Chandre Iqugan Szafran is Inupiaq from Alaska. Her creative practice combines lyrical prose with visual art and design, using playfulness and color to communicate her point of view. Chandre named her creative practice qaummaq, a word from the Fish River dialect of Inupiatun meaning “daylight” or “brightness from a source.” This suggests that light comes from something, like a lightbulb, a fire, or the sun. Similarly, her creative impulse comes from a place—her roots on the tundra near the Arctic Circle. As Native storytellers, Chandre believes it is our responsibility to deconstruct contemporary “Indigenized” narratives in spaces dominated by the non-Native gaze.

Chandre holds an MFA in nonfiction from the United States’ only accredited university of Indigenous fine arts, the Institute of American Indian Arts. Chandre enjoys biking, berry picking, traveling, and immersing herself in storytelling found in all artforms.

Daisy Lavea-Timo is an Aotearoa- New Zealand born Sāmoan poet (Vailu’utai, Samatau, Lepā, Saipipi) whose work is deeply rooted in her ancestry and her role as a tulafale-orator chief. Daisy explores what it means to sustain and construct her identity as a product of the Sāmoan diaspora, being born and raised in Tamaki-Auckland and living in Kalaisitete-Christchurch, NZ.

Daisy’s poetry is the dynamic and indigenous response of her Sāmoan-ness, and her work strives to communicate ideas about the complex societal issues connected with culture and leadership. She is a proud wife to Seta, mum to Hadassah, Micahlei and Honor, keen educator, and Director of Cross-Polynate- an indigenous social change agency. Daisy navigates corporate worlds as a strategic facilitator and cultural competency coach and in the community, facilitates vā-space for Rangatahi all over Aotearoa to use their “upu” - words to pen their aspirations and truths for their families, communities, and selves.

From her vantage point at the intersections of the many worlds she navigates, Daisy wields words about culture, leadership, and collective impact.

Cristina Rodriguez was born and raised in the city of Chicago, IL. She is a multidisciplinary artist: filmmaker, composer, actor, and writer based in Chicago. She majored in Musical Theatre and minored in Latino Studies at Columbia College of Chicago. She is a part of Actors Equity Association and Maestra Music Organization.

Her work blends magical realism, experimental sound, and Chicano cultural identity, creating immersive and emotionally resonant storytelling across film and performance.

She is the writer, director, composer, and lead actress of her own short film Mexica(n), and has composed original music for dance films. As a teaching artist, she has developed movement based curricula combining dance, mindfulness, and storytelling for young learners. 

Her films, performances and illustrations have been featured at Pilsen Community Arts Center, Map O Rama Interactive Exhibit at Free Street Theatre, Revive Arts Collective, PCCC Arts, Stage 773, Chicago Women’s Funny Festival, Second City, Short Stack Film Festival, Healthy Hood Chicago and Choreo Kick off at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. She also has been mentored by Andrew Cutler at Black Box Acting Academy, Resita Cox in the Indie & Impact Film Program at Duke University. Her artistry has been recognized with supported from DCASE Individual Artist Grant.

KYLE ABRAHAM (Founder and Artistic Director, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham; He/Him) is a dancer and choreographer, widely celebrated as a visionary voice in American modern dance. As the Founder and Artistic Director of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, a company recognized as “one of the most consistently excellent troupes working today” by The New York Times, his work embraces the full richness of human experience while honoring the communities that shape it.

A Pittsburgh native, Abraham trained at Civic Light Opera Academy and the Creative and Performing Arts High School before earning a BFA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He later received an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Washington Jefferson College and in 2026, he received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from his alma mater SUNY Purchase.

Abraham has premiered work to acclaim for decades. He is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship (2026), the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2013), the Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award (2016), the Princess Grace Foundation-USA Statue Award (2018), and the Dance Magazine Award (2022). His choreography for “Are You in Your Feelings” earned a National Dance Award for Best Modern Choreography (2024), while “An Untitled Love” received nominations for the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production (2025), the Rose Prize for International Dance (2025), and the National Dance Award for Best Modern Choreography (2026). He has been profiled in Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Kinfolk, Vogue, and British Vogue, among many other publications.

In addition to performing and developing new works for his company, Abraham has been commissioned by some of the world’s most prestigious companies, including American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the National Ballet of Cuba, New York City Ballet, Paul Taylor Dance Company, and the Royal Ballet. He also choreographed Misty Copeland in Cynthia Erivo’s short-form film “No Good Deed” in promotion of Wicked: For Good.

A dedicated educator and cultural leader, Abraham has served as the Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Professor in Dance at USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance and as a visiting professor at UCLA. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has contributed to advisory and leadership initiatives with Lincoln Center, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Prada Group, and Rebuild Foundation. In 2020, Abraham served as the first-ever guest editor for Dance Magazine.

Named a Kennedy Center Next 50 Leader, Abraham continues to expand the possibilities of contemporary dance through work that blends formal experimentation with cultural resonance. As Vogue noted, he brings “an avant-garde aesthetic, an original and politically minded downtown sensibility that doesn’t distinguish between genres but freely draws on a vocabulary that is as much Merce [Cunningham] and Martha [Graham] as it is Eadweard Muybridge and Michael Jackson.”

