Founding Board member - BOARD SECRETARY
Tricia Creason-Valencia
TRICIA CREASON-VALENCIA is documentary filmmaker who teaches video production, media studies, feminist and experimental filmmaking. She produced the Emmy-nominated documentary "Stable Life" and directed "Changing Boundaries: The History of San Jose". Her films address social justice issues such as immigration reform, homelessness and the representation of gender & race in American social history. Her films have won numerous awards, screened at film festivals and aired on public television throughout the United States. She lives in San Jose with her partner and two children.
Founding Board Member - bOARD TREASURER
Valéria Miranda
VALÉRIA “VAL” MIRANDA is the executive director of the Santa Cruz Art League, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2019. Val also teaches graduate art and museum education at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She is passionate about the power of the arts and culture to change individuals, communities, and society. Val has worked in and with arts organizations since 1992. She was the Director of Education at the San Jose Museum of Art and at the Monterey Museum of Art.
She also consults in equity and diversity, nonprofit administration, education, strategic planning, and fundraising. She holds an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. Val is MALI 6 and a 2001 graduate of Packard-funded Arts Leadership for the Future. Most recently she was very fortunate to participate in the inaugural Leaders of Color Forum, organized by Americans for the Arts, at the Atlantic Arts Center in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. A native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Val’s artistic practice is in dance, and she feels blessed by having grown up surrounded by visual and performing arts. Val’s mother took her to the theater for the first time when she was 5 years old and she has been an avid theater lover since then.For the last seven years Val has expressed her commitment to social justice by teaching weekly in the local jails of Santa Cruz County.In the US since 1991, she lived and worked in San Jose for 10 years, and in Santa Cruz for the last eighteen years. Val spends lots of time in the art spaces, beaches and woods of Santa Cruz County with her vibrant 15-year old son and many creative friends.
FOunding Board Member - BOARD PRESIDENT
Ron P. Muriera
RON P. MURIERA has over 20-years’ experience and knowledge as an arts and cultural administrator, performing artist, community activist, educator, historian, consultant, and advocate for underrepresented populations serving communities in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area, California and nationally. Ron has dedicated his life’s work to addressing a myriad of issues: racial, social and economic justice, access to the arts, cultural representation, inclusion of marginalized groups, and educational equity.
Ron currently is Development Director with San Jose Stage Company and is owner/consultant of RPM Consulting. He serves the community-at-large on the San Jose Arts Commission and is the Board Vice President of two state-wide arts organizations: Californians for the Arts and its sister organization California Arts Advocates. Ron has received numerous awards for his contributions to the community. Among them are the 2018 Mosaic America Impact in the Arts Award from Sangam Arts/Mosaic Silicon Valley, and the 2018 Global Artists’ Collaborative for Creative Empowerment Award. He has received recognition for his community work by former Congressman Mike Honda, CA State Senator Jim Beall and CA Assemblymember Bob Wiecklowski. Ron has a B.A. in Humanities from New College of California and is a graduate of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. He and his wife Gina and 2 children Francesca and Leonardo reside in San José.