contributions of intersectionally marginalized individuals to the field of art.

Amber C. Coleman, Ph.D. is an educator, researcher, and creative based in Phoenix, AZ. She received her Ph.D. in Art & Visual Culture Education from the University of Arizona in 2022. She is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in Art Education at Arizona State University. Her praxis centers the lens of Black feminisms, critical pedagogical strategies, and arts-based research as she investigates underrecognized experiences and reimagines methods for engagement with the visual arts and education.

Raised in a family of artists, crafters and makers, creativity and self expression have been a constant thread from childhood for Tara Harrison (she/ her). Since 1999, she has taught art in a variety of settings - currently at a suburban public elementary school in Connecticut. She is an artist and art educator with a passion for student centered learning, natural dye, gardening and crafted cocktails. She earned her MS in Art and Design Education from Pratt Institute and her BFA in Film, Video, Animation from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Alisha Mernick (she/her) is a Visual Art and Social Justice Educator based in Los Angeles, CA. She specializes in using art making to engage students in a critical analysis of issues of identity, social justice, anti-racism, and civic engagement. Alisha currently serves as Southern Area President and Lead ED+I Commissioner for the California Art Education Association, Lecturer at California State University Northridge, board member at Adding Voices, and member of the National Art Education Association’s policy review committee. Alisha previously served on the National Art Education Associations Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Task Force, and has lectured and consulted for several major museums and art schools. She holds her Masters in Art Education from New York University, and has been implementing liberatory, critical arts pedagogy in k-16 classrooms for over a decade. Alisha’s most recent publication “Critical Arts Pedagogy: Nurturing Critical Consciousness and Self-Actualization Through Art Education” can be found in Volume 74 of Art Education Journal.

Kat Lee (she/they) is an art educator and mixed media artist specializing in ceramics. Kat is a first-generation Korean-American born and raised in Philadelphia, PA where they currently reside. Kat practices a choice-based curriculum within their classes where they promote teacher and learner collaborative work. Kat has been working in independent schools for 10 years of their teaching experience. Alongside teaching High School art classes, their passion and focus includes DEI work around their school campus. They were recently awarded the ISAE (independent school art educator) award through NAEA. Kat holds their master's in art education from Moore College of Art and Design and an Undergraduate degree in ceramics and teaching certification from Tyler School of Art.

Janice (she/her/ella) is a New York based Art Educator, artist, and community activist dedicated to urban gardening. Janice practices culturally sustainable teaching and choice-based curriculum in their classes where they center communal care, meditation, and holistic science, inter-generational healing through interdisciplinary themes. Janice is passionate about land based learning and ecology in the arts, she serves on the Education Committee at The Smiling Hogshead Ranch community garden. Janice currently serves on the 2024 Adding Voices Conference Committee.

Janice holds an MAEd in Art Education from New York University and an Undergraduate degree in Sculpture & Painting with a focus on Art Therapy at the School of Visual Arts.

Lauren Stichter (she/her) is the Director of Art Education, and Associate Professor, at Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia. Lauren is also a part time potter and centers her work in wheel thrown, hand carved vessels. Prior to her director role at Moore Lauren was the lead art teacher at Pennsylvania School for the Deaf for 15 years.

In the spring of 2019 Lauren became the National Art Education Association, Art in Special Education interest group president. Lauren is also the current chair of Administration and Supervision on the board of the Pennsylvania Art Education Association.

Lauren is passionate about Accessibility in the Arts and presents regularly at national and international conferences, in district wide professional development days, for museum and community arts events and in webinars. Most recently Lauren has done work with the Disability Studies, Arts & Education group, the Kennedy Center VSA program, the National Art Education Association, the Council for Exceptional Children, the National Gallery, the Barnes Foundation, KidSmart, the Art Educators of New Jersey, the Georgia Art Education Association, and in a wide range of college settings and school districts across the country.

Additionally Lauren has become known for hosting large scale events at Moore including two annual symposiums with a focus on the intersections of Art & Special Education, the 2nd International Conference on Disability Studies Arts and Education (Fall 2019), the Pennsylvania Art Education Association (Fall 2016 and Fall 2021) and the Adding Voices Conference (Fall 2022 & Fall 2024).