MariaElena De La Garza

Executive Director, Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County, Inc.

Luna HighJohn-Bey

Lead Researcher, London Nelson Legacy Initiative

Daisy Nuñez

School counselor, Watsonville High School

Antonella De La Tore Marcenaro

Founder/Executive Director, PUENTES

Jorge Guillen/Xinistra

Drag Artist

Mariah Roberts

Executive Director of Friends of Santa Cruz County Parks

Mariah Roberts is Executive Director of Friends of Santa Cruz County Parks. She was one of the key partners of the collaboration to imagine, fund and build Chanticleer County Park, a 4.5 acre park, featuring LEO’s Haven Inclusive Playground designed beyond ADA requirements to be an outdoor classroom for inclusive play. The park is slated to open in January 2020. Mariah holds a bachelor's degree from Pomona College in Women's Studies/Religious Studies and a master's degree from San Francisco State University in Special Education. Her passion for community engagement and Universal Design in public spaces is informed by having spent twelve years as an educational specialist serving families across the South Bay and Central Coast. In medical clinics, schools or homes, she worked with professionals and families to co-design activities, materials and spaces to promote active learning and healthy development through play.

https://www.countyparkfriends.org/mariah-roberts.html

Carolina Rubio-MacWright

Artist, Immigration Lawyer and Activist

Carolina Rubio-MacWright is an artist, immigration lawyer and activist fighting for immigrant and humanitarian rights. Her experience as an immigrant and immigration attorney opened her eyes to systems of oppression and how these intersect, taking peoples freedom away. She believes art is the most powerful way of explaining these inequities. She has thus mixed her law and art into the perfect platform called Touching Land; a program that uses hands on experiential arts as a tool for immigrant empowerment and community building. At Touching Land, immigrants learn about their rights and self-worth as they make a ceramic piece. The program also has a building bridges track, where cross cultural exchange happens as immigrants and American citizens come together through the power of art. Whether working on policy campaigns for non- profits, performing public art pieces, speaking at events or organizing lawyers to work inside detention centers, Carolina is guided by a simply principle: anything is possible when inspiring ideas and passionate people come together.

http://www.carolinamacwright.me/about

David Deamer

Research Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz

David Deamer is a Research Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1989, Deamer proposed the idea that it may be possible to sequence a DNA molecule by passing it through a nanoscopic pore embedded in a membrane. Mark Akeson and Deamer investigated the technique over the next 15 years, and in 2014 commercial devices were marketed that utilize nanopore sequencing concepts and patents developed by the Akeson and Deamer research groups. In a second research area, Deamer investigates how nucleic acids and primitive cells could have emerged on Earth 4 billion years ago, which is the topic of his TEDx talk. Deamer’s research is described in Assembling Life (2019), published by Oxford University Press, and was featured in a cover article in the August 2017 Scientific American.

https://ucsc.academia.edu/DavidDeamer

Sylvanna M. Falcón

Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies, Director of the Research Center for the Americas, and Founder of the Human Rights Investigations Lab at UCSC

Sylvanna M. Falcón is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies, Director of the Research Center for the Americas, and founder of the Human Rights Investigations Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activists inside the United Nations, [University of Washington Press, 2016; winner of the National Women’s Studies Association’s Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Award] and the co-editor of Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship [under contract with Rutgers University Press] and New Directions in Feminism and Human Rights [Routledge, 2011]. She is also the producer and host of a weekly public affairs radio program called Voces Críticas/ Critical Voices that airs on KZSC and KCSB.

https://sylvannafalcon.sites.ucsc.edu/