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Solomon Kim is an improviser, composer, and cellist whose work is grounded in the traditions of creative music and new music. Solomon’s approach to composition is one which creates a system or world to be explored, harnessing the social, energetic, and otherwise intangible and emergent qualities of these complex systems to navigate the porosity found within practices of composition and improvisation. Recent and upcoming works include Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth for chorus and creative ensemble (commissioned by the Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra) explore social relations within improvisation as a route to creating emergent, dynamic performances. Solomon has worked with ensembles and artists such as Aleksander Gabrys, Marie Carroll, Kevin Ramsay, Carl Testa, Timuçin Sahin’s Recalibrators, Hypercube, Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra, Tacet(i) Ensemble, Atlanta Contemporary Music Collective, etc. and has received residencies and other honors from the K2 Contemporary Art Center (Türkiye), GITLER&___ (USA), College Music Society (USA), and the Association for the Promotion of New Music (USA) among others. Solomon is a recipient of the 2024-2025 Fulbright Creative Arts grant in the Republic of Türkiye and a current graduate student at Wesleyan University, studying towards a MA in Experimental Music with Darius Jones.

Based in Germany, Canada, and Australia, Mammalian Diving Reflex is a research-art atelier conducting culturally explorative work since 1993. The artists of Mammalian are committed to social acupuncture: playful, provocative, site-specific, and social-specific participatory performances, events, moments, situations, stage-based work, gallery-based participatory installations, videos, art objects,  theoretical texts, and models for youth engagement that are being replicated globally. The team has successfully carried our energies into the fields of urban planning, writing, directing, art history, education, photography, videography, filmmaking, acting, playwriting, and qualitative and quantitative research. Mammalian Diving Reflex’s work dismantles barriers between individuals, fostering a dialogue between audience members, between the audience and the material, and between the performers and the audience. Our work is innovative; we collaborate with diverse groups of youth, seniors, and adults, exploring and stretching the boundaries of what is considered theatre and performance. We are regularly invited to present our work in some of the most important contemporary performing arts festivals and venues in the world as well at the primary school just down the block, past the house where the dog is always barking.  

Darren O’Donnell is an urban cultural planner, novelist, essayist, playwright, filmmaker, performance director, and the artistic director and founder of Mammalian Diving Reflex. His books include Your Secrets Sleep with Me (2004); Social Acupuncture (2006), in which he argues for an aesthetic of civic engagement; and Haircuts by Children and Other Evidence for a New Social Contract (2018), in which he proposes the cultural sector as a pilot for a new social contract with children. His performance work includes Haircuts by Children, All the Sex I've Ever Had, Nightwalks with Teenagers, The Last Minutes Before Mars, Everything Has Disappeared, and Teentalitarianism.  

O’Donnell’s model for long-term collaboration with young people has been implemented in London, Bochum, Milan, and Berlin. He is interested in expanding and rethinking the role of cultural institutions in the world, particularly in terms of long-term engagement and collaborative friendships that spread into the wider community.

Institutional partners have included the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, the Humboldt Forum, the Tate Modern and Tate Britain, the West Kowloon Cultural District, the London International Festival of Theatre, the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region, the Schauspielhaus Bochum, and the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art.

Heather O’Watch (She/Her) is a Nakoda and Nehiyaw woman from the Okanese First Nation in Canada. She has paternal ties to Carry The Kettle First Nation. Heather is enrolled in a Master’s Degree in Public Policy (MPP) at the University of Saskatchewan. She holds a BA in Indigenous Studies from the First Nations University of Canada. She works with Indigenous Peoples Rights International, a global Indigenous led organization that works to amplify justice for Indigenous peoples and communities facing criminalization and impunity. 

Heather has experience in research, policy and international affairs. Heather was selected as one of four young Canadian delegates to represent Canada in the Y7 Summit, the official youth delegation to the G7 summit in Japan 2023. Her contributions were submitted in the youth communique which was accepted by the 2023 G7 Presidency. She joined the Young Diplomats of Canada as EDI Lead to further support other young aspiring global leaders. She also is connected to the Global Youth Biodiversity Network- the official youth network of the Convention on Biological Diversity Secretariat. Heather recently founded Timpsina Society, a local Indigenous youth-led initiative which seeks to empower Indigenous youth in building capacity regarding policy and advocacy amongst the prairie region of Canada.

Megan Lewis is a queer, mixed Kanien’kehá:ka woman and member of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, currently serving as Director of the Centre for Indigenous Policy and Research at Indigenous Youth Roots. Based in Ottawa, she leads national initiatives that center Indigenous youth voices in policy and research. 
Megan’s approach draws on lived experience as a vital part of advancing equity, self-determination, and community-led solutions. She is committed to making policy spaces more accessible and to uplifting youth leadership through advocacy, research, and relationship-building that help shape more equitable and responsive policy systems.